Nish Kumar’s grandiosely titled podcast Pod Save the UK isn’t anything like as annoying as you’d expect.
Yes, his speaking voice – a high-pitched nasal gurgle – can grate a little, especially when punctuated, as it is often and loudly, with a laugh that is very obviously insincere. But I listened to the full hour without experiencing a single violent urge.
This wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. Not at all. When he was on the telly, as he was improbably for four long years fronting the BBC’s truly godawful The Mash Report, like much of the rest of the nation I found I could manage about ninety seconds of him before wanting to put my foot through the screen. Kumar, for my money, was easily the most irritating man in the British media.
So why so much more tolerable in this podcast format? I felt bewildered by it at first – until it hit me. When he was on television Kumar enraged because he seemed clearly, and deeply disingenuously, to be using what should have been a politically impartial BBC platform to force tedious left wing agitprop onto his audience, under the gossamer-thin guise of so-called satire.
But on the Pod Save the UK podcast, rather than take his audience for idiots, Kumar seems to be honest about himself and his worldview. In my experience, it’s hard not to warm to someone when they’re being honest.
‘I think I’m the most closed-minded man in Britain,’ he tells the listener early on. ‘People who know my work are pretty clear on my politics, but I think possibly it’s even more unimaginative than the worst caricature of me could imagine. I am 100 per cent a Labour voter.’
He points out his family comes from Kerala, a region of India ‘that has consistently elected Marxist representation’, and that his relatives have stood for election as communist MPs.
‘In the context of my family history, I’m basically David Cameron,’ he says cheerfully. ‘As long as I’m not living in the trees with a Maoist militia, I’m basically a neo-liberal shill… If you think I’m too left wing, it could be a lot worse.’
With this admission out of the way, we’re off. What follows is in an hour of middle-brow, hard-left conversation with co-presenter Guardian journalist Coco Khan and guests – one of whom is Labour MP Clive Lewis – about the evils of monarchy and why opponents of large-scale immigration are by and large thrashing racists, particularly if they’re Suella Braverman. It’s the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear from not terribly bright sixth formers, and will no doubt go over very well with them.
‘Honestly, if the monarchy didn’t exist, you wouldn’t invent it, would you?’ wonders Khan at one point. ‘You wouldn’t be like: “let’s get a family who earn astronomic sums and their main thing will be to waft.”’
It’s the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear from not terribly bright sixth formers, and will no doubt go over very well with them
Kumar informs us he intends to spend the day of the coronation attempting to time a bowel movement ‘for the exact moment of the Proclamation’, and points out he doesn’t consider it unreasonable that newly crowned King Charles should apologise for Britain’s historic links to slavery.
He adds: ‘I also think we were saved by the fact they’re not using the Queen Mother’s crown from the slightly odd spectacle of Rishi Sunak, a man himself of Indian descent, being the Prime Minster during a coronation at which the regent is wearing a hat with a diamond taken from his country…
‘It will be a shock to people if you’ve studied British history in Britain, that the British weren’t just cool legends in India who came back with good memories of the word “veranda”‘.
He suggests, too, Charles should begin his reign by returning the Koh-i-Noor stone to India, or ‘we flog it to start paying doctors and nurses.’ Quick as a flash, Khan replies: ‘Mate, all the doctors are Indian anyway’. Cue much laughter. How subversive.
Pod Save the UK is a British spin-off of the relatively successful Pod Save America, which describes itself as ‘a no-bullshit conversation about politics hosted by former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor’. It was created, the hosts have explained, largely in reaction to the election of President Donald Trump.
Is Kumar a surprising choice as host for the British show? Perhaps not. Clearly, he’s already famous and he possesses the desired allegiances, to left wing causes and also to reversing Brexit. But listening to him – or indeed watching him – it can be hard at times not to wonder if he doesn’t hate Britain in a way that presumably the hosts of Pod Save America don’t hate the United States. Certainly, it would be refreshing to hear him talk occasionally about what he likes about the United Kingdom.
He also doesn’t bother to put forward any ideas as alternatives to the status quo he so vehemently criticises. There’s a lengthy segment of the podcast, for example, during which politicians who oppose illegal immigration are criticised as racist – ‘I think the suggestion that there are cultures that are incompatible with British values is very, very serious, and is essentially dog whistle racism’, he states unequivocally – but at no point does he advance any argument for why large-scale immigration might ultimately be good for the United Kingdom. Perhaps he feels it’s so obvious as not to require explanation.
Anyway, all this is perhaps to take too seriously what isn’t meant to be taken terribly seriously. There’s a demographic of people that will always enjoy this kind of fare, and why deny them it? Besides, the good news is independent podcast Kumar is far preferable to BBC Kumar. Hurrah. Current BBC presenters, please take note.
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