INTERVIEW
GOODNESS GRACIOUS GATWICK Actor, comedian, writer and Chancellor of the University of Sussex, Sanjeev Bhaskar is also this year’s host of the Gatwick Diamond Business Awards. Sanjeev tells Ian Trevett about the impact of Goodness Gracious Me and why his dream was to play an ancient king.
“W
e just wanted to write something that will make people laugh. We had no idea that it would have such an impact.” Few comedies can honestly be described as groundbreaking, but it was certainly true in the case of Goodness Gracious Me, which first aired in 1998. The sketch show was created by four friends (Sanjeev, Kulvinder Ghir, Meera Syal and Nina Wadia) who shared a love of comedy, but of course, what made it different was that the four friends were young British Indians, who daringly poked fun at the differences (and similarities) and stereotypes of the two cultures. “You never make something to be groundbreaking,” says Sanjeev. “Other people may think it is, but it is not the objective. From our point of view, we didn’t want to make political points, we just wanted it to be funny. “We all grew up here and we have the same references and find the same things funny. It is actually very British. Even now you still see tweets about the ‘blandest thing on the menu’.” The ‘blandest’ line came from the ‘Going for an English’ sketch, which was voted the sixth all-time best comedy sketch on a Channel 4 Top 50 show. It was an inspired reversal of roles, with four Indians behaving in a suitably appalling way in an English restaurant, cluelessly ordering 12 bread rolls and 24 plates of chips. Who knows how many people blushed with embarrassed recognition watching that sketch. The show also had a mixed reaction from the Asian community, remembers Sanjeev: “Younger people got what we were doing, but some of the older generation were embarrassed. “At one event, an older Indian guy asked me: “Why
36