Nish Kumar : Dropping the C-word, Fighting Fascists & Partying with J-Lo.

What's My Age Again?

Nish Kumar joins What's My Age Again to discuss how political controversy, right-wing press attacks, and a bread-roll incident contributed to anxiety and PTSD. He explains how

Key takeaways

• Nish Kumar says he did not go to therapy until Brett Goldstein told him he was a misogynist and then emailed his therapist, removing the decision from Nish's hands.
• Nish describes a 2019 charity gig where someone threw a bread roll at him after his jokes, followed by what he now recognizes as PTSD linked to a family anxiety disorder.

Main topics

• Mental health, therapy, PTSD, anxiety, and ADHD
• Political comedy, right-wing press, and Boris Johnson

Notable quotes

I didn't go to therapy until a white man told me.

Conclusion

The episode offers a candid look at how public controversy, mental health treatment, and

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) A Rayo Original Podcast. Speaker 1 (0:07) We're just a couple of brown-skinned, thick divas. I met J-Lo because of Brett Goldstein. Speaker 2 (0:13) Wait, how much can you say about that? I didn't sign any NDAs. That was going very penis for a minute, the Speaker 1 (0:18) way you indicated Speaker 2 (0:18) it. Speaker 1 (0:18) I broke my penis playing football. Don't be editing that out. I didn't go to therapy until a white man told me. That you're a misogynist. Yeah, that I'm a misogynist. That I do not respect women. Speaker 2 (0:27) And is the press going to jump on that? They're like, yeah, yeah. My God, this is Speaker 1 (0:33) going worse than Prince Andrew and Maitlis. And she said the most important thing you have to get your head around is everything that you've achieved in your life was despite your anxiety disorder. Nothing good that has happened to you has happened because of your anxiety disorder. Speaker 2 (0:47) Nishkumar, your biological age is... Speaker 2 (0:54) Hello and welcome to What's My Age Again, the only podcast where we take your blood and we use it to discover your biological age for some reason. We learn about the damage you've done, the recovery you've put in place, and how this has affected your body on a cellular level. Today, we are joined by hilarious and opinion-splitting political provocateur. His cutting satire in both Stand Up and The Mash Report, cancelled, ruffled so many feathers. He had a bread roll thrown at his face. More than one, I thought. It Speaker 1 (1:26) was one, okay? Oh, okay. Let's get ahead of this narrative right away. All right, fine. It was one bread roll and it didn't hit me. It Speaker 2 (1:32) was exaggerated Speaker 1 (1:32) by Speaker 2 (1:32) the Telegraph. But that hasn't stopped him, nor have death threats. We can't laugh at this bit. Death threats, racism, or security escorting him away from Boris Johnson's car after he chased it, screaming. Speaker 2 (1:47) Nish. Did you do that? Speaker 1 (1:50) Yes. Speaker 2 (1:51) Okay. But what about life behind the lens? Speaker 2 (1:56) He is a fried chicken fiend. I didn't write it. Do you like that description Speaker 1 (2:02) of yourself? When you get through this intro, we'll go through it. Okay, thank Speaker 2 (2:06) you. He's a fried chicken fiend and lives for a pint. But he's also undergone therapy, has a rich social life, and a loving long-term partner. Has the stress of fighting fascists worn him down? Is he one pint away from pre-diabetes? Or is prioritizing your mental health the key to keeping yourselves young? All shall be revealed. Please welcome to What's My Age again, Nish Kumar. Speaker 1 (2:34) Hello, Catherine. Hi. What an extraordinary intro. It was Speaker 2 (2:38) really good. I think that's the best intro. Straight Speaker 1 (2:41) off the top, opinions playing. Some of you have turned off this episode already. Speaker 2 (2:46) Not these listeners. No. There are some people, there are some fascists about who don't share your opinions on whether or not Boris Johnson is the C word. Speaker 1 (2:57) I don't know why you've cleaned it up to the C word having already said. Because Speaker 2 (3:00) you can only say it once. You've said it once now. I've said it once now. We get one C word and that's it? Speaker 1 (3:05) Wowee. Speaker 2 (3:06) And not even that one. I'm sure they'll bleep it. But I prefer to say it and let them do the work. Speaker 1 (3:12) I think a bleeped swear word is so fucking funny. I think so too. I think it's really good. Speaker 2 (3:17) Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:18) I think that's one of the kind of core reasons Arrested Development is such a good sitcom because they bleep all the swearing in that. And I think there is something incredibly funny about a bleeped swear word. Speaker 2 (3:28) So yeah, let's go through this blow by blow because I get annoyed sometimes. at like the tediousness of no offense to present company when the producers come in my room and they're like the next guest is Nish Kumar and here's something about him and I'm like I've known Nish for 20 years but Speaker 1 (3:46) I Speaker 2 (3:47) guess I Speaker 1 (3:47) don't I guess you don't fried chicken fiend I love fried chicken I've not seen you eat it once who doesn't love fried chicken vegetarians But even they love fried chicken. They Speaker 2 (3:58) know Speaker 1 (3:58) they love it. Which is why we've got all this Satan fake chicken meat. They love Speaker 2 (4:02) it so much they've had to quit. Speaker 1 (4:03) Yeah. Speaker 2 (4:03) Cold turkey, pun intended. Amelia de Speaker 1 (4:06) Moldenberg has had to end chicken shop dates because people love chicken too much. Speaker 2 (4:09) That's it. Speaker 1 (4:09) It was affecting the health of the nation. Have Speaker 2 (4:12) you ever had Hooters fried chicken? Speaker 1 (4:15) I have never frequented Hooters. Why? Well, it's quite difficult to frequent. I think there's only like one Hooters in this. There's only a Hooter singular in this country. I Speaker 2 (4:25) opened it. Yes, there are photos of me on the wall, but I will confirm. Did Speaker 1 (4:29) you really open the Hooters? I did, Speaker 2 (4:30) yeah. I cut the ribbon. Speaker 1 (4:32) You're a Hooters celebrity. Speaker 2 (4:34) Thank you. It's the only one worldwide. And when I opened it, we had something like 420 locations. That's the only one that needed a bouncer. Speaker 1 (4:45) Oh, Nottingham. Speaker 2 (4:46) Is it Brett Goldstein who got you to go to therapy? Speaker 1 (4:48) Yeah, it's Brett Goldstein. That's what it says. I met J-Lo because of Brett Goldstein. Speaker 2 (4:52) Wait, how much can you say about that? Speaker 1 (4:55) I don't think I didn't sign any NDAs. All Speaker 2 (4:57) right. Speaker 1 (4:58) Tell me as Speaker 2 (4:58) much as you can. We Speaker 1 (4:59) went to an after party for Brett's film. And it's called Love. It's called Office Romance. Office Romance. And it's obviously crazy that Brett is in a movie, you know. Speaker 2 (5:09) It's not that crazy. That was always going to happen. He's very talented. He's Speaker 1 (5:13) objectively a Hollywood leading man handsome. To quote Speaker 2 (5:16) J-Lo. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I saw the press interview. And Speaker 1 (5:19) there was this after party and she was there and. I sort of am aware of the effect that she has on men my age. Speaker 2 (5:27) And women. I Speaker 1 (5:28) was unaware of the effect she had on women my age. My God. Amy Annette, my partner, Speaker 2 (5:34) her Speaker 1 (5:34) jaw was on the floor. And at one point she said to J-Lo, do you mind that Brett says the C word that much? Because I know that Jennifer Lopez said to Amy, please, I'm from the Bronx. And Amy was like, I know. Sure she Speaker 3 (5:47) is. Speaker 2 (5:48) Did you see the only bad bit of press I think the queen that is J-Lo has ever had is when someone, I don't know what she was promoting. This was pre-working with Brett Goldstein. And they said, what do you get from the bodega? She's like, you know the bodega. And she went a little too Jenny from the block. And she was like, I get the orange drink. And everyone was like, that's not a thing from the bodega. Because she is. Speaker 2 (6:14) Oh, slightly disconnected from her roots. Speaker 1 (6:16) Well, she's been famous for so long. Speaker 2 (6:18) And she shouldn't be embarrassed about that. Don't pretend that you go down to the... Be like, do you know what? I drink exclusively the champagne that I bathe in. And I don't know what's on offer at the bodega. Next question. Can Speaker 1 (6:31) I say that the UK comedy community that was present at that party did our level best to behave like mammals who breathe air. If I may quote Chris Rock. We attempted to... And we did our best. The second she left, the behavior collapsed. Literally the second she left, I dared my friend Steve to throw a donut ball across the room and see if he could get it in my mouth. He couldn't. It hit me square on the chest. And it exploded in an Oppenheimer-level mushroom cloud of baked sugar. And then Roisin Conaty lost her shoes. Like literally as soon as she left. Speaker 2 (7:04) And she's been sober for a long time. Yeah, it Speaker 1 (7:06) has nothing to do with that. She just simply lost her shoes. For the time that Jennifer Lopez was present, we really acquitted ourselves well. And then as soon as she left, we returned to being the sewer-dwelling rats that we are. Speaker 2 (7:20) And what did you learn from that experience? Is don't button it up. Not for J-Lo, not for anyone. Speaker 1 (7:25) No, I learned that we should always act like Jennifer Lopez is present at all times. And then maybe we wouldn't get kicked out of so many bars. Speaker 2 (7:32) Why don't you act like that around me? I can dance. I can lip sync. I'm a bad actress. Just kidding. I really like J-Lo. I really love J-Lo. Okay, but back to you. I have some opening questions. Go for Speaker 1 (7:44) it. Speaker 2 (7:44) Now it's halfway through the podcast. Speaker 1 (7:46) We've just been talking about Jennifer Lopez. The one thing you said just before we started recording was they keep telling me we've been talking too much about irrelevant stuff. And we've had a 10-minute conversation about Jennifer Lopez. I Speaker 2 (8:00) don't think Jennifer Lopez is irrelevant. No, she's incredibly Speaker 1 (8:02) relevant. Speaker 2 (8:03) Brett Goldstein. Works with her on Office Romance. Correct. He got you into therapy. Correct. We're Speaker 1 (8:08) going Speaker 2 (8:08) to circle back to that because your mental health has a big impact on your biological age. Also, what do you think J-Lo's biological age is? Oh, I think J Speaker 1 (8:15) -Lo's biological age is maybe, I think, yeah, I think it might be in the teens. Speaker 2 (8:21) So we're going to go through how your life is different to hers. And then we'll see. We'll compare. Speaker 1 (8:28) Listen, we're just a couple of brown-skinned, thick divas. Speaker 2 (8:32) I know. Why is Speaker 1 (8:34) everyone laughing at that? Speaker 2 (8:35) An orange drink from the bodega. I Speaker 1 (8:37) don't understand why everyone's laughing at that. Fucking hell. Are Speaker 2 (8:40) you feeling it in your 40s? Do you feel it anywhere in your body that you're starting to get old? You Speaker 1 (8:44) know, everybody keeps saying, oh, I really feel it now that I'm... Because, you know, roughly our contemporaries are all in their 40s, or a lot of them are in their 40s. And people keep saying, oh, I'm really feeling it. And I'm not because I already have a bad body. Like my body was already malfunctioning. So I barely noticed it. Like you like people keep saying like, oh, this bit of my body hurts. And you're like, yeah, that's always hurt for me. I've always been in quite bad shape. Speaker 2 (9:13) I don't think that's true because don't you play football? Yeah, but not well. And Speaker 1 (9:17) also to be clear, in playing football in the last few years, I've broken this finger and my right toe. Speaker 2 (9:24) That was going very penis for a minute, the way you indicated. I broke Speaker 1 (9:27) my penis playing football. Don't be editing that out, uncut, and putting it on the internet. You're playing Speaker 2 (9:33) it. Speaker 1 (9:33) And saying I broke my penis because I played football with my dick. Don't be saying that. Speaker 2 (9:36) It's uncut and it's on the internet. And you're playing it wrong. Oh my god, this is Speaker 1 (9:39) going worse than Prince Andrew and Maitlis. Speaker 2 (9:45) Nish, what are the three things that have aged you the most? Speaker 1 (9:48) I think lifestyle is number one. Speaker 2 (9:51) And Speaker 1 (9:51) I think that being a stand-up comedian, as you well know, isn't conducive to a healthy lifestyle. Now, it isn't prohibitive from a healthy lifestyle. I'd say you have a pretty good, relatively healthy lifestyle. Well, Speaker 2 (10:04) my biological age, the first time I took it on the show was 77. Speaker 2 (10:09) But I'm not getting drunk at a J-Lo premiere and throwing donut holes. Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:13) No. That's because you've been pooping out on them kids. I Speaker 2 (10:15) know. Speaker 1 (10:16) I know. Thank you for Speaker 2 (10:17) recognizing the episiotomy element. Can you tell me your life story in one minute? Speaker 1 (10:25) He was born. He was a laugh. He died, as we all must. Speaker 2 (10:30) Well, have you always been a laugh? Yeah. I saw you recently on a podcast, because that's all there is now. I assume it was a podcast. It