From The Comic's Comic

Sometimes the second time’s the charm when recording a podcast

Ahir Shah and I spoke over Zoom twice this month. Something about the first encounter was decidedly off — even before I brought up the Paris shootings of Friday the 13th of November 2015, which killed 130 people, including 90 at the Bataclan theatre, a few doors down from where Shah himself was performing to a live audience. He didn’t want to talk about that, but I also didn’t want to ask him specifically about his experience that night. I was more interested in how he funneled his energies from that into his 2016 show at Edinburgh, “Machines,” and how he may have looked at comedy and his own ambitions differently. Anyhow. As I noted, we’d already gone a bit sideways in our conversation more than once before this point. For whatever reason. Interviews can do that sometimes. Especially when the two parties have never met before, or don’t know each other that well.

Tone and intent and much more can get lost in translation, even when you’re both speaking the same language.

Luckily for him, for me, and for you, we figured out a second time to link up over Zoom a few days later, and the second time was the charm! If you listened already to our chat, you could hear Shah laughing quite a bit. Jolly good time had by all.

You can find his first stand-up special, Dots, on HBO Max.

If you’re not already subscribed to my podcast, seek it out and subscribe to Last Things First on the podcast platform of your choice! Among them: Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Stitcher; Amazon Music/Audible; iHeartRadio; Player.FM; and my original hosting platform, Libsyn.

Here is an edited and slightly condensed transcript of my conversation with Ahir Shah !

Sean L. McCarthy: Last things first, congratulations on Dots. Pandemic notwithstanding, why did it take you so long to film a special in the first place ?

Ahir Shah: Well, that is, that’s a question best answered by others, right? Like, potentially, I was just awful beforehand. This is the first thing of any decency. No, we did. I believe reasons that one can’t go into publicly, we did attempt to make the proceeding show, “Duffer,” into a special but there was certain sort of copyright-y issues, because I used a lot of lyrics from Bohemian Rhapsody in it. And that is, apparently, something you’re not allowed to do. Which at the time, I didn’t know. And so, this time, I stayed very clear of Queen, and cross my fingers it seems as though, that sort of did the trick.

What about “Control”? Because both “Duffer” and “Control” were were finalists for the best show at Edinburgh.

Well I think “Control” was definitely like very much, a show of its time. So that was, basically, you know, it was the 2017 show that I did in Edinburgh, and it was very much, we are now living in the world of Brexit and Trump and these things are still pretty raw. And so, that one: You know I was very proud of it at the time, and whatnot. But I don’t know how well it would stand up now that we live in — Well, of course, Brexit is still an ongoing concern, as everyone in this country is painfully aware of whenever they attempt to go to a shop, but mercifully, from my perspective for the time being. You’ve seen off for at least four years you’ve seen an awful fascist.

Well, you know, being too topical doesn’t stop any of the American comedians from putting out specials that become outdated within a year. Is that something that’s different about the comedy culture in America versus the comedy culture in the UK? And that’s why we don’t see as many specials come out from the UK?

I think there’s probably some truth in that. Because also, if you think about it like we live in just geographically so much denser a country, that if you like a particular comedian or whatnot, and you want to see them, that year, you will be able to do that because they’re going to come to at the very least somewhere that might be, let’s say 20 miles away from where you live, or what have you. Obviously you could be extraordinarily rural and that doesn’t apply, but for the most part, right. Whereas, I guess in the U.S., like, I’ve not toured around the U.S. but from American stand-up friends, I gather so much of it is just sort of going around certain large cities in certain states, and you may find that, alright, if I live in, you know, the third-largest city in Kansas, and I particularly enjoy this guy. Well, maybe I’ll be able to see him at some point in the next five years. But aside from that, you’d have to put out recordings.

NOTE: At this point in our conversation, I felt compelled at once to Google the populations of the towns and cities of Kansas. Wouldn’t you know it? The third-largest city in Kansas is Kansas City! I had to explain what this meant to Shah immediately, and how we have not one but two Kansas Citys (Kansas Cities?). But most folks didn’t need to hear about that, so I cut it from the podcast!

But the question that it made me wonder is why comedians — and I guess this might be more of an American thing than a British thing — why American comedians feel like they have to put everything on tape. Right. They can’t just do the shows and have the shows be this, this moment in time that you experienced with the audience, but you have to get everything on on tape and I realize the irony that I’m forcing you to put this on tape.

Well I think that a big part of it is going to be the geography and another part of it is just as you said, like, there is this cultural background of that something that happens in the United States, in much the same way as our television schedules are absolutely jam-packed with panel shows, and we don’t really do late-night shows. Whereas with you guys, it’s the other way around.

But also, I think that the culture around stand up in the UK is so heavily dominated by the existence of the Edinburgh Festival, which means that your year really is leading up to, or for a lot of people there are plenty of comics who don’t do it, but for me, certainly, it feels like your year is leading up to this event where you’ll put this live show on for a month, and then you’ll tour that, and then you’re perfectly happy sort of burning that material afterwards, so personally you’ll have you know like I’ve got audio recordings of all my old shows and everything because it’s a nice thing to have. But one doesn’t feel like there’s anything necessarily weird with, yeah of course I spent a year doing that, and now I’ll never do any of it again. That just seems pretty normal, maybe it shouldn’t.

Well I feel like it’s not just a cultural change slash difference, but it’s also due to the changes in technology. It’s so much easier to make a special. It’s so much easier to set up to have the camera equipment, set it up. Film it, even put it on YouTube if you don’t sell it to a streaming platform.

Absolutely. Like even even the fact of being able to do this one and, you know I’d be sitting in the edit suite, and looking through you know I went in a few times just to see how it was all going, partly because I had to and partly just because of personal interest. And then, clearly it’s all done, and then you sort of push a button, and there’s, you know, very meaty file but even 15 years ago would have probably taken a couple of hours to wig off is just like, alright, it’s in American now! It’s done. That is quite anticlimactic, you know? You want the big sort of silver discus reel or something. That would be nice.

Right, I mean, we call it specials for a reason, it should be special. You mentioned everybody preparing for, and your career revolving around Edinburgh. Were you aware of Edinburgh, even when you were 15 just starting out?

Not particularly. Just because it’s not the sort of thing that my family ever would have gone to, or anything like that and I think like. I didn’t have family who worked in the arts. My friends were all children, and also didn’t have families who worked in the arts, and it would have fundamentally just been too expensive for us to go for a holiday, up to the Fringe and see a bunch of shows. So, it was something that I learned about when I was in my mid-teens and started learning about comedy. But then, very very quickly I realized that that was the thing. That was the mecca for this industry.

I mentioned how Dots is your first proper special on film. But you did, you did have a TV credit, really early with, So You Think You’re Funny.

Oh yeah, well that wasn’t televised. Yeah, it’s the sort of the stand-up competition that all new acts in the UK end up doing, and the finals are in Edinburgh, and I was dreadful because I was far too nervous, and just tried to get through everything as quickly as possible, and didn’t give any time and it didn’t work. As a consequence. But in the long run, it’s absolutely fine, and a good learning experience.

For me as an American, I just presumed it was televised because that’s what we do in America. We had Last Comic Standing which some UK acts participated in. We have America’s Got Talent, which Simon Cowell brought over. What is the place for So You Think You’re Funny? Where does that exist in the UK comedy ecosystem?

We’ve got Britain’s Got Talent, and many comedians have sort of done that but that’s more of a like, you tend to get asked to go on that. They’ll spot you and you’re pretty new, but you’ve done a little bit, but you haven’t really got any Telly credits and they’ll say, come and do this, and then you’ve got to work out for yourself whether it’s because they want to laugh at you or with you. But something like So You Think You’re Funny, and I think, again this is just intimately tied to the geography of the place. So we have, you know the heats for these sorts of competitions are done in cities all around the U.K. And then the final will be in Edinburgh, and that is, obviously, much less of an ask than it is to, say you had a stand-up heat in every state capitol. In the U.S., if that’s, Texas, you’re 1000s of miles away, that creates its own difficulties. And if you’re like the finals going to be in New York, and make your own way. That’s a fairly large ask for someone who you know like, obviously, at the beginning of one’s attempts to do stand-up isn’t exactly going to be flush with the sort of thing to be able to hop on a plane willy nilly.

That reminds me, that’s just the kind of thing that almost expected in North America. I mean, even to this day, I mean, not to this day because in 2021, Just For Laughs Montreal was mostly over Zoom. Or virtual. I don’t know what platform they use, but in the past, the ask would be for the New Faces, to make their own way to Montreal, even though it was the biggest thing, like the keystone of their young career, getting New Faces but then you have to make your own way to do it.

Yeah, no I find the sort of economics of it in America. I mean, I suppose, it seems like what a lot of America seems like as an outsider, which is that either you’re it’s scraps or you’re a millionaire. Whereas, here feels considerably more egalitarian than that. But like I remember one evening, so my sister used to live in New York for work, and so I went to visit her a couple of times, and one evening, I was going around with my friend the American comedian Ari Shaffir. I was just following him to like clubs and like seeing him do sets. And, you know, the amount that you would be being paid for 20 minutes or what have you, was an absolute pittance. And when you figure out that he’s getting taxis all around the place. And it’s like, just a sort of dumb thing that, you know, unless it’s like no no — the money comes from television, but there’s no money in the live game, and it makes you think how difficult it must be for someone starting out A) you’ve got to live in New York, not the cheapest place, you know, taking New York as an example. But then, you know to be going out on a Saturday night, and doing five, six spots. And even when you’re a sort of well-known comic, still, just getting essentially beer money. So for a newbie must be extraordinarily difficult.

Yeah it is. It’s something that I think every generation of comedians eventually talks about trying to start a Union or some sort of Guild and then it quickly falls apart because stand-up comedians are such independent rogues that they’re like I don’t want to do what all these people are doing.

I remember years ago, my friend Daniel Kitson had a line about British comedians trying to form a union and he’s like, I don’t think it’s gonna work. We’re all a bit too self-involved for that. You just have a bunch of people go, what do we want! We???

Exactly. You said your experience with So You Think You Can funny like didn’t pan out quite the way you might have hoped that did that change since I was still. How old were you when you did that?

17

Okay, so you’re still so young. How did that shape your ambitions or your career goals? Did it?

Well, I think, at this point, it was still very much a sort of thing that I just like regarded as a bit of an odd hobby. And so I was like, oh I’ll go on a trip to Edinburgh, that’d be fun. Whereas, you know, I guess because you know you’re still at school and that was before I’d even sort of applied to university or they but then I was at university for three years after that and it was only really when I graduated, that I was like, OK, I think I will try and make a make a stab at this. But that was never really, you know, for better and worse and I think largely for better, because it never sort of affected, you know like if something, if you’re zeroed in on the fact that, no this is going to be my career so every, like, it becomes a lot harder to fail. Whereas, like, you know, like, I played cricket for the school team. And if I had bad innings or I dropped a catch or what have you. Oh that sucks. On the day. Whereas if I if I were a professional cricketer and did the same, or wanted to be a professional cricketer and did that, it’d be like, oh gosh, that could be my entire livelihood out of the thing so the stakes were sort of happily lower.

And that’s even considering that you went to Cambridge, and which has the Footlights, who themselves have a storied tradition.

Yeah, for sure, but even when I was at university. I toyed with just staying in academia, and was was quite interested in the possibility of doing that, and applied to a master’s program at Oxford, and was consummately rejected because my entire personal statement was basically just the words, “Please don’t send me into the real world yet.” They were quite right and it turns out they’re quite clever, an awful thing to have to admit, but this is just supposed to be like the place that you go to work out what you’re interested in. And why not try as many things as possible.

One of the things you’ve been not trying, but doing is writing, writing for and sometimes appearing with The Mash Report, Late Night Mash. Tell me about that show’s place in the infrastructure… what’s its place in society over there?

Nish Kumar, who is the host and driving force on the show, both sees himself as having and does have sort of function as a social commentator and whatnot in the U.K. now, which I think he’s just fantastic at doing and being. And for many many years, we’ve tried to recreate some American sense of a late-night show that’s more topical and whatnot, and loads of things were tried over many years. All of which failed. And to the extent that it was so outside of the norm of what could succeed over here that John Oliver had to come to you guys in order to do it and what’s very much our loss is very much your game because by God like it would be amazing to have him do Last Week Tonight on British television, but it was just thought that, well that’s a thing that you can’t do. And then Mash sort of I think became the first thing that actually did work. That people sort of accepted, and ended up having now run for quite a few series, and largely I think due to Nish’s sort of ability and personality.

What do you what do you try to pitch for the show? Are there certain things that you try to get on over and over again?

I think that my role in the writers room is very much. As someone who’s still sort of on the center-left of the British political spectrum, which I think that by American terms probably making a full Communist. I’m boring center ground guy. And so, in that room, my role is largely, let’s, let’s reel this in like a little bit guys because I think that you might be being slightly unfair on that!

Do you find yourself defending Boris Johnson then?!

The last piece that I did on it, which went out on Thursday night, was sort of semi-defending the Conservative Party’s record on the environment. It was really funny to do in front of him, because like it’s so difficult for him, like on 9 things out of 10, 99 things out of 100, I’m on the same page as him with regard to the Conservative Party, where I was like, “Look, we can’t act like that doing nothing about climate change because actually by global standards, by the standards of the global developed country, it’s actually very odd that we have a right wing party of government who take this seriously. And we should be grateful for that. If you just like slag them off now absolutely everything, then you’re going to make it a culture war issue like it is for you guys, And then no one can afford that.”

That’s true. So thank you, thank you you for your service on Late Night Mash. That brings me to like something you said in Dots, you talked about how you recognized through your shows in Edinburgh, there’s a point where you talk about your management, or your representation, informing you that you now have this amplified voice, right, and you’re asked to speak on behalf of your race or your religion or your ethnicity…

Yeah, I think that is the case and to a certain extent, it is, obviously, frustrating because you would like for most of the time to be a Ahir Shah, human being not Ahir Shah, comma, capital letters BROWN MAN. But on the other hand, I suppose, that one does need to acknowledge that it is a privilege to have an amplified voice, whoever you are. And then, hopefully, if that can be used in such a way that shows people that like portrays my community and everything, as the three-dimensional characters that we actually are because that’s how all human beings work, then that’s not necessarily any bad thing so it’s certainly a privilege just an annoying one.

I mean you you know you do try to put Hinduism into a little bit of perspective. I feel like, for those of you listening now. Ahir and I did speak earlier in the week, and it went completely sideways, and I don’t know. I wouldn’t blame the Hinduism for it, I might blame Mercury being in retrograde, which is a completely different way to look at things.

It would be really fascinating for us both to blame Hinduism for that. I think, look, we had sideways conversation and when you think about it, I think we can all agree, it was Ginesh. It was Ginesh’s fault. It’s fine, we’ll put that behind us.

I do, I do like to sort of discuss that because I think that, there’s still a pretty poor understanding of Islam in the West, but Islam is something that people, I think just because it’s more akin to Christianity is something that you know as an Abrahamic monotheism, it’s sort of more relatable and understandable in the Western Christian consciousness. Whereas, Hinduism still sort of carries this sort of thing, and it’s not unknown in a way that it’s like fear and or anything like that but it’s just, it’s just the unknown of a sort of, I don’t really know how that really works. Which is, of course, absolutely fine. If someone’s just like, oh I don’t really know anything about that. Cool. All right, well let’s learn together. Like, my girlfriend is Irish, I am shamefully ignorant about Irish history. So, she’s very patient with me whenever I’m just like, look, consider that I’m an idiot. Please tell me these things that I should clearly already know but I don’t. I think that’s a useful thing to be able to do.

I just hope that that Hinduism is at least as accepted and as known as astrology. Like I mentioned Mercury Retrograde, everybody knows what I’m talking about.

There is, of course, extraordinarily storied astrological history in Hinduism, to the extent that the first stand0up show I did was called “Astrology” because it was based on when I was born, like, like a great many Indian children. There was a thing made for me, sort of what’s written at birth. and you consult an astrologer. Look at the star chart at the specific time of this child’s birth, and they basically just write a potted biography of how your life’s going to go. It’s actually really fun. Some of it was pretty bang on! Apparently I’m going to get divorced twice. I haven’t got around to that yet, but who knows?

There’s still time. There’s still time. Something that has become more commonplace or more acceptable, at least in terms of show business is concerned, is people talking about depression and mental illness and taking antidepressants, you know, there’s more and more comedians here in America talking about it, you certainly mentioned it in Dots. So I wonder what your current perspective is on laughter being the best medicine, versus medicine being the best medicine?

I mean, it’s what we’ll put it this way. I wasn’t extraordinarily excited about receiving two doses of laughter to protect me from the Coronavirus whereas I am very happy to have received two doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and I’m still ashamed that your country does not acknowledge its wonderful effects. There’s a great British success story and we’ve got too few of those these days. I want to big up AstraZeneca to the American listeners. I think, certainly, it’s sort of encouraging that people are talking about these sorts of issues onstage, I would say that, like, fundamentally, as with anything like, the point is to be funny. I’ve had comedians tell extraordinary hilarious stories about suicide attempts that have been like rolling on the floor and everything but, like, if they did it without jokes, I’d just be like, mate, are you all right? This isn’t the forum for that sort of thing. What it is, is the forum to tell jokes in, and the beauty of it is that you have total freedom as to what they are? Right, the only obligation is to be funny. And if you can do that, whatever you’re being funny about, I just want to see you explore, whatever it is that you want to explore, and if you’re making me laugh then I’m extremely interested in your explorations and if that be mental illness or faith or love or family, or if you just want to do a bunch of one liners, I am equally happy with all of those because I enjoy laughing.

Even in a pandemic, so thank you for reminding us that we’re still in the pandemic.

I was watching the 10 o’clock news. The other day, and they kept using the phrase like “during the pandemic” or “now after the pandemic” and everything, and then at the end of the at the end of the thing, they were like, and just today’s latest COVID figures 45,000 new infections and everything. What?!?! I’m not gonna sit here and act like I haven’t been sort of living my life pretty much as normal beyond wearing a mask when I’m in indoor settings, and what have you. But that’s not to say after the pandemic if there’s still 45,000 people a day catching this thing!

Yes, and I’m grateful that we can both laugh about it. I mean, maybe that’s because we’re both involved in comedy. It’s easier for us to laugh at the madness, that’s happening.

Yeah. I mean, it destroyed the comedy industry overnight so if you can’t laugh, then you’re going to be extremely upset.

Right, which I guess brings me to my last question, and that’s, you know the pandemic game everybody not just people in comedy, a chance to take a timeout and reflect, I mean for comedians it forced you to take a timeout from what you were doing and reflect. In a way Dots, which you were hoping to film at the end of March, 2020, but end up filming in 2021 Already deals with the uncertainty of life. But how, how did this, especially knowing you had a special, how did the time off, impact what you think about how you want to move forward?

I think that sort of gave me a greater sense of clarity of what I want, not necessarily professionally because, like the thing about the professionally is like, well I can’t do anything about that, right? As an individual, we were all so clearly not the center of what was going on, and it was extremely important that we did them in terms of the precautions that we took and whatnot, and hopefully still continue to take in certain settings, where it’s appropriate. But I got a lot more comfortable being completely insignificant. And I think that that gave me a bit more of a sense of right, what what actually do you consider to be important and what actually, do you want from life? Because before that I paid my identity so heavily to my profession. And it was a very rude awakening of like, perhaps it’s not wise to do that, Because it turns out through the whims of the gods, your profession can evaporate.

And beyond that, I was just like. Yeah, I think that one thing and I won’t say during the pandemic. But one thing that is relatively easy to forget now, I think just because we have to forget. Because otherwise how will we live? Was just how apocalyptically frightening it was right at the beginning, particularly. It’s obviously still like a frightening thing but that that sense of, at the beginning, like my entire thought process was devoted to, like, I hope that these people who I love who are vulnerable to this thing, don’t die, and just as everything was becoming slightly more manageable in the UK and the vaccine rollout and everything was going very well, that’s when it really struck India. And so, I had, you know, on the one hand this sense of optimism for what’s going on here but also that fear coming back. Because, sort of like my dad’s entire side of the family basically are over there. So that’s how I feel about that.

Thank you for considering this podcast important enough to do, and I look forward to speaking with you again. After the pandemic.

Yes! Exactly, exactly.