Sanjeev Bhaskar

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2008

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Sanjeev Bhaskar. A writer, comic and actor, Sanjeev has brought the British Asian experience into mainstream comedy with his television programmes Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No 42. Despite initial worries from the broadcasters, both attracted a loyal following and great critical acclaim.

This represented a turn-around in Sanjeev's fortunes: aged 30, he had been unemployed, single, depressed and living at home. Now he is enjoying great success professionally and is one half of a golden couple of entertainment - he is married to fellow writer and performer Meera Syal. "At times," he says, "it's felt like living someone else's life. But I'm not going to give it back to whoever owns it legitimately."

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: The Waters of March by Susannah McCorkle Book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams Luxury: A grand piano.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.2	The program was originally broadcast in 2008. My cast away this week is Sanjeev Basker. As a writer and performer he's
0:31.0	become a star by making his laugh and bringing the British
0:34.4	Asian experience to big audiences with shows like goodness gracious me in the Kumar's at number 42.
0:40.1	He was a late starter in the fame game, aged 30, unemployed, mired in debt and depression and living at home with his parents.
0:47.5	The idea of Emmy Awards and number one hit record and the honour of an OBE must surely have seemed an impossibility.
0:55.0	But in just 15 years he's bagged them all and then some.
0:59.0	Yet very recently he said, I had great difficulty in realizing I was successful.
1:05.0	I had never seen myself as successful.
1:06.7	Everything was about falling short, about not achieving, about
1:09.9	unrealized potential.
1:12.1	You've also said Sanjeev that your initial success
1:15.2	ultimately was founded on the toss of a coin. What happened? Yes it was during a
1:21.0	period of time where I was out of work and living at my parents and being very depressed.
1:26.0	I got together with a friend of mine, Nittinsigni, who's a composer who had been at university with.
1:31.0	We'd sort of done a double act thing at university and we thought well
1:35.4	you know let's resurrect that you know we had time on our hands and we were called the secret
1:39.4	Asians which was a pun and the comedy didn't really get a lot better than that.
1:44.0	From what I can remember, the show was called Popper Dom Preach.
1:47.0	Right, I'm with you.
1:48.0	The Flyers for the show had gone out and a couple of producers from the BBC had seen it.
	...

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