In January 1998,
a seven-year-old boy was sat on the floor
of his grandparents' living room
in Alperton, North West London.
Three generations gathered round the telly
to watch episode one
of this new show on the BBC.
Now, the boy's grandparents
had had tough lives, right?
The sort of lives
that clad you in an armour,
and it's the sort of armour
from which laughter struggles to escape.
But for the next half hour,
the boy and his family
watched episode one
of Goodness Gracious Me,
and he listened as his grandparents
f*cking pissed themselves laughing
at themselves and with themselves
for the first time he could remember.
And watching Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal,
Nina Wadia and Kulvinder Ghir
on television,
the boy thought,
"Wait, we can do that?!
I didn't know we could do that."
"But if we get to do that,
then I wanna do that,"
because hearing my grandparents
make that sound
is the best sound I've ever heard
in my entire life.
Over 25 years later,
would you please welcome to the stage
Mr Ahir Shah.
Hello! Hello!
Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.
Good evening, London. Are we well?
Fantastic, fantastic.
Lovely to have you here.
Lovely to have you
in such fine voice. Hello!
Uh, my name is Ahir Shah.
That is my name, by the way, right?
I didn't used to need to clarify this,
until a few years ago,
I was doing this gig in Switzerland...
I was doing a gig in Switzerland,
and the theme of this gig
was that every comedian
was from a different country, right?
I was the British entrant. Very modern.
Right? And...
There was one comedian
I was particularly excited to meet
'cause this guy's name was Ali Al Sayed.
Now, Ali is a stand-up comedian
from the United Arab Emirates,
of all places, right?
I'd never met anyone
from the United Arab Emirates,
let alone a comedian
from the United Arab Emirates.
To be perfectly honest,
I didn't think they had comedians
in the United Arab Emirates.
I assumed he'd just be
walking onstage being like,
"What's the deal
with unspeakable oil wealth?"
He's a very nice man, a very funny man.
After the show, all the comedians,
we're all backstage hanging out.
We're all having a laugh, having a drink.
Not Ali, obviously. Right, and...
We get to talking, and he says to me,
"Like, uh, listen, bro."
"We're friends now.
I can ask you a question."
"You're not gonna get offended."
I'm like, "Listen, brother."
"You're from Dubai.
I'm of South Asian origin."
"As long as the question
you have for me is not,
'Do you want a job
on a construction site?'"
Industrialised sl*very.
"You can ask me
whatever the hell you like."
He's like, "Nothing like that.
I was just wondering."
"When did you decide to start using
the hilarious comedy stage name
Ahir Shah?"
Right? I was like,
"To be honest, I don't remember,
but it was probably 28th December 1990
when I plopped out of Mrs Shah,
and she and Mr Shah decided to call
their newborn bundle of joy Ahir."
"I think that's about when
I started going by Ahir Shah."
He's like, "Right, right, okay."
"One thing you should know, in case
you're ever in my neck of the woods,
is that in Arabic, your name means
prost*tute King!"
He wasn't even f*cking with me.
Ahir Shah is "prost*tute king" in Arabic.
There are several reasons I didn't think
my career would go stratospheric in Saudi.
Humble enough to know that I don't have
the best bone-saw material on the circuit.
That's Romesh, and fair enough.
Right, but, uh...
I put this to the back of my mind
for several years, as you would,
until, uh, November 2022.
I was in Egypt doing some work
around the COP climate conference.
They speak Arabic in Egypt,
and I don't know
if anyone else in the room
has ever walked into a hotel
and attempted to check in
by announcing themselves
to everyone working there
as "Monarch of all p*mps"?
Really changes the vibe in a lobby,
in my experience.
They think you're selling
something very different to what you are.
Anyway, that's me, then. Ahir Shah.
prost*tute King to my friends.
Mr Shah to you, and, uh...
It's been a while
since I've done a big show like this.
A lot's changed in the world,
in my life. A lot's changed in my life.
I'm now very much in my thirties now.
That's exciting.
sh*t started falling apart way younger
than I was led to believe, by the way.
I thought I had another good decade
left in me.
As it stands,
everything's already just crumbling.
My knees are already f*cked.
Absolutely no idea what's going on there.
I'm trying desperately
to get a referral from my GP, right...
Sorry, for younger people...
Right, um, a GP... Right...
So a GP was a service where, like...
- Young fellow. How old are you, mate?
- Twenty-two.
Twenty-two. So you might remember
but in the same way you remember iPods.
You never had one,
but you're vaguely aware they existed.
Okay, so basically, like,
a GP was this, like...
Right, imagine you're a bit poorly.
Not super poorly but a bit poorly.
What would happen was
there was this number you called,
and someone answered, right, and, uh...
Not even necessarily
at eight in the morning.
Any time during business hours.
Very forthcoming.
Uh, so you'd call them,
and you'd be like, "Oh, I'm a bit poorly,"
and they'd be like,
"Ah, cool. Come see us, soon."
Right?
And so a couple of days,
days, a couple of days later,
what would happen was
you went over to this... Right.
It looked like a semi-detached house.
It wasn't.
That was the first trick they played.
It's like a sphinx's riddle.
Past that, you were golden.
You'd arrive, like, 10, 15 minutes early.
You're a conscientious person.
And you'd sit in a sort of,
uh, waiting room,
and after about 10, 15 minutes,
someone would call your name,
and you'd go to a separate, smaller room,
and there would just be one guy in there,
and he would be like...
I mean, he would, right?
'Cause we've quite a reassuring manner
in a lanyard.
Right? And you'd tell this person
what sort of poorly that you were,
and this was a very well-educated person,
so you could just be fixed then and there,
but occasionally, it'd be a slightly
more complex health need,
and you'd get a referral
to a hospital, right?
Sorry. Right. A hospital. Now...
Have you ever wondered
where the queue of ambulances ends?
Right? That is a building
known as a "hospital".
Funny word, isn't it? Interesting thing.
You were born in one. You'll die in one.
Between then, you're f*cked. Sorry.
Right, uh, basically that...
I'm obviously being slightly disingenuous.
There are quite a lot of them.
Generally speaking,
they were all either built or done up
when the prime minister's name
was either Attlee, Wilson, or Blair.
Not sure why. Not sure why!
It's just a coincidence, isn't it?
What possible intellectual merit
could there be
in examining why that might have ended up
being the case of all things?
Fourteen f*cking years!
Fourteen wasted f*cking years!
Like, not entirely wasted, obviously.
There have been some genuine
achievements of Conservative government.
I mean that entirely sincerely,
by the way.
My favourite of which is, like...
Basically, it's funny.
If you ignore all of the noise
and just look at
the actual underlying data,
over the last 14 years,
the Tories so successfully decarbonised
the British economy and energy mix,
including all imported emissions,
that if the countries responsible
for the lion's share of emissions
had been anything like as impressive
as we've been over the last 14 years,
global warming
basically wouldn't be a thing.
The Tories did that.
They did it on purpose.
It is spectacularly impressive,
and they can't admit it
'cause they think it sounds g*y.
Other than that,
it's slim pickings out there. Really is.
Genuinely. It's worse than it's been
my entire adult life, for sure.
Listen, the vibes are awful out there.
We're genuinely skint, as a collective,
in a way that we weren't in 2010
'cause, basically, in 2010,
the Conservatives were elected
by telling a sequence of lies
about the British economy and society.
That they then spent the next 14 years
ensuring were true.
Right, and... Is it...
We need an election, yeah.
We need an election.
At this stage, I would settle for
a total overthrow of the current system
and the installation
of one-man dictatorial rule,
provided that the man in question
was Martin Lewis,
the Money Saving Expert, right?
I love that guy!
I love Martin Lewis,
the Money Saving Expert, so g*dd*mn much.
- Do you sign up to his email?
- Oh yeah.
You do? You're a good citizen.
Well done, sir.
If you do not sign up for it,
do your bit for your country.
That man is the only thing
standing between us and the f*cking brink.
Right. I love Martin Lewis,
the Money Saving Expert, so g*dd*mn...
So, for the uninitiated,
Martin Lewis, he's a money-saving expert,
and he runs this website
called MoneySavingExpert.com,
and you get a weekly email,
and it's about money saving
and the expertise therein, right?
And, um, basically, Martin Lewis,
the Money Saving Expert,
he set up his business for 80, right?
Eight-zero. That's all it cost.
He is now worth 100 million, right?
Isn't that amazing?
He gives a lot away
to things like Citizen's Advice
'cause he gives a sh*t
unlike the people in charge.
I love that for Martin Lewis.
I love that Martin Lewis is rich.
Right? Here's the thing, right?
The reason I love it is that Martin Lewis
is basically the only person
I can think of
who's got properly rich from helping.
Do you know what I mean?
Take a second to dwell
on how rare that is, broadly speaking.
'Cause there's no money in helping,
is there? We all know that.
There's money in hindering,
for sure. Right?
There's no money in helping. Right?
When's the last time
any of you were walking down the street
and went, "Oh my god, a Lamborghini!
Who does that belong to?"
And someone's like, "The lollipop lady."
Right? It doesn't happen.
'Cause there's no money in helping
unless you're Martin Lewis.
Because that man is rich as ba*ls,
and the way he got there
was by getting all of us together
and just being like,
"Pizza Express. 2 for 1 on Wednesday."
"Dough ba*ls are on me.
Don't worry about it."
It's gonna take more than Martin Lewis
to save us now, the state that we're in.
It's really bad out there.
And it's weird for me
because at the same time
as the country I love
is so visibly on its knees,
I am personally happier
than I have ever been in my entire life.
And the two things
are entirely unconnected, but still,
feeling personally happy
when your country is suffering
feels actively distasteful.
Do you know what I mean?
I've not done it on purpose,
but it's like having Chumbawamba
stuck in your head at a funeral.
The reason, ladies and gentlemen,
that I am happier than I have ever been
is that in October of last year,
I got married.
Yeah.
Honestly, she's the single best thing
ever to happen to me.
I love her with all my heart.
She's a civil servant.
I'm in it for the pension.
You have to understand
I'm a self-employed man.
Before I met her, my retirement plan
was just to not live that long.
Whereas now, my entire financial security
and old age is wholly dependent
on not upsetting one woman
till the day I die. Right?
That'll be a new personal best, mate.
In this economy, I'll try anything, right?
I'd always known
that I wanted to get married eventually.
I guess there was a certain degree
of cultural expectation as well.
I don't know what to tell you.
In Asian families, you get married,
you stay married. It's just what happens.
Some of you may know this from your own
families, maybe friends' families.
You might not be aware of the sheer extent
to which this is the case,
so I'll give you the best example I have.
I started doing stand-up comedy
when I was a teenager, right?
When I was about 17 years old,
I was given the opportunity
to do five minutes
at the Hackney Empire theatre
in East London.
That's a very big theatre. 1500 people.
Some of you may well have been.
It's the coolest thing
that had ever happened to me.
I was on in the first section,
so I invited my mum, my dad and my sister
to come watch,
and they saved me a seat
so I could watch in the second section.
And the reason
I was invited in the first place
is that the Hackney Empire were putting on
an evening of British Asian stand-up,
and I, as the new kid on the block,
they were like, "Let's give
little Ahir a go." That's nice, isn't it?
And so the whole audience, sold-out show,
1500 people, all British Asian.
All of the performers, British Asian,
apart from... right...
about two hours before the show started,
one of the acts suddenly had to drop out.
Now, this is the noughties.
It's not like nowadays where everyone's
got email on their phones.
They had to ring around,
try and find a replacement.
A replacement was found
in the form of my friend
the comedian Joe Bor. Right?
Now, Joe is a very nice man.
He's a very funny man.
What Joe is not is a British Asian man.
Right?
What Joe is is a Jewish man.
Clearly, with two hours on the clock,
one of the organisers was like, "f*ck! I..."
"I think Jews are basically Asian. I..."
Listen, I'm not saying there aren't
similarities between the communities.
My best mate's Jewish. We've been mates
since we were 14 years old,
and it's 'cause the first time we met,
he told me about his mum,
and everything that his mum did
was either sh*t that my mum did
or hadn't thought of yet.
There's one crucial difference
between the communities,
as my friend the comedian Joe Bor
found out to his dismay that evening.
Because my friend the comedian Joe Bor
walked onstage
in front of 1500 brown faces
and opened with the line,
"My parents are divorced."
"Gimme a cheer
if your parents are divorced."
f*cking nothing!
Not a single sound
from 1,500 people.
I will never forget my mother leaning over
and whispering in my 17-year-old ear,
"Bless him.
He has no idea who he's talking to."
So what happens in Asian families,
for better or for worse,
you get married, you stay married.
I come from a very long line
of very long-married people.
Uh, my parents met at a mutual friend's
birthday party in India in 1979.
Fell in love at first sight.
My dad proposed that night.
They have been married
for almost 45 years. Right? Um...
By the standards
of my mum's family, by the way,
my parents had had
quite an extensive courtship,
uh, prior to that.
I mean, like, well, her parents,
my maternal grandparents,
Nanaji and Nanima,
I mean, the first conversation they had
with one another, just, like, one-on-one,
was on the night,
like, several hours
after they were already married, right?
It's 1955 in India. It was arranged.
I don't know what to tell you.
Like, they weren't complete strangers
to one another. That would be silly.
It's, like, the families
had exchanged a photograph. Uh...
Right? And, um...
these pieces of paper with a few bits
of biographical information on them.
Imagine getting shown that
when you're, like, 19, 20.
"Is this who you'd like to marry forever?"
"Oh yeah, I guess."
Then, in the end, very happily married
for nearly a half century
until my grandfather sadly died
relatively young.
It's so funny talking about this
in front of liberal London audiences.
Like, it's just like, you all know
that outwardly you have to be like,
"Oh."
"The mysteries of the East."
Uh...
"A rich cultural tapestry
that may be interwoven with our own."
Internally, you're all just thinking,
"That's f*cking barbaric."
"The thing is,
that's f*cking barbaric, sorry."
"You mean to tell me
that two people barely out of their teens,
and all they had to go on was a photograph
and a few bits
of scant biographical information,
and within a matter of days,
they were in bed together?"
"That is f*cking disgusting."
"We would never do anything
so crass and horrific
in our contemporary, enlightened Western..."
Sorry, just because you've decided
to do it via algorithm,
not "old woman in your village",
does not make it less arranged, right?
All you've decided to do
is outsource responsibility
to the one thing
somehow less accountable, all right?
My wife and I obviously had
a far more conventional relationship, uh,
prior to getting engaged,
meeting in this country and whatnot.
It took me a long time
to work up the courage
to pop the question, as they say, mate.
We were going out five weeks,
and I asked her to marry me. Um...
I get sh*t done.
There's no point pissing about
if you know you know.
So just get it... get it done.
No point leaving stuff
on your to-do list for six months.
Things are worth doing quickly and well.
It's the single best decision I ever made.
Absolutely no downside.
Admittedly, we were engaged for six months
before we could start living together
just because, like,
our tenancy agreements didn't...
Spent half my life on a f*cking bus.
Then, eventually, obviously,
we were able to finally move in together,
but all that meant was we were two people
in our early thirties living in London
joining households,
so now, we rent one roof
that contains two copies
of every Ottolenghi book
and no realistic pathway to homeownership.
I love my Ottolenghi books though.
Not giving those up, even for a house.
Might need the spares.
Love my Ottolenghi books.
Hey, mate, you got an Ottolenghi book?
- Ah yeah, I love it.
- Yeah?
That's the sort of thing you can afford
when you get the Martin Lewis email.
Love my Ottolenghi books.
"For this recipe, you will need two limes
that were once briefly glimpsed
by a Persian widow."
"Or, if they don't have that
in a shop near you, just any lime."
The thing is, you think it's bullshit,
but I got some of the widow limes,
and you can taste the grief.
It's good stuff, actually.
The salt from the tears
adds real depth of flavour.
I think that,
shy of having children with someone,
I think getting engaged, getting married,
it's like the most optimistic bet
that two people can make on the future.
Just this idea that you can sincerely
look at someone and say,
"Our lives could be joined in something
greater than the sum of its parts
stretching forward for the rest of them."
That's an extraordinarily optimistic
way to feel, right?
At the same time
as it feels like we're embarking
on the most optimistic journey
of a lifetime,
it feels like the country around us
has just given up. You know what I mean?
It's very difficult not to feel like
this entire place has called last orders,
isn't it?
It is acutely difficult
not to feel deeply pessimistic
about every element
of the future of this country. Right?
That's weird enough for me as we're
beginning this optimistic journey,
but it's doubly weird
when I think about the fact
that if I were able to get
into a time machine and travel to 1964,
when my grandfather,
younger than I am now,
became the first member of our family
to set foot on these shores,
and I would just explain
the present to him,
he would not believe me
because he would think I was describing
some unimaginable utopia of progress.
So that's really what I'm trying to do.
To take a step back, view things
through a wider lens, a generational lens,
get some perspective, not be so blinkered,
try not to lose the wood for the trees.
'Cause the story of my family
is a very typical one
for the British Indian community.
I think that's a very relevant story
to the past, present and future
of this country, right?
British Indians are,
by a very long margin,
the largest minority-ethnic group
in this country.
Hindus, again we're talking
about millions upon millions...
None of you know any of that
because our entire cultural output
consists of my mate Nish. Right?
And...
The story of the Indian community
in this country,
by and large, starts,
as it did for my family, in the 1960s
and has ended up, in the 2020s,
with us now running everything?
"Rishi bhai did it!"
"Rishi bhai did it! Never thought I'd live
to see the day that Rishi bhai did it."
"Got that big house
in the middle of town now, baby."
"Rishi bhai did it!"
Listen, politically, I'm furious.
Racially, thrilled.
Ah! Are you kidding me?
On an ethnic level, couldn't be happier
for him and his family.
Increasingly worried about mine.
Very much how I used to feel every time
I saw Suella Aunty on the television.
"Jesus Christ, calm down, Suella Aunty.
You're gonna get us both k*lled."
Right, uh...
I'm gonna talk about
the prime minister a little bit.
Obviously, I've got to be
relatively careful what I say about him
because we can all agree there's
about a 70% chance that a decade from now,
I will play him in a Channel 4 drama.
Right, right...
Not gonna burn a bridge
before I've even crossed it.
Are you kidding me? I need that money.
I just wish that I could get across,
like, how wild that day was, right? I...
A British Indian,
devout Hindu, son of immigrants,
became prime minister of Britain
on Diwali.
That was a very difficult day
in the family WhatsApp for me.
Get the family WhatsApp up on my phone.
Yes, it's called the Asian Network.
See "Dad is typing..."
Wait for the inevitable.
"Ahir, have you seen
what Mr Sunak's son has done today?"
"Still, Ahir, you enjoy mocking your week.
I'm sure that's nice for you."
I'm glad the shine's come off him now.
Everyone knows he's not really up to it.
At the beginning, you all acted
like he was the perfect Indian boy.
At the beginning, everyone acted
like he was the perfect Indian boy.
It's 'cause you just go off
the CV on paper. Right?
You don't know what I know.
What does it say on the CV?
f*cking anyone could've done that.
What? Piece of piss. Who cares? What?
All right, fair enough.
What's the guy done? Fair enough.
Does well at school. Gets into Oxford.
Does well at Oxford. Gets into Stanford.
Does well at Stanford.
Starts working in finance.
Becomes a multi-multimillionaire
in his own right in his twenties,
largely through executing positions
as a big short in 2007-2008
that makes him rich enough
that he'd never have to work again.
No one even reflects on that
'cause at Stanford,
he meets and eventually marries
the daughter
of a genuine Indian billionaire,
who's a very successful businesswoman
in her own right.
They move to the United Kingdom
where he becomes an MP
at an obscenely young age,
Chancellor at an obscenely young age,
during one of the worst financial crises
this country's experienced,
then prime minister,
at an obscenely young age,
of the country that colonised and
expropriated the wealth of his ancestors,
leading to complex migratory patterns,
in his family's case, via East Africa,
landing him on the doorstep of the
most significant address in this country
on the most significant day of his faith,
and everyone acts
like he's the perfect Indian boy.
Feel free to look this up.
It is genuinely true.
Rishi Sunak never made
his school cricket team.
I was captain of mine.
That's right!
That is right!
Any Indian father would dropkick
the prime minister into a canal to get me.
All right? Know what I mean?
"Who cares about Rishi Sunak?
I want Ahir Tendulkar. Mmm."
"Hearing a lot about Number Ten.
Should be batting at number four."
"That's classy."
His family came here in the '60s too.
Like, I... I think about that sometimes.
Getting into my time machine
and travelling
to that cold bedsit in Bradford
and explaining to my grandfather
that when his grandson was a bit older
than he was then,
not only would this be the case,
but I think the bit
that he'd struggle with the most
is that it's not a thing.
Do you know what I mean?
The news was just like,
"And the prime minister, Rishi Sunak,"
and everyone's like,
"Yeah, that makes sense."
It is remarkable
how unremarkable it is, right?
That's a thing
that's worth reflecting upon.
Listen, I'll always talk about
the things we do badly as a country.
I think one of the things
we do terribly as a country
is never discussing
anything we do well as a country.
And I do think
that when we're at our best,
Britain stands basically alone,
certainly in Europe,
probably in the world,
as an example
of what a properly successful
multiethnic, multicultural democracy
can look like in practice
in the 21st century.
That's something that is worth discussing.
It's why I hate it
when you get people on the far right
decrying that multiculturalism
is some grand failed experiment,
when you can see its successes
if you bother to open your eyes.
It's why I can't stand it
when people on my own "team", right?
I don't like teams
in the first place, but listen.
I voted remain,
but whenever people are like,
"It was only the European Union
that gave us our values
of tolerance and decency to..."
f*ck off!
Anyone else in the room ever been
to continental Europe while not white?
It's not the relaxing
holidaying experience
that some of the rest of you may enjoy.
Genuinely. A couple of years ago,
I had to go to this wedding in France.
I genuinely... The way people were...
I kept asking people I was with...
Like, I thought I had something on me.
Turns out I did!
Gonna get an Algerian president
of France anytime soon,
or reckon the fash'll get there first?
Same question for Germany, you know?
Listen, I think that
Britain stands basically alone in this.
That's worth reflecting on, right?
I remember when I was 20 years old,
walking across the Meadows
on the south side of Edinburgh
with my friend the Indian American
comedian Hari Kondabolu, right?
I said to him, "Hari bhai..."
I think that when you're part
of any sort of visible minority,
whatever that minority might be,
what you fundamentally want in life,
it's not necessarily different treatment
or special treatment.
Rather, it is the ability, eventually,
to get to go without saying.
To be part of what is.
Just to, sort of, get to be normal.
I think if you get to be normal 24-7,
you probably don't realise how cool it is
to get to be normal all the time.
And does political representation
get us there in and of itself?
Of course it doesn't, right?
We know this for a fact.
Rishi Sunak, not even the first PM
from a minority-ethnic background.
First, way back in the 19th century,
Benjamin Disraeli, also a Tory, right?
Would you say that antisemitism
does not exist in contemporary Britain?
That would be
a f*cking stupid thing to say.
But maybe these things
are indicative of the fact
that, in societies,
we can, over time, move towards a position
where more and more people
can be brought into the circle
of who gets to go without saying,
until that sphere is eventually
expanded to include everyone,
which is where it should've been
in the first f*ck' place.
I have had the very great privilege
of seeing a large amount of this world
through these eyes.
I have been to many countries,
cities, continents doing this,
and I can comfortably say that Britain is,
yes, as the clich goes,
"the least r*cist country in the world".
It just says a shitload more
about the world than about Britain.
Right?
And please do not interpret this
as any sort of grand political point.
I think the guy's
a f*cking appalling prime minister.
He's, like, genuinely terrible,
and no one voted for any of this.
It is abysmal
what is happening to us at the moment.
I do not agree with his politics, but...
By the way, that's when you know
that something historic's happened.
People use phrases like,
"I may not agree with the politics, but..."
No one felt the need
with David Cameron.
It's just nice for someone like that
to get a girl, isn't it?
Right, but Sunak and Cameron
are basically the same guy
'cause they went to fancy school.
That's what explains it. Fancy school,
and fancy school runs the country.
That is not the school that I think about
when I think about the prime minister.
The school that I think about
is quite a long time ago
and quite a long way away.
In April 1919,
an event occurred in Amritsar, Punjab,
at the time British India,
that is now known to history
as the Jallianwala Bagh m*ssacre,
also known as the Amritsar m*ssacre.
This is when thousands
of entirely unarmed civilians,
peaceful protesters and pilgrims
were kettled into a very, very small area,
and tens of thousands of rounds
of machine-g*n fire
were opened up intentionally
on these entirely unarmed civilians,
at least 379 of whom were m*rder*d,
probably many more,
though we'll never know the true total,
and thousands more
had life-defining injuries thereafter.
It is one of the worst
and most well-documented cases
of colonial atrocities
of British rule in India.
I've known about that a very long time.
What I did not know about,
until an investigation
in The Times last year,
was that subsequent to the m*ssacre
in Amritsar,
there was a sequence
of additional smaller massacres
perpetrated in towns and villages
surrounding Amritsar as the word got out
in order to stop the possibility
of any subsequent civilian uprisings,
including one that happened
in a place called Gujranwala, right?
Now, Gujranwala,
it's about 100 miles away from Amritsar.
It's a border town
in contemporary Pakistan.
And in Gujranwala, again,
thousands of rounds of machine-g*n fire
were let out at entirely unarmed...
just farmers tilling their fields.
And over the course of two days,
ten bombs were dropped,
including one intentionally dropped
on the school
as a show of "This is how powerful we are
and how little of a sh*t
we give about you,
so don't you even think
about trying to f*ck with us."
One of the survivors
of the m*ssacre in Gujranwala
was a two-year-old boy named Ramdas.
Ramdas's grandson is,
at time of recording,
prime minister of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Yeah.
When...
when I think about
the last century of world history
and what might prove possible
over time and generations,
I think about the school in Gujranwala
rather more than I think
about Winchester College.
A punchline would feel distasteful.
Right?
Obviously, I wasn't alive at the time,
but I reckon the way I feel's
basically how a lot of women felt
about Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
You don't need to agree with someone's
politics in order to acknowledge
that someone walking through the door
means something in and of itself,
and that's the only way
you pave the pathway for others to follow.
And you can't deny that it works.
You can't deny that it... Listen.
We've now had enough
white-lady prime ministers
that they're allowed to be instantly sh*t!
That is a staggering achievement
for equality in this country.
Are you kidding me?
Maggie and Theresa walked
so Liz could fly.
Liz Truss, actually very important from
a representational standpoint as well.
Uh, I mean that entirely sincerely too.
Think about how many prime ministers
there must've been
over however long it's been.
Did you know that Liz Truss is the first
who just went
to a regular comprehensive school?
Isn't that mad, right?
Like, 94% of children
go to a regular comprehensive school.
I went to a regular comprehensive school.
I believe 94% of prime ministers should
go to a regular comprehensive school.
Admittedly, she wasn't
a great advert for us. Right?
"I may not agree with her politics, but..."
In case you're trying to square the circle
of the educational background
and the accent you're currently enjoying...
Uh, well, uh...
What ended up happening there was
I went to my local comp
in Wembley, North West London.
I had a wonderful time there,
but it did have a few police vans outside
to stop us murdering each other.
Very thoughtful of them.
Subsequent to that, I ended up going
to the University of Cambridge,
so I became functionally bilingual
in both posh boy and roadman.
Uh, uh...
A few years ago,
I was doing a TV record in Glasgow,
and afterwards, I was having a cigarette
with my friend the comedian Jamali Maddix.
I was there with Jamali,
smoking, making small talk.
He went, "You went private school, yeah?"
I'm like, "Oh no, I didn't." "What?"
So I talked him through
a few basic facts about my childhood,
and he just looked at me and went,
"Hang on, bruv, are you from ends?"
"Well, Jamali,
one supposes one was."
I'm not gonna do it down.
I grew up in a wonderful place.
I went to a wonderful school.
I hate when people do that down.
I... genuinely, it was a really good school.
If you avoided g*ng violence,
cousin marriage, it was Ofsted Good.
Like, it was a great environment.
All the families, by and large like mine.
First-, second-generation immigrants.
Parents may not have had a lot to give.
What they had was the most important.
An insistence that education
is the best way onward, upward, outward.
I think if you've got 100 grand,
that's a better thing to give to a child.
And blessed with really great teachers.
I'll tell you about one of my favourites,
Miss Lewis.
Now, Miss Lewis, I think she had
previously taught at a private school.
I don't know, but she definitely knew
the extras they were given
in order to get ahead.
Maybe thought that was unfair, right?
And so she set up, off her own initiative,
like all great teachers do,
off her own bat,
she set up, for a couple of years,
an additional, optional Latin class,
of all things.
And I, as you can probably imagine,
was heavily involved.
This is what I mean about
the transformative power of education.
You could change everything
for young people in an instant.
I still remember, like it was yesterday,
the first time
I walked into that gleaming Portakabin
bestowed on us by New Labour,
and I sat down,
and I opened these textbooks
that contained these things
that I'd never even conceived of before.
I was just there being like,
"Oh my God, it's true!"
"Caecilius est in horto!"
Do you know what I mean, right?
Led to probably
my single favourite experience
of my entire time at high school,
which was one time, at the end of term,
my boys and I were gonna go cinema
'cause you get a half day.
The way that you go to the cinema,
you get the 182 from Brent Town Hall.
So we were walking to the bus stop,
and on the way to the bus stop,
there's this blind alley, right?
And a dozen guys came out
to rush us and jack us and sh*t,
until one of them just stopped
all of the others by going,
"Guys, Ahir's safe, yeah?
I know him from Latin."
I sincerely believe I am the only man
in the long history of this sceptred isle
who has ever avoided a violent mugging
because of Latin class.
Uh...
Nathaniel, gratias tibi.
It's a great environment
to grow up in, you know?
Not much cash but a lot of ambition.
I think that's a good way around
to have it, generally speaking.
And realistic ambition as well.
The families just had realistic ambitions.
The sort of ambition
every parent should be able to rely on.
The idea that if everyone
does their bit, works hard,
the next generation might have it
a bit easier than the previous one did.
That is a reasonable ambition.
Parents should be able to rely
on that coming true for their children.
Right, now this is not
an unreasonable ambition.
I know all about unreasonable ambition.
You don't need to tell me about...
I remember once, when I was at uni,
entirely unironically telling my mate Ali
that by the time I was in my thirties,
I wanted to be GQ magazine's
World's Best Dressed Man.
Right? I am now in my thirties
and will settle for "Dressed Man".
And that's a stretch most days.
Listen, we all know, fundamentally,
that any sort of vision of progress
has to take into account
generational investment.
I think that the part that we've forgotten
is that the flip side of that coin
has always been generational sacrifice.
Now, I might not know much
about generational investment yet,
but I feel like, through example,
I at least know something
about generational sacrifice
because every day after primary school,
I would go to my grandparents' house
in Alperton, North West London,
and I would see generational sacrifice
continuing to write itself
on the faces of Nanaji and Nanima.
Now, quick note on language.
I speak another language.
It's called Gujarati.
"Nanaji" just means your mum's dad.
You have different words
for both sides of the family.
So maternal grandfather, that's nanaji.
As you can imagine,
I write a lot of stuff on my computer.
My computer refuses to accept
the existence of the word "nanaji"
and will insist on autocorrecting it
every time to the word "Navajo".
Which has led to three instances
where I, alone at home,
have yelled at a computer screen,
"Wrong sort of Indian!"
Now, Nanaji was
the first member of my family
to arrive in this country
when he was in his twenties in 1964.
He is probably the reason
that I was born here in the first place.
He is the reason for so much.
Even though he died a fair while ago now,
he's probably the largest part
of the reason
why I ended up sounding like this, right?
When he was eventually reunited with
his wife and children in this country,
he said to the children,
including my mother,
"Listen, when you're outside,
you're not allowed to speak
to one another in Gujarati any more."
"You live somewhere called England now,
so you need to learn how to speak
like proper little Englishmen and women."
"And then if you learn how to do that,
maybe one day,
they'll learn how to accept you."
And it sounds kind of weird
to our contemporary ears,
but this was a very commonplace thing
in the '60s and '70s.
A sort of, like, vocal version
of dressing for the job you want.
You ever heard that phrase, right?
And this has been entirely useless for me,
but, like, my uncle is a doctor.
Can you imagine if your doctor
looked and sounded like me?
You'd be f*cking thrilled.
Imagine that,
he's doing the ward rounds, just like,
"Oh, good morning.
How are we feeling today?"
You're thinking, "This m*therf*cker's
gonna cure me in two hours."
"Make lunch plans!"
Now, Nanaji could never integrate
in that way himself,
so I think that his way of doing it
was that he worked a succession
of almost comically English jobs, right?
So for the most part of his career,
until he retired, he worked at John Lewis.
Worked on the shop floor,
selling curtains, fabrics
'cause it's what he knew
from the textile factories back in India.
That's probably the most English place
anyone could possibly work.
You're not gonna get
a more English place to work
than the John Lewis Partnership.
Unless the job you had before that
was conductor on the big, red bus!
"Fair play. That's the most English place
anyone could possibly work."
"You can't hit us with a more English
workplace than the big, red bus."
Unless the first job you had
in this country
was literally at the baked-bean factory!
It's where it all started.
Baked-bean factory in Bradford.
1964, baby.
Came over here. Work on those beans.
Now, uh, crucially,
he did not want to, uh, right?
By that stage,
been married for just under a decade.
Had three children.
Had friends.
Enjoyed his work in the textile factory.
Thought he might be able
to work his way up and everything.
Very little interest
in the United Kingdom.
Hitherto no interest in beans, right?
But, um...
It was my grandmother who pushed this.
Like, Nani, quite understandably,
was like, "Listen, just..."
India at the time
is just poorer and more violent
than anyone with the dumb luck
of having been born in this country
can remotely conceive of.
And so she, quite understandably,
was like, "Listen,
these children aren't gonna have
the life we wanna give them over here,
but they're taking people in England."
"So I need you to go over there.
You just work it out, right?"
"I'll stay here with the children.
You send money back to us."
"When you've saved up enough,
we'll come join you."
"All right. Cool. See you later. Bye." Uh...
He just did it,
like, pretty soon thereafter. Just went...
Like, listen, I like to think
that I'm gonna be a pretty, sort of,
accepting, thoughtful,
50-50 type of husband, right?
However, if, just under a decade from now,
my wife is to tell me that I must leave
her and our three children
to move to a different continent
with no guarantee
of when I would see them again,
no way of communicating with them,
no guarantee if any of it
was going to work out
and no guarantee
of my own personal safety,
that would not be
the end of the conversation.
Right?
However, of course, for Nanaji, it was.
How could it not be?
That's your dharma.
That's your duty. You have to do it.
It's your duty to your family, right?
So he came over, not entirely on his own.
Came with a couple of other guys
who did the same, left the wives and kids.
But they didn't really see each other
that much for a few years
'cause they ran a system
called the eight-eight-eight, right?
The eight-eight-eight is a system whereby,
as mathematicians in the room can confirm,
if three men each have two jobs,
the shifts of which are eight hours long,
and you time the shift patterns correctly
and work seven days a week,
you only need to rent one bed in one room
because one of you can be asleep
at any given time
while the other two are at work.
One guy finishes his second shift,
comes back, hits you awake,
you go off to your first one,
he falls asleep.
Do that again and again.
Saves two-thirds on the rent.
That's more that you can send
to the wives and kids in India.
And that's the largest expense, isn't it?
What's the second-largest expense?
Probably food.
But food, taken care of.
'Cause at the baked-bean factory,
they give you a tin of beans.
Protein. Very important.
For the second meal of the day,
they had a big sack of rice,
and they'd have some boiled rice in a pot.
Apart from Sundays, obviously,
because Sunday is treat day,
so the boiled rice
contained an onion, right?
Some of you are probably thinking,
"Surely, even in 1964, onions are cheap."
"Anyone could have onions
whenever they wanted."
From what you have heard so far
about my nanima,
do you believe she is the sort of woman
who would have tolerated
the profligacy
of a seven-a-week onion habit?
It's what you needed to do.
It's what they needed you to do,
so it's what you did.
Eight-eight-eight, 24-7, 365.
Five.
Five years. He didn't see
his wife or children for five years.
Imagine that.
It's not like, "At least I've got
a good data plan" or something like that.
Forget about calling.
That was never gonna happen.
Letters? Couple of letters a year.
Each time you write one,
you feel a bit closer.
Every time you buy a stamp,
you're driving them further away.
To the extent
that my mum's first memory in this country
is Heathrow Airport, 1969.
Her, her brother and sister
all sort of hid behind their mum
because they were just like,
"Who's this man?" Right?
"Who's this big man?" Right?
Just like, "Why's he smiling at me?"
"Why's he got these tears in his eyes?"
"I guess he looks like that photograph
that Mummy cries over sometimes
if anyone ever hums that song, you know?"
I think about that a lot too, right?
Imagine that.
Trying to raise three children on your own
for five years,
occasionally just crying
over a single photograph
and a handful of letters.
Should've cried over a lime.
She'd have made some money.
Family reunited in 1969,
the year after
a very prominent Conservative politician
got on a soapbox in Birmingham and said,
"We must be mad, literally mad,
to be permitting
the annual inflow of dependents,
who are, for the most part,
the material of the future growth
of the immigrant-descended population."
"It is like watching a nation
busily engaged in heaping up
its own funeral pyre."
Now, Mr Powell was correct
about one thing
in that that little girl
hidden behind the sari
did become part of the material
of the future growth
of the immigrant-descended population.
Because that's quite a mouthful,
my sister and I tend to go with "Mum".
Imagine that.
Bringing your wife and kids into that
the year after Rivers of Blood,
when you've been here on your own
since '64,
the same year as the Smethwick campaign.
Right? It's f*cking grim.
Right, just like the violence,
the aggression, that goes without saying.
It's also...
It's always the more insidious stuff
that cuts the deepest, yeah?
The thing, I suppose, like, nowadays,
we acknowledge as having broken him
was that he was eventually, uh,
accused of quite serious theft
from the workplace, uh, which was, like...
Suspended and investigated for ages.
Entirely cleared.
He'd obviously not done it.
But it didn't take a genius to work out
eventually when you hear these stories,
that it all starts with a couple of guys
at the place being like,
"Who do you reckon
they're gonna believe, eh?"
Imagine what that does to you.
Like, your dignity and stuff.
You have to do it again though. Tomorrow.
You have to get up,
brave face, for the kids.
For the kids.
It's not like the kids have it any easier.
There has been so much more progress
in the last 20 years in this country
than there was in the 40 that preceded it,
and I feel very comfortable saying that
because I went to exactly the same
high school as my mum and my uncle.
My abiding memory of that school
is a funny story about the time
when I didn't get mugged
'cause of Latin. Ha-ha-ha.
My uncle's abiding memory of that school
is the people who would flick
lit cigarettes at him every day
when he walked to and from it.
My mum's abiding memory of that school
sticks with her to this day
because every time
she wants to eat something,
she has to change her clothes entirely,
cook, eat,
change her clothes entirely again.
No matter how many times I tell her
that the smell of spices hitting hot oil
is the most beautiful smell in the world,
all she hears is a decade of children
telling her how much she stank.
And he died in 2002,
so he died only remembering the sh*t bit,
and he wasn't old,
so if he'd just hung on,
he would have seen how quickly
it was going to get so different.
You could have at least seen
a bit of that before you left.
Right, in 2016,
I'm on a train, reading a newspaper.
Sorry, mate. A newspaper. Right, um...
Imagine, like, a solid tweet.
Right, and... and...
On a train, reading a newspaper,
and it's the day before
the mayoral election in London,
and there's this big feature article,
uh, where basically Sadiq Uncle
is walking around the city,
meeting the various voters
and talking to them.
In the feature, there's this one guy.
I've forgotten his name.
It was a West African name, I think.
He's there with his five-year-old son,
and he says to him, "Son,
I want you to shake this man's hand."
"This is Mr Khan."
"Mr Khan is going to be
the next mayor of London."
And in that moment of reading that, like,
my hands stopped working,
and the paper fell from my hands,
and the tears fell from my eyes
as I thought about the fact that he died
in a society where the sentence,
"This is Mr Khan. Mr Khan is going to be
the next mayor of London,"
was completely impossible, right?
And yet 14 years later,
it had become totally inevitable.
So what would he have made of witnessing
the change in society necessary
to make that happen
and landing on that sentence
in that paper?
What would he have made
of reading a sentence like that?
What would he have made
of reading the words,
"This is Mr Khan. Mr Khan is going to be
the next mayor of London"?
Probably not much.
I don't think he really liked Muslims.
"I may not agree with his politics, but..."
And that's how I felt
Diwali before last, you know?
Lit my divo, I went outside.
I went back into the kitchen,
and I poured a little glass of whisky,
and I said,
"You finding today interesting, eh?"
It's, like,
obviously, problems still exist.
None of this is to negate
any of the problems
that we're all too aware of, right?
But at the same time,
pretending that the sort of stuff
that I have and have had to contend with
is in any way comparable to the sort
of things that they had to deal with
feels genuinely offensive to me.
'Cause this was the generation
that never talked about it
and so never had it acknowledged,
and it's worth acknowledging.
'Cause they're the ones
who changed so much
to make so much of what happens
now possible, right? I'm not an idiot.
I wander around doing this for a living,
all around the country.
Occasionally, people shout
ignorant sh*t at me in the street.
Like, I'm not oblivious to that.
And listen, my wife is a white Irish lady.
Sometimes the two of us are going
about our business, out and about,
and people see us together.
They don't like that too much.
They make their opinions known.
They're all so f*ck' old, right?
So old. Like, proper fossils, and...
When I was a teenager, it would really...
Like, I'd be ready to fight,
and now a part of my brain
just can't help but think,
"F... I think maybe you lost," right?
No, not... Lost isn't correct
'cause it's not like
society's a football match
where someone blows the whistle
and we decide what the result's been.
But at the very least, I can acknowledge
that I'm not the one who scored the goals.
I'm a sub.
They're the ones who scored the goals.
They scored the goals
and ran straight back to the net
and pulled it back to the halfway line
'cause they knew that no matter how hard
they were trying every single day,
they were still, 1969, two down, right?
And is the point of my generation
one more not only of maintenance
but also trying not to lose grip
on this extraordinarily fragile thing
that exists around us?
It's worth acknowledging
how fragile this thing is, right,
because you see people, young people,
trying, once again, to sow,
sort of, any sorts of division
in this society we're trying to build.
And you just think,
"What the f*ck are you doing?"
"What are you doing?"
Surely, the point...
If the point is anything,
the point is to create a society
in which, one day,
everyone's children
get to go without saying.
I think that you have to be
staggeringly naive
to believe that that's possible,
and I refuse to be anything else.
It's so easy to despair, right?
Despair is the easiest position to have.
It's definitely my default.
It just turns out that despair
is a deeply unproductive emotion.
Right? Try something else. Yeah?
My wife's way better than me at this.
Like, she's just, generally speaking,
quite stable and well adjusted.
I used to think that she was
some sort of superhero or something.
Turned out it's because she has absolutely
no social-media presence whatsoever.
Uses the internet sparingly
if necessary for work.
If we were all slightly more like her,
we'd all be slightly less f*cking insane.
By the way, no one's changed their names.
There's no Mrs Shah to this story.
Fortunately for all of us,
in Irish, her name means
"prost*tute Queen".
Didn't even take five weeks, not really.
There was a point, one week,
stood opposite her in the kitchen,
and just all of a sudden,
it's like the trailers stopped.
Like all life up to that point
had revealed itself to be the trailers,
and all of a sudden, every atom
of the world outside of the two of us
was whispering in unison,
"Shh-shh-shh-shh-shh-shh-shh. Shh."
"The picture's about to start."
And now I get to see how it goes.
That's it.
I mean, the ending's gonna suck.
Right. I'm not gonna know
too much about it though.
100% gonna die first. Get in!
Love it. Are you kidding me?
Listen. It's like... She's really like,
"Oh no, we shouldn't
have processed food in the house."
And all I want to do in my life
is f*ck a Chicago Town pizza.
While chain-smoking
and doing lines of salt.
It's nice to feel like you've had
one of your last beginnings. Yeah?
Frees you up to think
about where things end up.
It's the interesting thing
with love, right?
Love, the way that it begins, begins
in as many ways as there are people.
If we were ever to have a conversation,
and you said to me,
"Ahir, can I just check,
were you in love on your wedding day?"
Wouldn't that be a ridiculous question?
You'd never ask.
'Cause the answer's obviously yes, right?
What I find fascinating is that,
if you were ever to meet my grandmother,
and you were to say, "Ramila, can I check,
on your wedding day, were you in love?"
It would be an equally ridiculous question
'cause the answer would obviously be no.
Of course she wasn't. Right?
There she was, little more than a girl,
sat opposite little more than a boy.
Total strangers, functionally.
Of course she didn't love that boy. Right?
And yet it began. It began, right?
Wild.
Did she love the boy she was sat opposite
on her wedding day?
Of course she didn't, right?
Did she love the young man
just under a decade later,
who was willing to move continents
because he knew
that's what the people who relied on him
needed from him in that moment?
Of course she loved that man.
She loved that man for the next five years
as she held up her end
looking after three children,
while occasionally taking a moment to cry
over a photograph
and a handful of letters.
Of course she loved that man.
She loved that man
in Heathrow Airport, 1969,
the photograph made flesh once more
as those three children
hid behind her sari
because they barely recognised the man
who had done so much for them.
Of course she loved that man.
She loved that man as she took his hand
and walked forward together into a society
infinitely more hostile than the one
that has been bequeathed to me
as a direct result of their actions.
She loved that man
as they danced together,
shielding one another from as many
slings and arrows as humanly possible.
For the next decades until his end,
she loved that man.
She loved that man in 2002
and well past that,
as you will know if you go
to a living room
in Alperton, North West London,
and see a photograph on the wall
with a fresh garland of flowers
that you pray to when you visit.
Of course she loves that man.
That's where it ends up.
Nanaji died in 2002,
a week after his birthday.
He'd just turned 69. Oi!
He'd brought a slightly hastened end
onto himself, really, uh...
Basically, when he retired,
he wanted to spend
as much time in India as humanly possible,
but his lungs had been f*cked
since his twenties
'cause of the fibres in the air
in the textile mills.
The place in India
my family are historically from,
a city called Ahmedabad,
it's incredibly polluted.
Makes Central London
look like the f*cking Peak District.
And so he would go over there
and come back weaker, diminished.
And he came back,
and after the second trip,
his grown-up children had to
get him sat down in his own living room,
and my mum had to say to her own dad,
"You are k*lling yourself." Right?
"That's what's happening here.
That's what's... It's perfectly clear."
"You go there. You come back.
You're weaker. You're smaller."
"You're more diminished."
"And can you not see
what is happening to you?"
"It's not even about seeing.
Akshay is a doctor."
"He can hear what is happening
based on your breath and diagnose you."
"Do you not feel what is happening?"
"So here's the thing. You've had your fun.
You've had two trips."
"But now you stay over here, right?"
"'Cause we love you very much,
so we wanna keep you around."
"That's how we're all
gonna look after one another."
"So you've had your fun,
but you're not allowed to go any more."
"Here you are. Good. Yes."
And he had to look at three adult children
and say, "No."
"I never wanted any of this.
Right, I never wanted any..."
"Like, my entire life, it turns out,
has just been this means to an end,
and that's fine.
It's fine because you are the end."
"So if I had to do it again, I would,
with a snap of the fingers and a smile
on my face, I would do it again."
"But can you not understand
that I just need this at my end?"
"I can feel it far more
than you can see it, or he can hear it."
"Do you not understand I don't care?"
"I don't care
because when I go over there,
no one looks at me like I'm any different
or yells at me
or spits at me like I'm any different
because I'm not any different."
"When I go over there, I am a normal guy."
"I have been a normal guy
since the day I was born."
"I just haven't felt like it in so long."
"You don't understand
that when I'm over there,
I get to go without saying,
and I haven't gone without saying
since nineteen sixty-f*cking-four."
He used to run off the plane
as quickly as possible,
sprint across the tarmac
as quick as f*cked lungs would carry him,
and go to the first part of the airport
that wasn't paved over,
fall to his knees and just start digging
fistfuls of earth with his bare hands.
He would dig up the earth,
and he would put it in his mouth.
Can you imagine? Dig the earth and put...
'Cause you miss a land so much
that you need to dig it
and put it in your mouth.
But you had to leave, you had to leave
because that's what they needed,
and if they needed it,
it's what you had to do.
He would dig the earth
and put it in his mouth.
It can't have helped.
A third and final trip
to the only place
on the face of this earth
that would do a normal guy
the basic decency
of getting to go without saying.
And it k*lled him.
That's how much
every human being wants that.
You need a pretty damn good reason
not to give it to them.
When he did die,
he died in this country, in a hospital.
D'you remember? "Hospital".
And my mother was next to him, sat down.
He was in a bed, not speaking any more.
It was just the beeps, you know?
Most of us have heard the beeps.
And a nurse came by, saw my mum, and said,
"Oh, you must be Mr Vaishnaw's daughter."
She said, "Yes, I am."
And the nurse said, "Well, listen,
I'm new to the ward,
so I didn't get a chance to speak to him,
but I've spoken
to some of the other nurses who did,
and they said he was a good man."
And my mother squeezed the hand
of a man she had barely recognised
in Heathrow Airport in 1969
and said, "He was the best of men."
And the line went flat.
And if Nanaji were capable of hearing
in that moment,
then the very last thing
he heard on this earth
was the little girl it had all been for
saying that he was the best of men.
And, like, objectively, he wasn't.
Do you know what I mean?
Not a baddie, but just, you know,
a normal, complex, flawed human being
like absolutely everyone in this room.
And probably we could give one another
a bit more of a break
than we currently have
the appetite for, I suppose. Yeah?
But for someone, for someone,
which it turns out
is the only way that you can be,
of course he was.
He was the best of people for someone.
He did what they needed from him
when they needed it from him.
He did the best that he could
for the people he loved.
If you can do that, then you can be
the best of people for someone.
If you can do the best you can for
the people you love and who rely on you,
then you damn well
get to go without saying, in my book.
It is not that I have currently
had some sort of grand revelation
that sacrifice is somehow more impressive
or important than achievement.
The truth is what the truth always was
in the first place,
which is that the sacrifice
is the achievement,
and with that in mind,
I know full well that till my end,
Krishnadas Vaishnaw will remain
the most impressive man I will ever meet.
I have wanted to do this
since January 1998,
sat on the floor
of my grandparents' living room
in Alperton, North West London,
listening to Nanaji and Nanima laugh
at episode one of Goodness Gracious Me.
And for just over a decade,
I have had the absurd privilege
of calling it my career.
But it's not the job.
Not any more.
And it never will be again, I hope.
The job, as I understand it,
is what Nanaji understood the job to be.
He was a good husband
and a good father
for the people who needed him to be
when they needed him to be.
He was the best of men.
And I am now, in front of you,
the World's Best Dressed Man.
Because I get to stand in front of you
and tell his story
while wearing his waistcoat.
Because I am finally
dressed for the job I want.
And it will be
the hardest job of a lifetime.
But with you, Nanaji,
I'll be able to do it, I hope.
Sorry. "Hope..."
Thank you very much.
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Ahir Shah: Ends (2024)
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