Comedian Eshaan Akbar talks to Reading Today about his upcoming stand-up tour and whether a comedian’s personal views are relevant, ahead of his show at South Street Arts Centre in April.
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Eshaan has been performing comedy for nearly a decade, with appearances on Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week, QI, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, and The Big Asian Stand-Up, as well as lending his voice to the revival of Spitting Image.
He’s an accomplished radio host and award-winning podcaster, as well as recently announcing that he is among the cast for the fourth season of Netflix’s smash-hit Sex Education.
He’s also set out on The Pretender, which Eshaan says is his first national stand-up tour “after nine years of traipsing up and down this great beautiful, green land.”
He says that while a UK tour is a situation which involves even more travelling throughout the country, already an occupational hazard for comedians, the connection with audiences keeps things fresh.
“Sometimes it can be very difficult to see the beauty of a situation when you’re coming back from Cardiff and there’s a three-hour delay on the M4.
“But one of the beauties of being a comedian, particularly in the UK, is you’re able to go up and down the country and meet different audiences.
“You get to understand what it is that people enjoy and love.”
As for the show itself: “It’s an hour of my funniest stuff, but if there’s a theme then it’s about how we’re all slightly pretending all the time.
“We’re all presenting ourselves differently to our partners, our friends, our family.”
“I feel like a lot of political discourse is people just trying their best to fit in whichever side of the debate they’re on.
“I don’t believe that everybody believes everything about their side of debate all the time.”
While Eshaan doesn’t ‘court’ political issues, he doesn’t avoid them either, instead seeking the humour first.
“A lot of my stuff that is political or social observation deals with what representation and diversity means for people of colour- a phrase I personally hate.
“I get criticised for being a diversity booking, and the fact that their parents weren’t interested in other races isn’t my problem.
“Then there are others who expect me to do certain things because they think I’m a diversity booking, and I won’t do those either- I want to highlight how comedy can make someone laugh, fundamentally, before it changes their minds.”
He admits that some comedy audiences, however, can be somewhat navel-gazing: “Sometimes, particularly in London, have this sense that comedy has a higher purpose than it serves.
“But we’re all basically the same: we want to pay our bills, have a nice time with the people we love, hope that people love us back, and be comfortable — that’s it really.”
Despite the occasionally lofty considerations of comedy, Eshaan says also that there is an often unifying aspect to live comedy.
“People want to enjoy the show; they don’t want to be hit over the head with how terrible people are.
“That’s one of the things I love; white, black, doesn’t matter, disabilities, sexuality, doesn’t matter– fundamentally, as human beings we all want the same things.”
He also says that his “cantankerous” personality leads him to enjoy the pushing of an audience’s buttons: “I don’t always take the position people might expect, and that’s what it’s about.
“I don’t want people to come and see me because they agree with me politically– in fact, what I want people to not have a single sense of what I believe.
“I want them to be able to laugh at something that they just completely wouldn’t expect, that’s when I’ve done my job.”
The element of surprise plays a part in this, he explains: “People will be surprised to hear some of the things which come out of my mouth.”
But he also sees a comedian’s personal views as irrelevant to their comedy: “my personal views, I think, have no business in the public domain.
“I’m there to be funny- if you want to judge, and Lord knows people do, that’s their prerogative.
“But I don’t really care what people think, because you can’t police that, so I’m quite relaxed about it.”
This, he feels, has led to him supporting a wide range of fellow comedians from a diverse range of backgrounds and political standpoints.
He says he’s supported comedians from Jason Manford and Micky Flannigan to Kae Kurd and Mo Gilligan.
“What I learned from that is that the audience just wants to laugh- are people changing their minds at the polling booths because of what a comic said?
“I don’t necessarily subscribe to that idea, though I know some comedians do, and me being shrill or angry about the state of the nation doesn’t contribute.”
“Print media overall tends to be right-leaning, but comics seem to lean left; then you get big comedy heroes like John Cleese who end up being right-leaning too.
“Nobody wanted to know that, though, it’s a by-product which some lean into, but that’s not for me.
“I want to find a middle ground.”
And this middle ground could be achieved, he says, through longer discourse, such as via podcasts.
“They’re a really good way of showcasing nuance and diversity of thoughts and opinions, but with the aim of having a good time.”
All of which becomes only more so as age continues to set in, as it does for us all: “In the blink of an eye I was 38.
“And in the blink of an eye I’ll be 70, and I want be having a great time until then rather than spending time worrying about things way beyond my paygrade.”
The Pretender is touring around the country including Reading’s South Street Arts Centre on Saturday, April 22, with support from Alexandra Haddow.
Other dates include shows at London’s Leicester Square Theatre, Guildford, Maidenhead, and Swindon.
Full tour details and tickets are available via www.eshaanakbar.com/tour
