The Comedian's Comedian Podcast - Nish Kumar Returns, Again! | Part One

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

You know him. I know him. Nish Kumar (Pod Save The UK, The Mash Report and in his own words, one of Taskmaster’s greatest losers) returns for his third appearance on the show ahead of embarking on his new tour, Nish Kumar: Angry Humour From a Really Nice Guy. In the first part of this special, we discuss:how Bridget Christie, The Mash Report and Taskmaster all gave him permission to be both serious and goofy on stageNish's "candy floss" approach to building a show how explaining references for international audiences creates new joke opportunitiesthe practical nightmare of reworking one show into wildly different running timesthe difficulty of writing jokes when you can't gauge what an audience already knowsand how a diagnosis can reshape your understanding of yourselfJoin the Insiders Club at Patreon.com/ComComPod where you can instantly WATCH the full episode and get access to exclusive extras where we discuss the shocking pace of the current political instability, Nish's role on Pod Save the UK and witness two men try to catch a bee in a basement.👉 Sign up to the ComComPod Mailing List and follow the show on Instagram, YouTube & TikTok.Catch Up with Nish: Nish Kumar: Angry Humour From a Really Nice Guy is on tour throughout 2026. Find all the dates and more at nishkumar.co.uk. You can also now watch Nish, Don't Kill My Vibe on YouTube.Support our independently produced Podcast from only £3/month at Patreon.com/ComComPod:✅ Instant access to full video and ad-free audio episodes✅ Exclusive extra content with Nish✅ Early access to new episodes where possible✅ Exclusive membership offerings including weekly(ish) Stu&AsPLUS you’ll get access to the full back catalogue of extras you can find nowhere else!Everything I'm up to: Come and see me LIVE IN EDINBURGH & ON TOUR, find out all the info and more at stuartgoldsmith.com/comedy. Discover my comedy about the climate crisis, for everyone from activists to CEOs, at stuartgoldsmith.com/climate.Get in touch: If you’re listening and thinking ‘I’d love to work with ComComPod on getting something out there’ or ‘there’s someone you should absolutely have on’ - drop us an email at [e-mail]! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stuart here. You can go to Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy for tickets to my national tour. That's right. I'm taking my second ever climate comedy show. It's called Canary. I'm taking it to the Edinburgh Festival for the last two weeks of August at the Monkey Barrel, Cabaret Voltaire. And I shall see you there in the last two weeks of August. And then it's a national tour for this guy. Cambridge, Glasgow, Oxford, Manchester, Cardiff, Maidenhead, Sheffield and Birmingham, culminating in my biggest ever tour show at Bristol Old Vic. Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy for all your tickets. Today I am very pleased to welcome back to the show, Nish Kumar, who returns again. And he's a dear friend and family member, and I love him, and I'm thrilled to have him back. He's the co-ho-I don't need to introduce Nish. You know Nish. Co-host of hit podcast Pod Save the UK,

former host of the MASH report, and in his own words, one of Taskmaster's greatest losers. Nish Kibar returns for his third appearance on the pod ahead of embarking on his new tour, Nish Kumar, angry humour from a really nice guy. In the first half of part one, we discuss, we revisit the bread roll incident and the death threats that followed. We find out how lockdown made some pre-existing problems worse,

and we talk about the difficulty of writing jokes when you can't gauge how much an audience already knows about the subject, right? Plus, we talk about how a diagnosis can reshape your understanding of yourself. It's a tricky one, that. We opened with that, and we've probably got 20 minutes. out of ADHD, but we've shifted it around because, you know, it's a lot, there's a lot of ADHD in the episodes of late, and his take on it is particularly fascinating and prescient and vivid, as you would expect from Nish, but equally, you know, I'm just aware that we talk about it a lot,

and I fear that you, the listener, might be rolling your eyes going, oh, really, you too, not about him, but about me continuing to be excited, chatting to a dear friend about a mutual affliction. Sorry, a mutual superpower. Yes, it's a superpower, I said to my wife, as I realized that I'd put the tickets for Simon Amstall that we saw the other week in the, I'd booked them in the wrong day, I'd bought the wrong ticket. It's a superpower. It's a superpower. So anyway, all of that is coming up in just a moment, but there are loads of extras, tons of extras with Nish, with everyone that has been on in the last, God knows, however many hundred episodes, just hours and hours and hours of extra content. And if you would like access to it and get your greedy little ears on it, you can do that

at patreon.com slash comcom pod. You get the new format, Stu and A. You get all the extra content, full video of this episode with Nish, so you can see his lovely big face. Here is Nish Kumar. Hello, mate.

Hello. You're on the show again. I know. Now you're in my very cool cellar. Yeah, and also, for people who are only listening to this, I want you to know, you've done the reverse of a power move on your guests.

Oh, go on. Because there's like, I don't know if this is real or as with all of things pertaining to business. I don't know if this is a real piece of advice or something that they did on 30 Rock. Because I've not had a corporate job. So I don't know whether this is real. But there's a bit at 30 Rock episode where Jack Donegie has his negotiation furniture. And he is in a much more comfortable seat. Oh, I've given you the nice chair.

And I'm in a luxurious armchair. I'm in, I'm so ergonomically supported by this. Do you know, that chair has a name. No, not a name that I gave it. The brand of that chair is it. Not the brand, the model. It's called the Commodore. Yeah, that's the Commodore.

And I regret it because actually the sides of it, for the listener, the sides of it are stripy black and grey in such a way that it will not pass muster on like visual fuzz. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's the worst thing it could be. But I spend a lot of time in the Commodore. incredibly comfortable. The Commodore is incredibly comfortable. So I've done a reverse power move.

You've done a reverse power move. This is in keeping with the alignment of the show, the values of the show, and that the guest has the nice chair. Yeah, it's really like, everything's designed to make me feel comfortable. No, I'm pleased. I'm pleased. I'm glad you're comfortable. Let's start. Okay, let's have a little overview of the things that we have to talk about, one of which is your, like since the last time you came in, which I think was 2023. Correct.

ADHD diagnosis. 100%. 100%. And an absolute case of how did we not know? Did you know? At what point did you like tell me about, we've never really spoken about this. And I'm a late start. I think I was like 2022.

So when we, so when I was doing my last show, so when I was here in 2023, I would have been talking about the bread roll show because that would just have come. come out. Yes. So I wouldn't. So then, so we're now, I'm now about to start a tour that is the second show since we last spoke. Yes, it was Nish Don't Kill My Vibe. Which was a big mental health show.

Lots of stuff to talk about. Yeah, there was a lot of stuff about. Yeah. So, but in the, around the time, so probably about 2024, we started loosely talking about basically because of the stupid internet, everyone now thinks everyone has ideation. Yes. And the problem is that my instinct in those kind of situations is to go, oh, the internet. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't have ADHD.

Just because there's a kind of, and my partner, good old Amy and Ait kept saying, my brother in Christ, based on everything I understand. Yeah. You got it. And then various people, including Amy, got diagnosed with it. And so then this kind of phrase started being used, sweetie, you've got it. but like really kind of like instigated by my friend Hannah. Like it's, there was a sort of idea of like,

how is it possible that you don't have it? And I, I said to my therapist something like, do you think I have ADHD initially? And she said, I don't really know. I mean, she said,

and so we'd been working together for a few years by that point. And she said, I don't really know. I don't know if I think of you as like a disorganized person. And I had to unblur my background on Zoom for the first time. And as soon as I unblurred the background and she saw my study, she said, OK, well, let's have a chat about this. And so, you know, it's obviously not as straightforward as just being disorganised,

but she was, and then we sort of started doing bits of stuff around ADHD. And then I started, I basically, there's a long story in Nish Don't Kill My Vibe, which is now available on YouTube, which has been filmed. and it's done as a tour. There's a story in that show about me leaving my passport in a New York taxi. And people at shows would yell out, you have ADHD, including a memorable time in Basingstoke where a woman said, you have ADHD. And I said, what qualifies you to make that assessment of me?

And she said, I am a mental health professional who has ADHD. and she and so then and at one point I said and this is in the show I said to my therapist do you think I have ADHD this was after we'd done a bit of work around it I said do you honestly think I have ADHD

or do you think everyone thinks everyone has ADHD because of the internet and she said yes to both and that was when and then and then after I finished that tour and kind of and also yeah I forgot about this but the end of that

bit in the show is really what happened. I said, why do you think I have ADHD? And she said, because I sent you a referral to an ADHD specialist three months ago and you haven't replied to the email. And so then I did the assessment. And so now I'm at the point where we're trying to work out if it's therapeutic options or whether it's whether we medicate me, what medications that's going to involve. And we're moving very slowly through the process. because also they wanted like, you know, I'm 40 and I also have a terrible family history of heart disease. So that slightly complicates what meds they kind of want to give me. And so we're in a kind of process of it.

But yeah, I will say it explains a lot. And so I met somebody after one of the shows. I feel like it might have been a show I did in maybe in Denmark. I did a bunch of European shows. And I met this woman after the gig and she said, I have known that you heard ADHD from the first time I saw you on television because I thought this man's brain is moving at speed that suggests that there is something,

this, an ADHD element to the way that this man's thoughts are functioning. I think it's funny hearing that specifically about the speed because something I think is to my genuine detriment as a comedian. is that I think too fast for an audience. Yeah. Like, I haven't got a handle. Like, sometimes I've got a handle on that. And other times I'm like, oh, of course this joke doesn't work.

Of course that thing doesn't work. I'm assuming such. And, you know what I mean? Like, in a way that I'm very, I'm at pains to point out, is not me going, I'm too fast for an audience. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like a boast. Oh, my thoughts are really quick.

It's not. It's a huge pain in the dick. Like, I really, it can be, it can have, there are benefits, for sure. Yeah. It does have the sort of superpower quality. But I think also, I'm, I often. and making very fast connections, and I'm very frequently frustrated that I am calibrated for a speed of connection that the audience doesn't have. Yeah, sure. And that makes me

unrelatable and hard to listen to. I mean, I think, like, when I, I definitely know what you mean, and there's definitely a thing that manifests itself in problems in joke-rying to return this to the core of the essence of this podcast. Very professionally done, yeah. I've been listening to the show for two locks since day one. So I will always bring it back to the core. We're both producing the show as we do it. Lovely. Lovely. I do think sometimes the

I can't remember whether we talked about this beforehand, but a lot of the reason that a joke doesn't work is either you gave them too much information or not enough information. And if you give them too much information, they don't laugh because they made the connection in their head already.

And if you don't give them enough information, they don't have all of the variables. And I feel like That's where ADHD can manifest itself in an unhelpful way because there's a kind of, your brain is moving so quickly that you've sort of assumed that they have the same information as you do. Well, like the annoying ADHD trait of interrupting people because you know what they're going to say next. And sometimes you don't. Like that's a big bone of contention between me and my wife is she will often, like, I'll be like,

yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. And she'll be like, well, what am I going to say next? And I'll say, it's this. And she went, no, it wasn't, wasn't that. And if I ever managed to catch her doing that the other way around, I'm so thrilled. Because that, you don't know what I mean? It's like, I find it a challenge those kind of like, you know, the quick firing or misfiring. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like I scan books. I realize I can look back and go, oh, I've always scanned books. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? I need plot. You know, you know, my wife, she loves a sort of melancholic three-hour French movie. Yeah. Whereas I'm like, make a thing happen.

You know what I mean? I like a Christopher Nolan heist, please, with interlocking parts that I can understand and block all at once. So, I don't, my ADHD, well, I've, as you know, quite a similar taste of films to your wife. So my ADHD doesn't sort of manifest itself in those kind of things. My ADHD is the most childish version, which is, I'm bored, I cannot take any of this in. Yes.

That's the real problem. Well, I think the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, The question that I started with, which is like, why didn't we know? Yeah. I know my diagnostic, and people have said a lot of ideas along in common with this, my diagnostic criteria for like when my friends get in touch with me and say, hey, I've heard you've been diagnosed with ADHD and I listened to a podcast where you mentioned it. And I just wanted a chat.

It's now, oh, 100%. If we get on with each other, the reason we get on with each other may well have something to do with the fact that we think and communicate similarly. And if there's that and you've got to the stage of wondering, yeah, then can, Congratulations, my friend. I'm pleased to tell you. You have ADHD. But given that you and I have a friendship, which is characterized by often quite quickly talking about lots of subjects in varying degrees of depth, there is the why didn't we know thing. And like, do you, did you, because I'm a friend of mine who sort of announced his diagnosis. He has got very, he's very ADHD. I feel like mine is mild and controllable. But when we can talk about medication, you were asked earlier on.

I am on a hilariously low dose of elvance. Like, I'm on 10 milligrams of elvance. They don't do slow release 10 milligrams. So I have to get 20 milligrams, which is the lowest slow release and break the pills. Yes. Because the substrate that makes them slow release is in each individual grain rather than the whole pill. Normally you can't break slow release pills. There's getting into some deep medical information here.

But literally, I had an annual review a month ago, and the doctor online who I was not aware of, laughed in my face twice. when I told Pete bobbing I'm on 10 milligrams he was like have you heard of coffee it's like it's ridiculous but it makes an unbelievable measurable difference to my life my overwhelm

how much I get done how little I freak out about it all the rest of it to which the medication detractors out there will go well obviously you're on speed but I think it's it's certainly helping me I think the question I was going to ask

yeah let's start with that like why didn't we know you know it's hard It's because we, our generation still has quite a poor understanding of what it is. And actually the psychologist who diagnosed me said that the H is a real problem for us. Because that's sort of what's thrown off our ability to diagnose. Because when we were kids, if somebody had ADHD, it was because they were like running, like literally just like running into walls and stuff.

And it's quite sort of poor understanding of what it actually involves. And there are things now when they say to you, these are like characteristics of this type of person. You know, the biggest thing is people, when you're a kid, like one of the first things he said to me was when you were a kid, did people constantly call you lazy? I said, yes, lazy, disorganized. Also, the biggest one was daydream.

Like, when I was a kid, my parents would always go, what planet do you live on? Like, what you're daydreaming all the time? And that, I thought that, you know, I was like, well, I guess I'm just creative. But it turns out my brain chemistry is fucked. that it's, I think we all have a poor understanding of what it is. And I think maybe hopefully people in sort of our age bracket are like the last generation that don't really fully know what it

is. And the psychologist, I said, you know, is this a crisis of over diagnosis? And he said, no, he said some, there could be a bit of overmedication because medical doctors, understandably, are overstretched on the NHS and so sometimes just want to give people pills. So he's like, not everybody needs medication, but we are, he said, we're still way. under-diagnosing it. He said we're just getting to grips with the parameters of what it involves. And so I guess when somebody, when a medical professional says that to you, it definitely liberates you a bit from self-flagellation. Oh, how did I not spot this? Well, we're just learning really about what it is. At the end of my meeting with my diagnosis, she said, I'm, you know, no diagnosis.

Oh, no, this is the way around it happened. I said, she said any questions. I said, could I have fooled you? Like it would solve, I feel like it would solve a lot of problems. in my life if someone said, well, wave a magic wand, all those times you felt like you were a square peg in a round hole, you actually were, and all the rest of it. And so could I have pulled the wool over your eyes? And she said, well, no diagnosis is 100%, but I've been doing it for long time and I'm 100% confident. She said, but isn't it curious that the language that you choose to relate to all of this is, I'm, you know, it would be great for me if I got a diagnosis because it would mean I wasn't such a piece of shit. You know, that is the language that you've

clothed it in. So my question is, what language did you clothe it in? Have you grown up thinking, um, oh, I'm a disaster. I'm all over the place. And if upon then having a medical professional tell you, actually this is a brain chemistry thing, did it feel relief? Did you feel, you know, what's? Yeah, it felt it did feel, to be honest, it felt like a relief because, but also I had so long to adjust to it because because I didn't reply to that email for three months, with my therapist had sort of had basically to say to me, I've started basically doing a therapeutic program for ADHD for you

because I just thought, and she said, I need a psychologist because my, my accreditation is not that. So I want you to see somebody that is a specialist for that. But we've started. And also, you know, we had this kind of move towards it being an inevitability.

By the time, I had a lot of time to consider and process the diagnosis. But also it's really helped me, and I'm interested to know whether you found this as well, because anxiety, which is a big problem for me, is a major comorbidity of ADHD. And I think that a lot of this, a lot of the process of diagnosis,

because Amy said, be careful how you feel, be careful with your emotions around this, because she said a lot of people when they get a diagnosis feel a kind of grief for the younger version of themselves that hadn't had this diagnosis and so was, you know,

feels sadness about how they were treated as a younger person. And I spent a lot of time thinking about that. And I think, again, this, the psychologist genuinely saying, you know, we're still learning about this has made me less upset that I wasn't diagnosed with it in 1999 or 1998. We just didn't know what it was. So I didn't. But when when it came to the point of diagnosed, it was a bit of a relief. Because, listen, I've always been a bit off. There's always been something a bit off.

off with me. Yeah. But so it is a sort of slow moving thing. And also, we must have talked about the last time I was here about PTSD, because that was a lot of what I was going through that was in the bread roll show, in your power, your control. And it's really helped me to understand that everything is sort of interlinked. Because the PTSD was a sort of specific response to getting death threats.

But then what we've now been doing in therapy, you know, my therapist is a traumatologist, and so she was saying, we deal with this, but then we try and figure out why. You know, we try and dig into what's the, what, we know about the circumstance, we know about the effect, we try and learn how to manage those effects. We'd also like, I would also like to know why it is your brain was susceptible to it. And it, knowing about ADHD and anxiety, it sort of understands that, you know, the, my, our brains are like a pinball machine, right?

It's just the ball is just kind of flying around, smacking off bumpers. And that's fine if what, if the ball is just a normal ball. But if the ball is a bad thought ball, then it just means it's bouncing around and pinging off the bumpers. And you're constantly rotating the worst case scenario around this pinball machine in your brain. And it's given me so much more of a sense of how this has happened. And it's given me so much more of a sense of the, the why and it has

it has really really it has really really helped me in the last few years that's great I'm really I'm really really pleased for you and I suppose I think last time you're on the show we talked I think I will have said at the time

and that feeling hasn't really got away is you're one of the people who I lived with at a time when you had some mental health stuff going on that I didn't notice because I had some mental health stuff going on And I always, like you and I think Noel, who you know, my friend Noel, who you know, he at one point, someone was trying to break into his house bit by bit. And it was like a really traumatising. He's very strong silent type, as you know, didn't mention it for ages. And only after it had all been resolved, sort of opened up about how he'd felt. And I was like, I've let my friend down. You know, like I think I will probably always be kicking myself that I didn't spot how much you were going through. Well, I was really going through it

and part of the issue and sort of part of the unfortunate timing of it is the real bad stuff was end of 2019 into 2020. So to be quite honest with you, no one knew I was going through it apart from Amy, really. And weirdly Brett Goldstein

because Brett Goldstein was the person who... How can you not tell that man everything? How can you not put your head on his chiseled bosom? But he was the one who He was the one who kind of Amy had been trying to get me to go to therapy for years. Brett,

but in Amy's words, oh, so you'll do it when a man tells you. Yeah. But yeah, it was, so nobody really knew about the kind of real bad bit because the real bad bit was actually in lockdown.

And also, lockdown didn't help because part of the thing was I was feeling out of control of my emotions. But also in my head, I was thinking, yeah, of course I'm out of control of my emotions. There's a fucking disease. Someone fucked a bat

and now the air's filled with poison. Like, of course, we're trapped in our houses. Of course I feel crazy. That's a logical response to what's going on. Not realizing that, yes, that is a logical response to what's going on. But also, you have carried some stuff into the pandemic that has gone back. And I think like anybody who was taking anything into the pandemic, it then multiplied the effects of that.

Because also, if what you're worried about is someone has said they're going to come find me and kill me, it's hard to say, oh, that's implausible if on a day, to day-to-day basis, you are taking meetings in a shirt and underpants because you're working on a computer because you can't leave the house otherwise all the old people are going to die. Like suddenly when there's a global pandemic, you're like, well, anything is plausible. So I think I think that that also contributed to this like me sort of being in a kind of real bad hole. And it was, yeah, and I think it was only, it is amazing because coming out of the pandemic and doing that show, a lot of my friends that came to see,

show were a bit like, okay, I didn't know that was going on. That's pretty bad. And I think it was, I think it was a lot of bad timing. It was a lot of bad timing. Basically, the pandemic was very hard for me. Okay. And I don't know if that's unparse anyone can relate to. I think there's also an element of it. It's that like regarding your mental health, you were kind of like a functional alcoholic. Yes. But for mental health. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, very high functional. very high functioning, but not, but in like not a good way, in like not a long term. We're going to have to cope with the fact there's a fly in the cellar. And the only way to stop that happening, and I did consider this earlier on when I was setting up,

is we'd have to close that door. I'm not prepared to do that. It's the hottest day of the year. This would be too slowly melting human men. Yes. The fly's still around. Let's deal like, I think, as you know, I work on the Grey of Norton show as you've guessed it on it rather fabulously. And I believe their protocol is you just keep going. You just keep going. Maybe take it out in post. Two men who have just

talked about the ADHD diagnosis. Yeah. Fackling. It, yeah, it was I was very high functioning for a long time and that was sort of the problem was that it wasn't but you know that's you're on a timer, you're on a countdown time It's not, you know, you can't high function your way out of the crisis. Eventually, the crisis is going to come for you. And it definitely did, it did sort of come for me without me really even realizing what was going on.

So this is Nish, Nish Kumar, angry humour from a really nice guy, is on tour throughout 2026. Go to nishkumar.coma.com for all the dates and more. and you can now also watch Nish Don't Kill My Vibe on YouTube and that is a spectacular show so please do that we'll put that in the show notes I'm on tour as you know my comedy show canary my second climate comedy show and I can I read you this I'm going to read you a thing I'm going to just read you this this is someone that came to see my show a friend of a friend came to see the show and they said just wanted to say excellent show it was perfect I relate to so much of

what you shared I appreciate having those experiences articulated in a way that was genuinely brilliantly hilarious and human. Working in Department X at the moment, and it's grueling. Your show, help me feel seen. Thank you for articulating all of... And there's some stuff that I can't tell you because it gives way the ending in the show.

Your show reached me at a low point and put me in better spirits to keep going forward. Thank you for making such a great and meaningful show. Thank you, anonymous person who I know. And I'm so stoked about it. Guys, the show. Non-gendered guys. The non-gendered guys.

you, the listener, you non-gendered guy, you, it's, I'm really proud of it. So I hope you can come and see it at the Edinburgh Festival from the 17th to the 30th of August, at Cab Vall at the Monkey Barrel. But if you can't, then I hope you're in one of these places. Cambridge, Glasgow, it's going to be great to go back to Glasgow. Oxford, Manchester, Cardiff, don't be jealous.

Oxford, Manchester and Cardiff, don't be jealous that it will be great to go back to Glasgow. It will be great to go to all of you as well. It's just something about Ouija's calls to my late, my late Glasgowian granny's soul. always reminds me of when I go there. Can't wait. Great gigs too. Sheffield, Birmingham, and then the biggest headline show of my career, Bristol Old Vic, on the 18th of November. Jump on that and get your tickets. Bristol Old Vic, the lower two levels are pretty much full now.

Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy for all your tour tickets, Edinburgh tickets and all the rest, and the mailing list. In the second half, we will discuss how Bridget Christie, the Mash Report and Taskmaster all gave Nish permission, or permission, if you will, to be both serious and goofy on stage. We'll talk about his candy floss approach to building a show, which is something I think about almost every day. Brilliant. We will talk about explaining references for international audiences, creating new joke opportunities,

and the practical nightmare of reworking one show into wildly different running times for previews, tours, filming and festival slots, and all the rest of it. All that and more coming up as we get back to Nish. What's the relationship between your current mental health? and your current show output, your current created output. I mean, for stand-up, it's very linked. Like, at this point, the on-stage persona is way for thin.

I was going to say, let's inverted covers there. The persona, sure. We're not doing character of Stuart Lee here, are we? It is, it is. The bit where Nish Kvars stands on a stage. Yes. It is way for thin. It is way for thin.

So it's all, it's all kind of, it's all, you know, it's the Joni Mitchell line. It's pouring out of me in these lines from time to time. Like that's, it's all, so the, all the mental health stuff and everything that is going on in my brain is like in this kind of sort of, it's in this kind of candy floss machine, just churning around in my head. And so then I, you know,

just put the stick in and just kind of draw, draw out whatever the show is. And then you look at the stick and go, okay, that's what we're doing. Okay, here we go. It's, you know, often friends will say to you, you know, like Josie Long was texting me and she said, oh, you're doing a new tool this year. She said, what's it about?

And one of the things that I think is so remarkable about Josie is that she will write, she wants to write a show, she wants to write a show that's about something. And it's a proactive process. She thinks I want to write a show about, this. Amy's very much like this. James Acosta is very much like this. You know, when they're working on a show, they'll say, I want to write. Amy's trying to write a show at the moment about beauty and the ideas of beauty. So she's saying, I want to write a show about that. There's none of that.

The only description I can tell you is that my shows are like a plane crash and it's just wreckage everywhere. And the process of turning it into a coherent hour is finding the black box recorder. You have to find the black box recorder and then from the black box recorder you get a sense of what has happened here. And that's how you put together a narrative of the chaos. Okay. So that's a discovery that you've made.

You can look back and go, oh, that's how I work. Yeah, yeah. So what's the relationship between how you were trying to work before you realized that? Were you trying to, you would certainly, you've certainly done. Your shows do have themes and narrative and stuff. It all emerges. Yeah, it all emerges. So did it in the early day.

were you going, like before you knew that, before you'd made that discovery about your most fertile way of working, were you doing shows where you were trying to write about a thing? I tried to write about a thing in 2013, and it was my worst show, and it was the best experience I've ever had. It was the most important experience in comedy for me,

because 2012 was my first hour. It's just, it was a first hour. Like, you put it together. Then 2013, I thought I'm going to write a show about something. But what I learned from that is, the thing that you write the show about has to be able to sustain the hour hour plus now when you're touring

that you are standing on stage talking about it and the thing that I was trying to write about didn't really sustain an hour it sustained perfectly a short and a proper essay that I wrote in the Good Immigrant Anthology so if you have that book or have read the essay in that book I was trying to do that as an hour show

and actually the most the best iteration of it is the essay in the good immigrant, yeah. And so then in 2014, I thought, right, I'm just going to do stand-up and then see what emerges from it. And so then that was kind of the sort of loose process. Then in 2023, I tried to write a stand-up show even though what I was telling them was a story. And I found in the preview process, because in my head, I thought, I don't write shows that are about things. I write shows that are stand-up shows, and then they have narrative themes, and then

eventually it coheres into a whole piece. But that was a story. That show is different from everything else I've done because it was a story that had a beginning, a middle and an end. And I realized, okay, you're fighting against what the audience is interested in here. That's the great thing about being a stand-up,

the preview process. The audience is trying to tell you what they wanted to see. And I was fighting against that because I thought, I don't do story shows. That's the thing that I don't do. And so then I just sort of was like, okay, then pull the whole story apart, beginning middle end, we hang all the routines off,

anything that really doesn't fit, we take out of the show. And we can use again at some point. Like that it would be totally fine. But actually, in the end, I was able to hang all of the material, all of the stand-up that I was trying to do could be hung off the show, off the story that I was telling about having a bread roll thrown at me at a charity gig and then getting death threats and the consequence of my mental health. And then it built that.

So then when I then came to the next show, I can't remember somebody said, oh, so what's story of this one. And I remember thinking, no, that's not, I don't have to do that again. Because I can do that again if I have a story that can sustain an hour, that the plot of the story can sustain an hour. Otherwise, we're back to just vibes. And actually, when I was doing Nish Don't Kill My Vibe, during the pandemic, I was on a walk and the, I was screaming at my brother about what was going on with the UK government's COVID response. And a man saw me, clocked me and stared at me

and I thought, I think he recognised me but then he didn't say anything and then when I got home he had gone on Twitter and written I saw at Mr. Nishkumar in the park today and it turns out it's not a character

and so then when I start putting the material together that I was putting together for that show I sort of at some point realised that's the black box that's the thing that's the thing that is going to unlock what this like the thematic thing thing of this show

and so then you put that in and you suddenly realize like yeah this is this is kind of a this is a sort of stand up comedy show about unfunny things so that on the there's a bit where I read in that show there's a bit where I read the um set list out the kind of the set list for the show and it's something like Gaza Gaza death death anxiety rage and it that was the set of

list of the show and you you you can make something and it was it was coherent but it wasn't a story so it's a different type of show and like the thing that I always think about and I must stop doing this because it's a fictional murderer written by an author who is genuinely I think quite an unpleasant person but in we need to talk about Kevin Lionel Shriver has some truly abhorrent views, right? And also has written a book about a fictional mass murderer. Unfortunately, in that book and the subsequent film adaptation, there is quite a important piece of advice for stand-up comedians

because sometimes people get in their heads saying, how does this bit link together? And I'm talking about a very specific type of stand-up comedian, in a kind of person who presents either as themselves or like a heightened version of themselves and who is trying to tell stories from their life with jokes of them essentially. So I'm talking about sort of, you know,

what we would call straight stand-up, person microphone stand-up. Sometimes people get in their heads about how bits of material hold together. And they will say, well, I don't know if that really fits in with what I do or I don't know how to link one bit to another. And I always say to them,

in we need to talk about Kevin. The parents are having a discussion about Kevin and he overhears them and the mum says you didn't hear the context and Kevin says it's me, I'm the context. And that's the key piece of advice of stand up. You're like, it all connects because it all came out of your brain.

So don't worry too much about, don't force the connections because it will all sort of, it can happen very organically. Every single thing that you're talking about has come from your brain. your personality. And so no matter how much it doesn't seem to fit together, it will always fit together. And people don't sweat too much, the kind of linking bits. Because if you, that's when

things get, in trying to make something coherent, you can actually take the audience out of it. Like a bad link can actually, you know, a sort of strained link can take the audience out of it. And it has the exact opposite effect. You're trying to keep them along for the wrong. I've got to explain the slight huff that I did there is because I am faced with this right now. It's mid-May, our late May, and I'm doing a show in Edinburgh, and it's my new show, I'm working on it for years, and I have reached the stage, I think, where I'm going, I'm up against exactly that challenge, where I'm going, I'll tell you the mistake I can feel myself making as I make it. The stuff has all naturally co-heared in, congealed possibly, from numerous previews and

to a particular order. And now I'm looking at it going, it would seem more structurally sensible if that bit that's always, if B, that's always been between A and C, was actually where G currently is. And then all of the connective tissue breaks. And then you go, is the, am I?

And now suddenly I've got to remember the changes I've made rather than the stuff tumbling out in the right order. I think I am absolutely right now this morning at the stage of going, I know I've got too many beats. I know I've got too many beats. I've got nine beats. There's too many beats.

And I'm really unwilling. I'm something my wife said to me earlier on about, you know, this bit. Like, as you said, this bit that we can put that in a different show. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, but I really personally want to say it. And I want to personally say in this show. I've got too many fucking beats, man. We're doing a preview tonight.

Please let me know which beats I should get rid of because I am just, I'm really swimming in that thing in the moment ago. You're absolutely right. I'm the connective, I'm the link, it's the other theme. I love this analogy of just you put the stick through the candy floss. For sure, it's all coming from me. I'm trying to say too much. I think I've written a 90 minute show.

Yeah. As someone, you will often, how I'll bring it back to you, you will often have a 90 minute tour show and they have to do an hour of it. How do you do that? Man, you know what? That is such a fucking nightmare. I'm so glad.

Yes. The thing, So the last show that I did, and I'm sort of looking, sort of staring down the barrel of the same touring structure again, I did in Edinburgh as a work in progress. And at the start, if you watch that show, there is an ending to that show. There's like an, there's a thing that's set up at the start that then comes back and forms the last five minutes and it's an ending. I didn't have that. There were bits of the show I didn't have. And so over the course of Edinburgh, it became a kind of 75 minute show. and then you start sort of revolving things out of the hour that you're doing in Edinburgh. And then in the tour, then it really just got to breathe. And it became sort of 85, 90 minutes. By the time, I then in February and March, I went to the States and Canada. And they structure their shows completely differently,

where it's just, they're just like, we're going to serve drinks throughout this. People are going to come, get up and go. But you just, you're open at us 10, 15 minutes. In the case of my opener, Amy Annette, how did you get that gig? and Amy Annette opened and then she would just introduce me and I would do, at points I was doing like a hundred minutes on stage and

it was so much fun like the gigs was so fun and it was and then I got to Melbourne to Australia and I had a 60 minute slot and it was a total shit fight because you suddenly go because the problem is

you suddenly realise that there's so much interrelated And the ending of that... Yes, it's not all modules by that stage, is it? No, and also the ending of that show was... Was call back, call back, call back, call. Like, it was... And so, then if you can't do that, then you suddenly have to go, okay, so what pieces can I move?

And also part of the thing with my stuff is like, it is a mix of... There's a lot of political stuff in there, and there's also a lot of personal stuff in there. And I like having both, because I think it creates light and shade. And also, there's lots of stories because I'm quite, you know,

in the political... I'm obviously quite like sort of, you know, like hectory. And then in the personal stuff, I'm dumb. Like my sort of public persona, I'm... Yes, they are, they're essential components, aren't there? Like, an entirely hectoring show from you is a very different thing. Amy always says the thing that changed your whole life is when you realized it didn't matter that you were an idiot. Like, that you were goofy.

She always says goofy. She was like, in 2000... I remember when I was doing 2014. Just harking back to our earlier ADHD, how does one perceive oneself? That's right. seeing myself as an idiot. Yeah, that's right. Oh, sorry, she says goofing.

Yeah, to me. Amy always says in 2014, I tell you a big thing that happened. I can't remember if we've talked about this before. I saw a bick for her at the Bridget Christie Show. That is a hugely significant influential thing on my comedy. And it's interesting to think about it because, you know, a lot of the other influential stuff is stuff I saw in my teenage years or my 20s. Yes.

No, this was 2013. I was 28 and I'd been doing it for quite a while and had done a couple of solo shows. But when I saw Bridget do that show and actually 13 and 14, those two shows, she's so goofy. But she's talking about the most serious things. She's talking about men murdering women. But she's so silly because when you know Bridget, you know that she's silly. And so it kind of started to give me permission to be a bit looser and a bit goofy you're on stage.

And I think also what really helped me that is not something you're necessarily in control of is that the first, the two TV things that happened at the same time for me were the MASH report and Taskmaster. And it was really liberating for me because I realized that, oh, I can both be man in suit news jokes

and why has he kicked over that water to him? Yeah, sort of the fringe self. I think that's what taskmaster, that's part of that's a quality of taskmaster. I don't know how much people discuss that. It lets you be your fringe self. It lets you be your late night fucking about on your mate's show. Totally. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, the fringe self is a great expression for it because there are times when you're doing Edinburgh, you know, especially when you're not having a great, and like luckily I've done so many Edinburghs, I've had every flavour of them. But there's times where you're not having a good, or you're having a run of bad gigs where the shows are going badly. I really remember in the middle of Melbourne 2014,

I had three of the worst gigs I've ever had consecutively. And the thing that got me out of it, weirdly, was going to do a late show. And for some reason, like, the pressure was sort of off. I wasn't really even thinking about it. I was too worried about my stupid shows that were going badly every day. And I went, I had to do a late show at the festival club. And I was so focused on, why the show was going wrong, that I forgot that I had to do a gig.

And then you sort of wander down to the festival club. I sort of remember walking there with David O'Donarty just going, this is, I have forgotten how to do comedy. Like, this is bad. And I was like thinking, how can I fix this? How can I fix this? Then I was at the festival club without really realizing it, which is a kind of nightclub in the middle of Melbourne,

and the festival runs Mixedville shows there. And, you know, they're kind of late-night gigs. They're kind of raucers. It's festival. So it's not fully, you know, stag and hendoo. They're absolutely drunk. They're a bit loose. They're a bit drunk.

But there's still an audience that has been watching, you know, five shows, four of which are like clowning shows about everyone's family dying. Like it's like, so it's still a, it's a, you know, a nerdy audience. But I was thinking so much about it. And then I sort of was just sort of pushed out on stage, really without even knowing about it. And then had just a really good gig because I just, I wasn't really, I was, I was overcooking everything and over-analyzing everything. And there were definitely times in Edinburgh, probably in like 2013,

where you're thinking, I'm not having a good run. And then you'll do like a late show. Like Pappies used to run Secret Dude Society, which was a late-night gig where I don't perform with any alcohol in my body normally because it just does, it never worked for me. Apart from those gigs, when the performer and audience are so drunk. And, you know, and everybody's just mucking. around and everybody's and the audience is it's great because it's an warm in joke because the

audience is all part of the same fuck around and that fuck around fringe self is definitely the thing that taskmaster brings out of the various comedians that have done that show and i was really lucky because the mash report and the task master and my taskmaster series happened the exact same time and so it almost gives you permission to go i can talk about anything i want regardless of the severity of it, but I can also goof around. And so the shows, so then when it comes to editing the show, you're thinking, I'm going to have to lose one of the stories. You know, there's a whole routine in Nish Don't Kill My Vibe about breaking my finger with my own ass. And you're just thinking that, I think that has to go. I think that has to go. And even though

that part of that is, and also because in that, it's a story where I behave very badly, which is again funny, because it's sort of rounding out the character. You have this kind of, like person who in their politics is kind of a holier than thou leftist, but who also just does not like, like, is like disregarding his girlfriend's opinion on mental health, ignoring, like, talking about how everyone needs to take the vaccine, but just ignoring doctors when they're telling him things. And so it like, it rounds out the like character on stage. So then when you cut, it was a really, really difficult thing. It was good for me in the end. Like a lot of those exercises that are painful in the short term, it was really good.

good for me because it actually made me rewrite bits of the show and tighten up a couple of things. Okay. And then, and it did also help me to edit those, to actually edit some routine. So then I got it down to 60 minutes. And then when it came to the filming of it, I then had to rebuild it back into the original 90 minute iteration, which then was a total nightmare. And like, I was really struggling with it. Then I had to do, then I did, I, I, I castor was like, Acasta called me and it was like, How are you feeling? I was like, oh, just half of the show doesn't work anymore. I don't know what.

And then so then we sort of had this like three day period where Amy and James placingly out to accompany me to gigs and were just like frantically trying to help me edit rework it. And then all of that meant that the filmed version of that show, I think is the best. It's like it's hard to be. Because it's been stripped down and grown and stripped down and grown. The material that ends up being. filmed in that show is kind of the best expression.

I don't know if it's probably not the best, I don't know if it's the best performance of that. I don't know if it's possible to have your best performance of that material filmed. Because I think the presence of the cameras changes stuff in the room and it changes the dynamic of it. And so I know that there are shows that like flu and particularly like some of the American shows but also that's because the material that I'm doing in a specific context and in the American political climate, the audience is reacting to something outside of the comedy.

But definitely the presentation, the material, the actual content of the show, that's the best iteration of it, because it had been pulled apart and reassembled so many times. And then by the, I then did a week of it in Edinburgh. And then by then I was like, I can do whatever. And they had given me a 70 minutes slot. So by the end, there were three versions of, there was a 60, 70. and 97 minutes. Interrelating different journeys like if you're the movie Primer.

Yeah. You try to explain it by means of a diagram. At the end of the tour, you go, I can do the 60 minute, I can do a 70 minute, I can do it. Do you want a 9 minute version of the show? Yeah, but yeah, it was a really interesting process because actually having to pull it apart as frustrating as it was forced me to kind of re-examine. I always think about I'm such a nerd.

I always think about the ending of Batman begins, right? You know, the end of Batman begins? Wayne Manor's been blown up. And Christian Bale has a bit of dialogue with Katie Holmes and then she walks away and then Michael Kane comes over to him and he says,

are you going to rebuild it? And Christian Bales goes, yeah, I'm going to rebuild Wayne Manor, which is burned down. He says, I'm going to rebuild it back brick by brick. Michael Kane goes, I thought we might have a look at the southern wall. And he's like, I can't remember the exact one. But he's like, oh, if we're rebuilding it, we should get the, have a better back. And I think about that. It's like if you're going to pull something apart, you know, there is actually an opportunity for you to review some of the other stuff. Because in the process of thinking, oh, I need to take 20 minutes out of this show. You got,

what about the other 70? Yeah. Is it? Because it's fine to make, you have to make the big cut. Look, that's what I learned when we were, um, I had a radio four show that I used to sit in the edits for. It was a topical thing. We, I think we did about eight or nine of them. But it was a topical thing. And I sat in the edit and I realized that the easiest bit of an edit is when you make the big cut. When you go, that 10 minutes gone. The worst bit is the bit where you have to take two minutes out.

The taking out 10 minutes of a 40 minute radio record to make it into a. 28 minute radio record. Taking out 10 minutes took five minutes. Taking out the last four minutes took two and a half hours. And so, but every time you, every, every time you pull something apart,

you may as well try and rebuild every piece better. You may as well, like, you may as well actually just go, what I would say is, it's easy for me to say that now. It was, the week before the filming is like one of the most, I've ever been in my entire life. But definitely

it definitely helped me. And also having to rewrite it from America, having to rewrite it from Australia, because my favourite thing is just anytime you have to explain something, it's not a burden, it's an opportunity for another joke. Every single time you are talking about some,

you'll have known this, like when you're talking about the climate, there's lots of things people don't know that you have to explain in order to do the comedy about it. And every single explanation is an opportunity. for another fun joke. This is why I've got nine beats, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. Something I've noticed you do, so I saw you in Wells two days ago in the middle of three hour-long previews on the bounce, which is, which was for reasons of secret TV reasons to do with another act, which he accidentally gave away. And then it turned out she'd also accidentally get away. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was, yeah. I don't want to give too much away, but me and Lusanders are two of the loosest lips.

on the comedy scene. I don't think either of I should be told any secrets. So, I saw the middle one. Yeah, so I was booked to do Saturday and Sunday, the Welsh Comedy Festival. I love Ben and Naomi who booked that festival. It's great festival. That room's great.

And also they're the people that book my tours and they're my friends. And so I'm very happy to do that festival all the time. And so I was supposed to do Saturday and Sunday and then at the last minute for secret filming reasons, an act who shall not be named apart from when I did it two minutes ago, had to move one of her previews. And so they said, do you mind doing another one in the middle?

So I was like, yeah, sure. So you get through an incredible amount of stuff, right? That is, it's already, it's a disgustingly packed, funny, brilliant. Oh, Christ, come on, mate. It's one of them, right? And, oh, I've just been momentarily distracted by, at some point, we have to have a conversation about the fact you're wearing a blue jacket that I had a collar. Very much not what I'm used to from dish.

threw me completely. But the speed with which you are saying, so the challenge I'm having, and I'm going to rudely bring this back to my structural challenges with my show at the moment, you talk very fast and you say a lot, but it's completely coherent. And I noticed that structurally you keep coming back

to being 40. And the stick, the candy floss stick is, I've turned 40. That's the stick, right? That's the stuff. And so you kept very, like, in a way that, I'll tell you what it is. You effortlessly say an incredible amount of stuff very quickly,

some of which is complex. I feel like I've either got to get, I feel like I'm already talking very fast about a lot of complex stuff with my too many beats. Do you, have I got to talk faster? What am I? Do you want to help me, Nish? You'll see it tonight, but like there's a lot of stuff in there.

I'm talking very fast. It does need room to breathe. Yeah, yeah. But I do want to say all the stuff. And I think what I was most jealous off was like, he's still saying all the stuff. It's still coherent despite being fast and passionate. You're explaining enough stuff fast enough. Is that because, like some of the reasons that might be because might include you are painting big pictures, right?

You're talking about the, you know, you're not to butcher the bit, but you're talking about the reform rallies in the context of the Oasis concept. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Who are we here to see? Yeah, all that kind of things. You know, lovely analogy there. it's a nice clear simple stuff. You're not explaining, you're not saying the word percentage very often,

which is crossed around my neck at the moment. So what, you know, what help can you give the panel on how to jam in as much stuff as you want to jam in whilst retaining clarity? So I think a big thing that changed my stand-up was the radio,

what started with Newsjack and then became Spotlight, which was a Radio 4 show. And then I basically the same group of people and I then did all of my stuff on the Mash Report and then did a show called Hello America on Quibi. RIPP forever in our hearts. Forever in our hearts, Quibby.

Show is the tattoo. I tell you what? I have all the merch. Quibi merch. Can you imagine the value of the Quibi merch? It's extraordinary. So I think I was going to use it for my poster shoot for this store, but I think I'm going to leave it even further. Oh, yeah, great.

I wanted to really ripen ripen. And yeah, Quibi was a short form content. It was a bit, I think the, I believe my joke about it was it's YouTube, but you have to pay for it. And that is both the business model and the reason it ultimately failed. But it was, I worked with the same group of people. And so every week we would be writing, you know, a five, to seven minute monologue thing about something that was going on in the news.

And it, one of the things that we would always talk about is what are we trying to say? Tom Neenan, who's the head writer on that show and Sarah Campbell, who, again, I've worked with those two for so long, they would always say, the jokes of the fun bit. That's the fun bit. We like that. We like being comedy writers. We love sitting there trying to think of funny things to say. so let's do the hard bit first.

So we would sit there and it was amazing how much of the two or three days we would have to write these monologues where we would say, what are we trying to say? Like what's the point that we're trying to make? And so we would be really clear. And we would almost plot it like you're plotting a film. Like you're like you're, so you'd say we're trying to say that, that, It's hard to... I can't think of one just off the top of my head

because honestly, I've forgotten all of them. But we were trying to say something specific about something that's happening in the news. And this is the point that we're trying to make about it. And this is the way we're going to justify it. And this is the conclusion that we're coming to. No comedy. Just the argument.

Just that. Then once we did that, we would go, what is our punchline? What is our funny out? What's the thing? Because that was always the hardest bit. landing the idea and then landing the comedy were the two things we would sweat over.

Once we had those, once we had what we're trying to say and what's the funny, what's the big laugh we get out on? It was just, that was the fun bit. Because then that is just you and your friends in a room. That is what people think comedy writing is. But you have to do the, like, really tough work

of make the argument, justify the argument, conclude the argument. And I think it was really important to me at the time, I realized very quickly this is not stand-up. So I separate those two things out in my brain because it's a different thing, right? It's a different muscle. But I think what I then started bringing back to stand-up is that same level of rigor in the clarity of what I'm trying to say.

So with all of these things, if you're trying to talk about the sort of race, rights you're thinking what's the what am I actually trying to say here and like luckily I don't have to think too much I'd have to spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff because I do a weekly UK news podcast so I started doing Pod Save the UK in 23 I think and so I'm constantly trying to organise my thoughts about various things that I feel strongly and passionately about and I one of the people that works on the show saw the stand-up show that I'm doing right now. And she said, it's really interesting because there's ideas in there that I've seen you talk about.

And it's really interesting seeing how you've clarified the arguments that you're trying to make. And now there's a joke on the end. And she was like, she was sort of like, I feel like I can see the whole like assembly line of all of this material. And so I think for me it was just about clarity. What am I trying to say? And then it's about, then it's just like, you know, like I'm such a, I'm 30 Rock is on my mind at the moment because it's just because it's just like I've been. RIP grace. Watching it.

Yeah. RIP Grizz. Oh, man. That's so sad. Like, because, yeah, I could talk for hours about how funny Gris and dot com's performances are in 30 Rock and how really sort of essential they are to like the, the. Like, they provide a really important point of comedic different. Anyway, but I love, I'd love heat-packing things with jokes. So then once you have the argument clear,

then it is just like every single opportunity you cram more jokes in. But it's difficult you can only get into that position once you've clarified in your head what the argument is. And I'm not giving you advice for this because I've only seen, I've seen this show. I'll watch this show tonight, but the last time I saw it was a year ago, pretty much in Edinburgh.

And so I'm not telling you this is what you should be doing. I'm just saying that for me, one of the clarifying things has been, I need to know the thing that I'm trying to leave these people with. Like if I'm saying that the flag is, if I'm saying I'm uncomfortable, because we were driving through a bit of England, they were just English flags and British flags,

everywhere. Those flags make me uncomfortable and they are in my mind demonstrably different from me seeing a flag during a football World Cup and you can, there is a, you know, you can't just turn around to people and say, it's just a flag. It isn't because it's a symbol it changes its meaning depending on the context in which you're seeing it and who has deployed the symbol. And so I'm trying to think about why that makes me uncomfortable. And then so once I've got that sense of it in my mind or I've made that kind of counter argument, you then kind of go, okay, so what, then what is the joke here? Like, what's the joke line that we can push into it? And so every beat of that argument then has to have a joke in it. And then it has to have a joke that was good

enough to get us on to the next, throw us forward into the next bit. Well, this is it, as I have in the last three or four or five years, started moving into similar territory of like, oh, I've got an argument. Yeah, yeah. I used to have an argument. I was just out to have fun. You know, I might have had some preoccupations. I might have had some, you know, I might have been like wanting to express something about my mental health or parenting and what have you.

I might have been going, I've got a problem and I'm going to talk about it. But it wasn't an argument. And now I've got an argument. And I had a very funny experience Friday night, which I will talk to you about in coded terms. And I don't read my reviews ever. And I got a review.

And I happened to read because I had some ulterior motive to wanting to read a review because I thought it would be useful. I thought I remembered someone saying a particular thing that I'd seen a clip from a reviewer. I was like, oh, I'm going to have to look at it to see if they did see that. And they didn't say that and it's annoying.

But I read a review by a prominent comedy blogger who, their criticism of spoilers, my 2023 first stab at a climate show, was that I was on this, basically they included the phrase, Goldsmith lays a lot of the blame for the carbon problems at the feet of the fossil fuel industry, as if it's solely a problem of production and not consumption.

And I experienced a thing which you must get all the time. I was ideologically opposed to a reviewer. I was like, are you fucking kidding me? What? Hot on the heels of that, of course, was like, well, that's potentially a bit. That's a problem thing in a way to talk about it, if I could talk about it in the right way. But I was like, I'd never experienced there before. I think the first thing I thought was not in terms of political comedy.

it was more that it gave me a deeper insight into something that Daniel Fox talked about on the podcast about the kind of inherent like internalised or kind of unwitting homophobia on the part of comedians lumping together gay acts or camp acts and kind of you know and I not to kind of ployne that concept for myself but I did get an insight into it of going like holy shit you disagree with me about a thing I think and that's like wow that's what that's like More full-meater, apathetic to get to the age of 48 without being ideologically opposed to a comedy critic. But I think that the... Definitely, as I move more into having an argument,

great advice in terms of, you know, wider advice for anyone who has a line of argument they want to push. Get the clarity, decide what the argument is, don't worry about the jokes, get the funniest joke. So that was Nish. Angry humour from a really nice guy is his tour show. It's on tour now all throughout 26, all the dates and more at Nishkumar.co.com.com.com.com. And you can also get on YouTube and watch Nish Don't Kill My Vibe for free. The extras, we will in, we talk about the shocking pace of the current political instability throughout Britain. We'll talk about Nish's role on POD Save the UK. And you can even hear

mine and Nish's predictions for the very high stakes, makers field by election, which now is some time ago. But you could get instant access to the ad-free video and audio versions as well, all the extras from all the Eps with extras, which is hundreds of them, for only £3 a month for more at patreon.com.com. I never say that. Comcom pod. It's with an upward inflection. Comcompot. You can find out how to see me live at Stuartgoldsmith.com slash comedy.

And thank you to everyone who put that together. Thank you to Nish predominantly, but also producer Callum, Susie Lewis for the logging. The music was by Rob Smouten. of the show, The Comedians, Comedian Podcast, was created by Ashtra Levin, who I hope to see in late September. And thank you as well to our

insider producers, hacker, spiller, Dave Powell, Simmons, Alan, Lucas, McClellan, Swarbrick, McHerald, Swaddle, Wormel, Burry, and a big thank you to the execs. Lovely to have the execs on board. That's Peters, Neil, and Dennant, Andrew, and also the super secret one. Thank you. I know I've not been post-ambling at you for a while. I can only apologize, there is too much on, and I'm putting all of my

time into writing funny stuff and somehow admin. Anyway, Cheerio. Speak to you next week. Oh, what I didn't say is that this is a two-parter. So part two coming next week. Speak to then.