Hardeep Singh Kohli prepares to take his own caravan of love on a stand-up virgin tour.
With his wry humour and droll demeanour, many already think of this softly-spoken Scot as a fully paid-up comedian. Others may be more aware of his writing, his directing or his presentation of rather serious documentaries. He has been nominated (twice) for Scottish Columnist of the Year; written and starred in his own TV series; written, directed and presented BAFTA-winning shows; and aired his opinions on TV programmes as diverse as Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff and BBC2’s Newsnight Review. He is well known to audiences of BBC Radio 2, 3, 4 and 5 Live, and in his spare time he has travelled the UK with his critically acclaimed cookery-cum-comedy entertainment.
So he has a breadth of talent and a broad appeal - having stealthily drawn in a diverse audience, as he gradually moved out from behind the scenes and extended his reach across different media. Now, finally, he is about to stand in the spotlight, all alone and with no gimmicks, and you can’t help wondering whether this was what he planned all along.
Undoubtedly he has taken a circuitous route to get here, and while he is vague when questioned about his intentions, he insists that there is a method in the meandering madness, a thread that pulls this particular journey together. Everything he does, he says, is about looking for connections and communicating with people. And this, he has proved, he does well.
But he has never done stand-up and is more known for his narrative storytelling than witty one-liners. So what can we expect from this new show? Knowing people will go expecting jokes, he has obligingly written some. But mostly this will be an amalgamation of what he does best: a weaving together of a truth, his truth; a frank and honest account of a 45 year old man who was dating a 28 year old woman, and who now finds himself single again in the strange, new world of internet dating. Perhaps a little embellished…
No doubt this articulate and charming Glaswegian will produce something warm and intelligent that everyone can identify with. ‘Radio 2 listeners may be shocked’, he muses, ‘but I think they’ll live with it… I’m not gratuitous.’ Anything else? ‘Oh – and funny. It will be funny!’