Raul Kohli: Spiritual Reflections to WWE - Including Tales From The Weaselverse

Hey, Screen Rats, Couch Potatoes.

Today's guest on Television Times Podcast is the wonderful Raul Kohli.

He's a very funny guy.

He is a comedian.

He's from the northeast of England.

He lives in Newcastle, and he's also from Indian descent.

I'm only bringing that up because we talk about India a little bit because my wife became pregnant with our firstborn son while we were in India in 2013.

And I've been there a few times, and it invariably went that way, partly due to the sort of subject matter of his new full-hour show, which he will be doing in Edinburgh.

Now, Raul is a talkative gentleman.

He has a lot to say, and I don't know if this podcast was even long enough for him, so he may be back at some point.

This one was a lot of information, all of it good, but he's a really good guy, and I think you'll enjoy a lot of what he has to say.

He came out of the house.

It was one of the first, I think he was only the second person to come around the house for a face-to-face, so I'm not sure if the audio quality is exactly top notch, but I will do my best to make it sound lovely within your earlobes.

Now, to my little pre-chat.

Today, we're just gonna have a little chat about spoilers.

I think the best thing to say about this podcast is this.

If you happen to be in a bath, friend of mine, and a podcast is playing, and they're about to say something about succession, then just say, hey, Siri, Paul's podcast.

All your phones have just gone mad, haven't they?

Or something like that.

Just assume this particular podcast is going to have spoilers.

I don't want to say individually what they are at the beginning of each episode because there's loads of them, you know?

There's no point me bringing them all up.

Otherwise, you're gonna know what I'm gonna be talking about.

So just assume that this is a spoiler zone.

So if we bring up something, I always do say something like, if you haven't watched it, stop the podcast here, you know?

So we do give them during, but be forewarned.

We do talk about television.

Therefore, there will be spoilers about almost every TV show we talk about.

So it will be a massive list every week.

So I'm not gonna do that.

I do put it in the text, I think, weekly.

So, you know, but let's just say this is a spoiler show full of spoilers from start to finish.

I'll try and mention as best I can, which TV shows we're gonna be talking about in the text of the episode beforehand.

So, yeah, I mean, I hate spoilers.

I hate trailers that tell me everything that's gonna be going on in a film or a TV show before I see it.

I think it's far nicer that we live in a time where when you go to the cinema or they show something on TV, there's just a little slate that shows you that something's coming, make you be excited.

What are they called?

Teasers.

Prefer a teaser to a trailer, which they still do on Netflix if you look at the old thing.

You'll get the whole story if you watch a trailer.

If I could give you one piece of advice, no matter what show, film, whatever documentary you're watching, have a little read about it.

Don't watch trailers.

Trailers are terrible.

They don't tell you enough or they tell you everything.

I mean trailers have kind of changed over the years, but I have noticed a tendency, especially with comedies, to show you the whole goddamn thing.

Right, let's get straight into the episode with Raul Kohli.

He's got a lot to say.

You're going to hear a lot of information.

Be prepared.

Get a pen and pencil, people.

His new hour-long show is called The Full English.

That's with an I.

At the beginning, I-N-G English, and I believe that has been changed to Raul Britannia for his show in Scotland during the Edinburgh Fringe.

Details will be provided in the text of this episode.

Here we go.

Welcome to Television Times.

A new podcast with your host, me, Steve Otis Gunn.

We'll be discussing television in all its glorious forms.

From my childhood, your childhood, the last ten years, even what's on right now.

So join me as I talk to people you do know and people you don't about what scared them, what inspired them and what made them laugh and cry here on Television Times.

I've had some very interesting guests on, some great guests, if I do say so myself.

Kai is a wonderful man.

He's a lovely man, yeah.

He's outstandingly lovely, isn't he?

Yeah, yeah, really sweet.

It makes me think he's hiding something.

He's too lovely.

Why is he so lovely?

I don't think I would have moved back to Newcastle if The Stand didn't exist in its form.

Really, where did you live before you came back?

Well, I was living in your motherland, good sir.

London.

Yes, I was and then the pandemic struck and I was paying £500 a month on a rolling contract to live in a coffin and I couldn't really, like you pay for the benefits of London, you pay to be out there, to be visiting cool places, to be close to culture, you're paying so you can network and do gigs and suddenly all that was taken away from me.

They hadn't announced the grants yet, so I was like, I can get a job in Tesco or something like that, but I couldn't, like I could also do that in Newcastle on the same if not similar wage and I could just save that money instead of pissing it away on Reds.

So I moved back to my parents and then it was just a bit of a big case of every time I thought my calendar was back to normal, you'd get that dreaded notification to your phone from the BBC, Chris Witte and Boris Johnson are making an announcement at 5.30pm tonight and you knew what that meant, that meant your calendar was about to collapse, your life was going back to inside the house and you weren't allowed to do anything.

But then once things got back to normal, it's been weird, I've been trying to sort of just get back to where I was, which I have now, but I've also realised I'm older than I was.

Do you know what I mean?

You're still a very young man.

Yeah, but when you're mid 20s living in a box room and you're travelling around the globe doing comedy and making a bit of money but not much to put aside, that's great, but as I've got into my 30s, I'm like two things, I kind of want a bit more money to put to the side, but also I'm sort of, I'm not quite as comfortable sleeping on couches as I used to be, I want to spend less time travelling and more time on my own couch.

But with the shifted content, well, like we're doing now, podcasts, that kind of stuff, you can sort of be anywhere, but I'm still sort of being my old self, I'm still doing a lot of travelling and being in Newcastle is tiring me because you always have to fit in an extra day.

Like if I go to the European geeks, then there's no direct flight from Newcastle.

I've got to go to London and then, well it's usually too expensive to fly via skipper, so you get the train or the bus down to London or Manchester and then you fly from there, but then you've got to get an extra day when you get back to travel home, so you don't really get time to spend one night in your own bed.

You get home, unpack, repack, spend one night in your own bed.

It's not exactly a relaxing day of sleep and you're back up and off again.

There's someone in London, actor, with your name, I noticed.

Yeah, fuck him.

I'm sorry, can I swear on this podcast, or?

Yeah, fucking swear.

He's actually very lovely, and he's been around since before me, and has taken the fact that a comedian has turned up with his name very gracefully.

But you would take it very gracefully if more than 500,000 followed us.

It should annoy him, because, you know, as a kid, I couldn't find a keyring nor a pen with Raul or Kohli on.

You could find every other name.

But not Raul, not Kohli.

And then I got into the arts, which I believed was the whitest sport on planet Earth.

And there's somebody with my full name there.

Not only is he more successful than me, he's more handsome than me.

And he's here in all these Netflix movies.

He's genuinely very lovely.

But it's just like, I don't know, I could have made a decision.

I didn't make that decision, which was when I realized I should have changed my name entirely.

I should have been like Raul Kumar or, but I didn't do that.

And now I'm too far in.

But there's still that confusion emerging.

And you've got that great bit about it.

So, you know, not to say it on here, but so.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

It's really good.

Yeah, thank you very kindly.

So have you spent any time in Singapore?

You said you're from Singapore.

No, I have not.

My best friend is married to a Singaporean Indian woman out there.

I went to uni with him.

And I'm not saying that's the effect I have on people, but yeah.

But three of my four flatmates ended up, they were all white, but they all ended up with ethnic minorities.

Did rub people up the right way.

No, but I've never been to Singapore.

My mom's not really, she is and she isn't.

It depends how you define it.

You have a multitude of backgrounds to you and your family.

So do I.

My mom was in Singapore till she was six, because her dad was in the British military.

Now her dad was from Punjab, like my father and his family too.

And like most of my family, but he was a British peacekeeper for the British military.

And he was living in Singapore until she was six.

And then they went briefly back to their bin, which is the Hindi or Punjabi for your village.

And you've gone from Singapore, which is like quite a advanced British colonial outpost, where there's flushing toilets and brick walls to mud huts and holes in the ground again.

And I was like, oh no, I don't think I can take this.

Where in the Punjab?

We don't know.

My mother does not know.

And it annoys me.

My father's village is Dehradun.

I visited, I've had a great time there.

But I would love to visit my mom's bin, but I have no idea where it is tonight.

Does she?

She was very young.

Her dad has now passed.

I'm sure she really wanted to try.

It wasn't passed down.

Yeah, I feel like we could probably find it, but we just not made the effort really.

I'm off home after this podcast.

I'm gonna actually maybe chase that up and see if we can find out where it is so we can visit.

But yes, and then being a British soldier, he had British citizenship.

So he decided to move to Britain, take the family.

And I never really understood why he moved to Newcastle.

That's always been a question in my mind.

But I'm very happy that he did move to Newcastle.

And then my dad moved a lot later when he was about 2021.

Met my mom, they got married.

And then here I am all these years later.

Here you are with your dirty accent.

Exactly that.

That was a die hard Toon Army Supporting Family.

We had a kid already, he was getting older, and we sort of just traveled with him.

I worked in China, we were all over the place.

He was actually conceived in India.

And we-

That makes me feel so welcome.

Well, this might not make you feel welcome.

Soon as we found out that she was pregnant, we were like, we gotta get the fuck down this mountain.

You don't want to be stuck up the hill, Ace.

We were up in, where were we, McLeod Gange?

I mean, with respect to my motherland, even the cities don't really have the best healthcare systems, do you know what I mean?

I mean, it's ironic, isn't it, given how many of us are doctors, but no, if you go to India, there's so many people and there's not really the infrastructure.

Like for all of the criticism we can level at the NHS, waiting lists and so on and so forth, it is a phenomenal institution and they don't have that in India and I would definitely rather give birth to it.

Not that I ever will, at least not in this lifetime, I am a Hindu, so who knows about the next lifetime, but I would definitely rather give birth or go through any medical procedure in a UK hospital.

Yeah, I think we are very, very lucky.

So just quickly, you're in Durham, Sharla, because that's not far from my father's village, Dharidun.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Because it's right near the Tibetan border, isn't it?

Because that's where the Dalai Lama went when China occupied Tibet.

I hope he's not going to get cancelled, he's been in the news lately.

Oh, the Dalai Lama, sucking on the tongue.

Yeah.

What are you doing, DL?

Calm down, stop doing that shit.

Don't give him the fucking ammunition.

That's Chinese bots are working on that one.

But yeah, yes, no, a lot of Tibetans believe that China are probably making that a bit worse than it is.

You think so?

Yes, spreading it a bit further.

I'm finding it hard to believe he's a bad man.

It would be very difficult.

No, I've seen him.

I've seen him give a speech.

I've read his book, The Art of Happiness.

I've got one there.

What's that?

Beyond Religion and How to Heal Anger and all those ones.

Yes, and it's like his religious philosophy seems to be confirmed or seems to marry quite perfectly with Western science and beliefs around psychology and neurology, which I think, I think I really, I've found a lot of peace with Buddhism in my life and I've found a lot to follow from the Dalai Lama, but I think in the age we're living in with Twitter and social media, it was actually Malcolm X's autobiography that I read that people say I'm a terrorist, people say I'm this, that, the other.

You can't define me by one sentence.

I've said you can never define me by one action I've made in my life.

I am the sum of all my actions till the day I die and that's really stuck with me.

And I think that's something that should be a bit more prescient, a bit more important and we should probably put on billboards and on the top of Twitter and as soon as you log in to Google or Facebook or whatever in this day and age, because I think we absolutely love to murk people for one reason.

I mean, it's not great what he said to the boy, don't get me wrong.

No, it's not what he said.

But I don't think he did actually make the kid suck his tongue or anything like that.

No, it was a very bad joke.

That is quite creepy, but that's it, do you know what I mean?

It's not like, let's cancel the Dalai Lama and cancel Buddhism.

Is that when you were doing your Sanskrit podcast for the BBC?

Yes, it was.

Oh God, don't even start.

Why would you do this?

I haven't managed yet.

It's probably the thing I am the most proudest of.

Sounds brilliant.

It is a really good podcast, and it helped me learn a lot, and it helped me actually for all that.

Buddhism was where I first found, I read the Bible when I was quite young.

I was always quite spiritual.

And I found some sort of solace in what the New Testament was, but I didn't like the do or die aspect of it.

And then found quite a lot of solace in Buddhism.

I saw a talk by the Dalai Lama in Manchester.

He's been canceled.

He's gonna get canceled.

Or he should be.

Anyway, why?

I won't say because a few of my colleagues in my industry have very much faced libel lawsuits for talking about certain things he may have done in the past, but nonetheless, you can be top of the charts, you can sell loads of stand-up specials, you can sell loads of songs, but if you don't have some sort of political or spiritual opinion that pushes people and us as a species on a little bit further, in a hundred years, nobody's gonna remember you.

Nowadays, you might be Drake, you might be, 50 years ago, you might be Engelbert Humperdinck.

Engelbert Humperdinck, but nobody remembers those names now.

Nobody will remember Drake in a hundred years the way that people remember, say, Tupac Shakur, because that politics and that spiritual side is important.

I think stand-up is to make intelligent points for the common person, you know what I mean?

For people who perhaps didn't have the greatest education.

Like, you shouldn't be using big words.

I think that's a cop-out.

And the amount of times I've seen him use so many big words that I then have to look up at if the Sora's a dictionary.

And then I've gone and translated what he said and what he said means fucking nothing.

It could have been said in three words.

He's trying to sound smart and it's a complete illusion.

I've never seen anyone do it quite like you do it.

You do it in a way.

Well, it's very complimentary.

I think it's a bit excessive, but it's complimentary.

I don't very much take that.

I guess what I'm saying is, I've got to say, this is a slightly shitty way to get to the good bit, but you know when someone comes on with a guitar, my fucking heart drops, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just like the worst thing.

So if someone comes on and immediately starts talking about their ethnicity, I get that same feeling, like, oh man, it's just gonna be that.

And you're not that.

You're something very, very different, and you bring everyone with you.

And because it's maybe because it's quite a localized, northeasterly thing, you bring out something that I didn't even know I had, I forgot all about.

And so I'm part of, not the problem, but part of the kind of, huh?

When I first came to Newcastle, first came here, it was about 20 years ago, and I came at the station, and I jumped in a taxi and my gigs were in Gosforth.

I got in the taxi and I said, oh, Gosforth, please.

And the Asian guy turned around to me and, wait, were you going over there?

And I was like, what the fuck?

And I know, I have to admit to myself that I did go, I did a double take because he sounded like my granddad.

My granddad was from up around here.

And I was like, why does this young Indian guy sound like my granddad?

But of course he would.

And for some reason, I never ever thought about it.

Do you know what I mean?

It never occurred to me, but it was just like a kind of, huh.

And I know I had it before, a year before I was in New Zealand traveling.

I was changing my ticket and this girl came up and looked like she was before me.

So I was like, oh, you go ahead.

Small Chinese girl walked up to the counter, fucking strongest Glaswegian accent we've ever heard in your life.

Now, maybe it's because how she looks and where I am, I'm not expecting that.

Absolutely.

But what is that?

Is that bad?

Is that good?

No, it's not bad.

And I'm trying, I'm really, cause I used then, I used the, this all started because when I started doing stand, firstly at university, people were quite taken aback, but there was never really a racial element, but there was just like this Geordie's fucking mental.

Yeah.

And then when I started doing stand up down south, I particularly found that firstly, like even when I did it in the middle of the country, your Sheffields, your Manchester's, they were quite like, oh Geordie like is kind of likable.

Cause he's Geordie.

But then when I started doing it down south, people would like, I'd just say, hello, my name is Raul and I'm from Newcastle.

And that wasn't a joke.

It was leading into that majority Indian man, if you'd rather a Newcastle brown male, which is obviously a pun on the beer.

But before I'd got to that bit, I'd say, hello, I'm Raul from Newcastle.

And the audience would just start laughing.

Oh really?

And I was like, what is happening here?

And they were doing what you were doing, they're like, what?

Yeah, I know.

An Indian from the North East to England?

Of course, it's a student's name.

Myself, before I was a stand up, I talk about this in my set, that leads to a joke about being a Chinese scouser.

That is 100% true and it caught me off guard.

I say I met a black guy called Babatunde from Cornwall.

I've not egged that up, but it was a black guy from Bristol named Jamal, but he did have Hagrid's accent.

That threw me off guard.

The first time I didn't meet him, but I saw a video of like one of the members of the Bad Boy Chilla Crew who are a Bradford rap group and they look as white as day and they look kind of like the Chavs, I'll break in your house, this kind of stuff.

Robin crops a weed.

That's their whole ethos within their music.

I remember just seeing a couple of them and just thinking they have a tinge of Indian accents and this is really confusing me.

They have a stronger accent than me.

They have a little bit of like, they sound more like they're raised by my dad than I do.

And that is obviously from the high levels of Indian and particularly Pakistani more so, Punjabi immigration to Bradford.

But that's the country we're living in now.

And I think it's a wonderful, wonderful thing to be celebrated.

But at first glance it is, jarring might be too strong a word because jarring is negative, isn't it?

But like it does catch your guard.

The front of your head isn't used to it.

I mean, you're trying to get, maybe yet, the front of your head has never seen it, never mind the back of your head.

And when you're trying to sort of marry those two, when you're seeing something for the first time, that can be sometimes where comedy is, but it's also just, it's shock, isn't it?

Well, it shocks you when you have these reactions.

Like I grew up in Ireland for five years of my childhood.

And I have to tell you, it's the whitest place I've ever been in my life, right?

Everyone was white.

There was no one, I swear to fuck, within 50 miles that didn't look like me.

And now when I watch like comedy shows, like what are they called?

Young Offenders.

And there's like a black girl in it with a really strong Irish accent.

And I love it, I love it, it's fantastic.

But like, I'm always amazed when people's faces change with accent, do you know what I mean?

Absolutely, yeah, yeah.

And when people start speaking a certain way, their faces change.

So that girl looks Irish, right?

She is an Irish girl, you can see it in her face, Scottish people's mouths.

And it's interesting you say that because I have been trying to work someone out, which I never have, and you've just given me the key there.

Is when I go to India, they know I'm British.

Before I open my mouth, they just see my face and they're like, my friend, nice price, let me sell you this, let me sell you that.

And I'm like, how the fuck do you know?

Like I'm brown, like as soon as I, is it the clothes I'm wearing?

I have no idea how you're working this out that quickly.

What is going on here?

But I think, yeah, like-

It's the way you carry yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just a different, you just look different.

I've had this from Indian friends, literally before I ever went to India, the first time I went, a friend of mine was telling me all this stuff.

And he actually told me like, two things are gonna happen to you when you're in India the first time.

He goes, you're gonna shit yourself.

Someone's gonna take a shit in front of you.

I was like, that is not gonna happen, mate.

It happened within two fucking days.

I shot myself immediately.

Yeah, you should have avoided the salad, mate.

But one thing I noticed about Indy when I went, it really just caught me off guard, like completely like, because when I went, I was six, and the three things that caught me off guard was Swastika is everywhere.

Yeah, me too.

It looks like Hit the One, The War.

Have you ever seen, it looks like a set from The Man in the High Castle.

I was like, oh my God, I need to start praying on my woo.

Get out of this universe.

Oh my days, what's happened?

I just got on a flight, I've gone through half of Lost, and The Man in the High Castle, and I've ended up here.

This is a nightmare.

Number two, men hold hands platonically.

That confused me.

And number three, ginger Indians.

Yes.

They put the henna in their hair and their beards, and they have like, India's the only country where people choose to be ginger.

So like, as a six year old child, I was there, I was like, oh my God, what is happening here?

This country's been taken over by gay ginger Nazis.

I've no idea what's happening here.

Little did you know you could pop in and get a free meal.

Well, no, so we were talking about it before we sort of did the sidetracked with things that I'm sure you've cut from the podcast now.

It's about five minutes long.

Yeah, so we're talking about, I did comic Sanskrit.

That was really good.

It was probably the bit of work I'm proudest of.

It was a six-part series on sort of me as a Westerner, sort of being raised without really much knowledge on Hinduism, but being raised sort of Hindu, trying to figure out what actually is this religion?

What are the tenets?

What are the key sort of principles?

Then looking at it from a Western perspective.

So we did six episodes, and each episode focused on something that was very popular in the West, but has been written about or focused on in Hindu books and in Hindu culture and by Hindu people for thousands of years.

So the first one was obviously yoga, mindfulness, meditation.

You can't, you can't.

I'm gonna get up just to show him one thing.

The yogi that we started with for a little while when we fell into that fucking Western trap.

Look at this book I've still got here from India.

We chopped it all up and put it in there.

There's lots of shamans, some of them trustworthy, others not that trustworthy.

Legitimate, yoga, it's philosophy in practice.

Me and my wife did it for a while.

That seems more legitimate than the advert where I came across when I was researching for the podcast.

Oh really?

And it was Virgin Gyms and it was like power yoga.

It was Western yoga twice.

Yeah, it was like written like, build your core strength while achieving inner peace.

Core yoga, PX 500 yoga, downward up, it's not called that.

Yeah, I think you very much missed a lot of the most important parts here, but nonetheless, there was yoga, mindfulness, meditation.

There was an episode on sex, the Kama Sutra.

And why did we write that 6,000 years ago before Jesus Christ and now we're probably like one of the most frigid nations or like one of the nations that, well not frigid, 1.5 billion of us.

But we don't want to talk about, we're very shy about sex.

It's not really as open as it is in the West.

Yeah, that's the correct word.

So there was that.

There was an episode on women.

The only major religion to have female deities.

Yeah, it's the least safe country in the world for women.

There was an episode on weed.

Shiva loved weed and Shivaratri.

Everyone drinks weed milkshakes.

When my dad told me this, this kind of blew my mind.

Even my mom rang me one day and was like, happy Shivaratri.

I was like, what does that mean?

She was like, you can get high tonight and I'm not gonna judge you.

And I was like, what?

Where does this come from mom?

The smoke and weed in the past to celebrate Shiva, if they all drink weed milkshakes from that day.

Weed grows freely on the bushes near the Ganges.

It's where the word comes from, Ganges, Ganges.

Like Jamaicans have weed.

Yeah, Jamaicans have weed because of indentured servitude from India bringing it over back during colonial times.

So weed is quite central part of the Hindu religion.

But then again, there's no central parts and there's no religion per se.

It's a westernized idea of Hinduism.

It's just Dharma, the infiniteness or the order of the universe is Dharma.

Your Dharma is that you're a podcast, you play guitar, whatever.

My Dharma is that I'm a comedian.

But it's like the natural order of things at any given moment.

Yeah.

And it's like you can pick and choose these things.

And that's why there's lots of different sects of Hinduism.

And that's why you meet Hinduists who eat meat.

Yes.

But you shouldn't eat meat.

And that was another episode where we did veganism and vegetarianism.

Yeah, I'm gonna listen to that one first actually.

Yeah, because obviously you go to India, like back in the day when I went, when I was six, you couldn't get, you went to McDonald's and you couldn't get meat.

Everything was veggie.

I loved that, because I'm vegetarian.

I've been for years.

Oh really?

So when I went to India.

You would be India, yeah.

First thing I'd miss you was the dream for you.

The Macaloo Tiki Burger.

Yeah, like I remember seeing the McRaj, which was the Big Mac.

You had the McRaj.

Yeah, I was just like, what is going on here?

Yeah, it's crazy, but it's-

It's funny that veg is the predominant because it's veg and non-veg.

So it's almost like normal food and you fuckers go down there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was probably more towards 70, 80%, but Western influence and philosophy sort of found its way to there and sort of made people less and less vegetarian.

And then the final episode was atheism because when I was Googling atheism, I found out the first school of atheism was founded within the Hindu religion.

Really?

Yeah, it was another, because I say there's different sects, there's different people who believe in different, or pray to different gods.

One thing that they all seem to teach us, which I think most religions and most people who are religiously inclined have actually missed out on is sort of be wary of the material world.

Be wary of attachment.

Don't go chasing like outside demons.

It'll just lead you down a path.

I have children and we're just trying to convince, like my eldest, he doesn't need all this tat and they're constantly wanting like more and more things.

And I'm trying to like, I guess what I'm trying to say is, how much plastic from China do we really need in the house?

That's kind of what I'm getting at.

And before you came around, I had a little 15 minute meditation to sort of calm myself before this.

So what you're saying sort of, you know, it does chime in me.

Yeah, well that is the big thing.

Most human beings forget to breathe.

Yeah, I do.

Forget to meditate, forget to just take five seconds of silence and that's like just a reset on your PC.

It's brilliant.

And it's very important.

Otherwise, that's where burnout comes from.

But bringing this back to, I suppose, my life story.

So I was there and I'd just done that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was very well received.

Yes.

I was the happiest, like the thing I produced, I was the happiest when I was like, this is banging.

I am proud of this.

I got invited to perform at the BBC Radio Music Awards.

And then that was the first thing to get canceled.

Fuck me.

And then everything else got canceled.

And then I was trapped in a four bed house with five people, kind of just losing my mind.

But I did watch some great TV.

I'm here now, I'm finally back to where I was, and living my career that I was from Newcastle instead of London or Manchester, and now I'm trying to really figure out what is the next step, what is gonna elevate me to not just scraping by and saving up pennies to really, I've got my own brand, I've got my own fans, I've got a tour or whatever.

That's sort of the next step for me.

And you're doing Edinburgh this year, right?

You're doing Night Flasers, right?

Yes, yes, I'm doing three shows at Edinburgh and my main show, the full English, Raul Britannia, as I've called it, because I feel a bit weird about taking a show called the full English to Scotland.

So I've changed to Raul Britannia in brackets, the full English.

And it's all about how I got my identity as both a Geordie, as a Englishman, as a Brit, whether I can be an Englishman, fully English, because I'm not allowed to be on the census.

I've got to be British Asian.

You can be British Asian, you can be British black.

Yeah, I don't tick those boxes anymore.

You can be white English, but you can't be...

I can't tick white English either.

I can't be English Asian.

I was after white Irish, I think.

Oh, really?

Because I don't feel English.

I never say I'm English.

I say I'm British, but I don't feel English.

English to me is like, it's that flying, isn't it?

Well, I think my show is half, it's like a modern, it's a celebration of modern England.

A lot of stuff we were talking about at the start of the show, my material.

Celebration of modern England and trying to sort of bring a bit of...

Because I don't think it's good to remove humanity from people.

I think it's good to remove pride from people.

There is white pride, right?

But I don't think that has to be synonymous with English pride.

But I think people can be proud of a lot of England's contributions to the world without necessarily glorifying colonialism.

This part of the world has contributed a lot.

I think it's like Ireland and Scotland in the sense that it has its own cultural identity.

It's contributed so much to the world, but we don't really know it.

A lot of people outside and inside sort of define themselves as binge drinkers.

And actually it's like, well, you know, we invented like the fairy light electricity.

We invented...

Trains.

Trains, we invented fairy liquid.

We invented Domestos, we invented Greggs, Brown Ale, Leucusade.

We ended slavery in the United Kingdom.

We contributed a lot to the universe and we helped build the Large Hadron Collider.

Really?

Well, that was only built because of the Higgs boson particle.

Peter Higgs was born in Newcastle to Geordie Perrin's, moved to Bristol at a very young age.

Were you keen on them turning that on, really?

We'll turn it on and see what happens.

This is one of the episodes how Newcastle put us on a parallel universe.

Isn't it terrifying?

It's the Geordie boys' fault.

Yes, Weaselverse, I don't know if you heard of that conspiracy.

A Weasel got trapped in the Large Hadron Collider in 2012 and they had to switch it off and get rid of the Weasel.

But some conspiracists have argued on Reddit that that's what's led to all these once in a lifetime events.

It's so much just the...

Oh, it's just a different claim.

This is why we've got Trump and Brexit.

Trump, Brexit, the pandemic, all these things.

New Casino had become the richest football club on planet Earth.

All of these things were because of the Weaselverse conspiracy theory.

So basically, we're in a different...

And none of this has happened and everything's fine.

And it was like the Olympics and just great stuff afterwards.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly that.

And then the Weasel got trapped.

Yeah, Pop Goes the Weasel.

I think what Game of Thrones are trying to do with Brad Stark, but they're quiet.

Really zoned it on.

Oh, we've got a TV show.

Let's hit a buzzer.

So Game of Thrones, you're a big Game of Thrones guy?

Until they fucked it, I was.

Explain.

Well, they fucked it, didn't they?

They fucked it in the ass.

Everybody who's watched Game of Thrones knows exactly what I mean.

This isn't in any way a controversial opinion.

Seasons one to six, the greatest telly you've ever seen in your life.

Season one to six was essentially that just everybody involved going, we are not your average fantasy series.

There's no fucking plot holes.

It's all very brutal.

Anyone can go.

And then season seven and eight was like, we are just your average fantasy series.

Please leave us alone.

Nobody important dies.

There's so many plot holes.

You could see from the get go if you know what you're looking for.

Or we're not the script writers.

We're not the producers.

We're the show runners.

What the fuck is a show runner?

Do you get the cups of tea or something, do you?

You're fucking idiots.

Did they change staff?

Did they change writing staff?

Well, so here's the thing is that George RR.

Martin, the book writer, he knows that.

That motherfucker knows how to tell a story.

That motherfucker, I would sit next to him in all round a campfire.

He is still alive, thank God, because I'm waiting for the winds of winter as is anyone who is a fan of the song and Vice and Fire universe.

But that motherfucker knows how to tell a story.

I mean, the TV show is amazing, but when I picked up the book, I remember I picked it up before my first Fringe Festival.

I just read a couple hundred pages, nothing much.

Like the day before, I thought I'd read like 20, 30 pages that night.

I fucking finished it within two days.

I put my whole Fringe in jeopardy.

I couldn't put the thing down, man.

I was like, oh my God, this is phenomenal.

I sort of wish I hadn't picked it up because it did take away from my work a little bit, but it is, oh my God, in terms of stories.

You're reading it right up to going on stage.

I couldn't put it down, man.

I was like, get a couple of pages in like two minutes into my actual showtime.

Oh my God, it was phenomenal.

That's taught me a lot about storytelling and he really knows how to tell a story.

And basically one to six, they had the books, the full books to, one to five, they had the full books to adapt to.

Six, they had probably what was incredibly detailed notes to adapt to, but you still start to see bits and bobs, bits of dialogue and things happening here and there where you went, that's a bit fucking stupid.

But overarchingly, as that sort, some of these narrative and loose ends were being tied up, it was so good.

The Battle of the Bastards was so good.

It was an Emmy award winning TV episode.

It was brilliant, it was beautiful.

That you were willing to ignore some of the few bits of dialogue.

Like I remember it was one from one of the Dornish Sand Snakes who said to Bronn, who's played by, I believe Robson from Robson and Jerome.

Or maybe Jerome, I don't know which is which.

Whichever one it is, but she says to him like, oh, you want a good girl, but you need a bad pussy.

And even just watching it, I was nearly wretched.

I was like, this show has so much brilliant pieces of dialogue.

I drink and I know things.

I'm a fan of bastards, cripples and broken things.

There's so many just little tidbits that's so built for the Instagram era.

That just perfect phrases that you get tattooed on you and so many people have.

And then like bits of dialogue like that start to seep in and you're like, what the fuck is going on here?

I'm a big wrestling fan.

And I always fake, all of this is fake.

What's the word?

It's not fake.

It's scripted, it's scripted.

But people say it's fake.

Well, the results are known.

Yeah, it's scripted, it's scripted.

It's scripted athleticism, essentially.

It's a choreo.

But people say it's fake.

I'm like, all this shit is fake.

Dragons don't exist, but you're deep in the Game of Thrones, but it's like, if you can make me suspend my disbelief enough, if you can sort of get on that border, particularly with your promise of what's real and what's fake, there's one particular master, Brock Lesnar, who was a UFC champion who's legitimately the hardest man in that company, John Cena.

Well, he beats the living shit out of John Cena.

I'm an uncomfortable watcher, I'm like, I'm not sure if Brock just hates John Cena and is teaching him a lesson publicly, or if this is generally the part of the script.

And that is exactly like sort of what you're going for with wrestling, it's that moment of like just the suspending of the disbelief just being kipped on the edge.

Is this real?

And you see that model in a lot of reality TV shows, you kind of go, is this real?

Is this scripted?

Is this Geordie Shaw?

Is this Kardashians?

Whatever.

But like just when they fuck up a move or when they really like the camera really fucks up and shows them throwing a punch and the guy not even being hit by hitting the floor, it's like, ah, thank you for taking me completely out of that.

Ah, this is all bollocks.

Would you think they're haunted?

It is real blood.

I know it is because sometimes they just accidentally get hit a bit too hard and they pop their lip.

But they blade, what they do is they get hit and they go down and they have a razor blade under their wristband and they cut their head.

That's how it works, yeah.

But like something like that can just take you, I can deal with dragons.

I can deal with, you know, magic and gods and this, that and the other.

But as soon as it's like ridiculous dialogue or plot holes or people surviving what in previous seasons would have clearly killed them.

Like Americans coming out of car crashes unscathed.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm just like, ah, this is, do you know what I mean?

Why, like you have to keep me engaged.

You just have to make this believable.

What was the first thing you saw on television, first character or person, that gave you the fuzzy feeling in your loins?

Definitely, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, made me like sexually attractive, I like goose bumps.

Not necessarily sexually attractive, it can often just be-

Like I'm horny.

I don't think kids get horny, but they do get like-

Oh no, because I remember mine exact one, it was red sing as well.

You got horny, straight away.

I remember the first time I ever got horny, right?

I was nine years old.

Nine?

I was watching, maybe 10, I was watching WWE Swack Down, and there was this storyline where Vince McMahon was making people kiss his ass, right?

He's the boss and he's making everybody kiss his ass, right?

This storyline sort of tails off with the rock getting revenge for everybody Vince McMahon has made kiss his ass, right?

So he starts bringing out these people one by one who've kissed Vince's ass and he's like, are you going to kiss his ass, right?

It's the first person who comes out as JR, right?

Who's the commentator, who's quite chunky old man.

And you know, he sort of pulls his pants down a little bit, nothing, right?

I'm not even, I'm still a kid.

I'm like, oh, kiss his ass, Vince, right?

And then Trish Stratus comes out as this blonde, still to this day, absolutely gorgeous woman, like model, right?

Go look at that.

Go look her up.

It's the first person I was ever sexually attracted to.

She comes out and there's this scene, it's a Saturday morning SmackDown, so it's pretty watershed.

And she goes to pull her pants down and as she pulls her pants down, the camera flicks away from her to the audience, but just this sheer suggestion of her putting her arse out and pulling her pants down, I got in a wreck, I was like, what the fuck is going down here?

Oh my God, what the hell is happening here?

And I just knew something was changing.

So straight to 10.

I went straight to the PC and I was like www.pawn.com and just destroyed the family PC with viruses.

And luckily for me, my brother knew what was happening and sort of fixed it quite quickly and was like, never do that again, but I know it's happening, your body's going through changes, don't worry.

But I have no idea, but I remember that very vividly.

So I came from nowhere, excuse the pun.

Yeah, before then I'd never looked at a girl and thought, ooh, do you know what I mean?

And then immediately I was like, what is happening?

It's nothing to do with you, see?

Nothing to do, it's biology.

I just had no idea, I was just like, oh my God, I wanna get cooties now.

It's by 12 or 13 members of the TV show Lost.

And that gave me a lot of goosebumps.

Another show with a bad ending.

And then, well, I was quite sensible.

I just cut my losses back then.

Now I feel like if I start something, I have to finish it.

But back then, I got halfway through season three, and there were these others who had penthouse apartments on the other side of the island.

I was like, what's going on here, Alcom?

They've got new builds.

This is ridiculous.

What's this guy doing in Hatches and doing numbers?

Yeah, this guy from Hatches with this weird, interesting idea of Dharma and spirituality.

Are they alive?

Are they not?

Wait, the others have just got a new build by like McKinsey on the other side of the aisle and hoop this and I just, I stopped watching that and apparently that was really good though at first.

Heroes.

Heroes was good.

Heroes was really good and it just sort of ended after season two.

I think it was a writer's strike that just sort of.

Is that what killed it?

Apparently that's what sort of, apparently what happened lost was that it was only meant to be two seasons and then it was so successful the first season that they were like, right, we want just to five seasons.

And that just ended up being padded out with all ridiculous kind of ideas.

They would never set that chance.

Yeah, some of the best characters got sort of killed off.

So that kind of really got me into box sets.

That's how it got deeply into box sets.

SpongeBob SquarePants.

This is your kids' show.

I watch back now and I'm like, whoa, it's actually quite funny for adults.

It's pretty funny, yeah.

They wrote this to balance both and that is a really hard thing to do.

It's quite druggy, I think.

They can't be sober or.

It's very sexual.

Sandy cheeks.

The chum bucket.

It's the chum bucket.

There's so many little sexual references.

Yeah.

Mr.

Krabs, that just sort of snuck in there, the Krusty Krabs.

Like they just sort of snuck in there and they're really funny.

Even Mr.

Krabs' daughter's a whale.

What happened here?

Like, and there's just so many.

I watch it, I watch it quite like stoned at uni.

You're trying to watch it literally.

I'm watching it thinking like, well, I still enjoy this.

And I did, cause it was like one moment where it was like, they're having a campfire.

And then like Patrick's like, but how can we have a campfire?

We're underwater.

Yeah, I always think about you.

I was like, that's brilliant.

That's very meta.

They saw stuff kids would maybe ignore.

I loved South Park as a kid.

Oh, you saw South Park as a kid?

Yes, and I just, I loved it.

And I was like.

How old was you when you first saw South Park?

Oh, five, six, seven.

I had all the brothers and stuff, man.

And all the cousins and they corrupted me quite badly.

You can't do that.

As a kid, I assume I was just laughing at the fart and shit jokes and the knob jokes and the stupid heads on Terrence and Philip and probably the racism as well.

And then when I watched it when I was old, I was like, hold on, this is one of the best satires I think I've ever watched in my life.

Still good.

How did I miss all of it?

And it's weird because where Family Guy and The Simpsons have just got worse with age, South Park has increasingly just responded to the times.

Did you see the Harry Meghan one?

Better and better.

I've not seen the most recent series.

Where the hell is it?

Where is it?

Comedy Central, surely still.

Is it Comedy Central?

No, they just signed some massive $900 million deal.

It's somewhere and I need to, is it Hulu?

It might be, we can check that.

It's something I don't have, I don't know that much.

The South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stein signed a $900 million deal with CBS Viacom with plans to put the show on Paramount Plus while currently it streams on HBO Max.

No, I don't, I don't do that at all.

No, I'm gonna just do that.

I was just about to say, just, I can't do it.

I've got, yes, but I need to get back on that because every episode I watch, I'm just like, you've just nailed the current times of the day.

Yeah, they kept it going.

Perfect, I know they've got a new couple of series out that I'm behind on and I need to catch up with that.

I've just started The Mandalorian.

I'm quite a fan of the Star Wars.

I like the Star Wars and the Avengers.

I just like how they look, I've got a big telly.

What do you think of Obi-Wan?

Cinematography was phenomenal.

Filming was phenomenal.

The story made no fucking sense.

It was fucking ridiculous.

How does Luke Skywalker just have no idea who Obi-Wan is?

Do you not remember that time you got chased through a fucking field by some woman and you don't know what a lightsaber is?

That didn't affect your childhood, maybe traumatize you in any way.

It made no sense.

It was just fan fiction really for fans.

It was a lot of money that Disney knew they could make.

Fair enough, they've got a brand there.

That's why they spent so much on the Star Wars brand.

But for me, I don't know.

I personally enjoyed the Mandalorian and the Boba Fett, but Boba Fett was my favorite growing up.

There is all that.

There is sort of like beyond the actual storytelling that I'm looking at where it's sort of just like, same with wrestling, same with following you guys.

There still is, it takes me back to my childhood when right and wrong and black was black and white and life wasn't quite as complicated and I didn't know what council tax was.

Yeah, it wasn't Money Heist, but it was foreign, it was Gamora.

I think it's the best TV series out there.

Maybe The Sopranos is on a par.

And that was something that took me a while to watch, but I only watched it two years ago.

Yeah, I didn't watch it that long ago.

I didn't stop, and I think it was one of the best.

I think even now, it's still got telling.

The whole episode, one of the widely regarded worst episodes of The Sopranos was Christopher.

It's when the Native Indians are protesting, and the mob attack them.

Oh, yes.

And I was like, when I'm watching it, in light of Black Lives Matter, Yeah, yeah.

and the protests that came with that, this was so on the news.

That was so predictive.

And I think some of the best satire, some of the best TV, is predictive.

Look at The Simpsons.

And that's what The Sopranos got it right.

And perhaps people watching at the time were like, oh, I want to do more mob stuff.

I don't want to see, you know, this ridiculous politics.

But they got it so right.

And just these ideas of like American culture, like the mob and interventions for addiction and seeing it's like a therapist and his feminist daughter, who's got a black boyfriend and the difficulties that come with that.

I'm like, this is so on point and this came out like 2002.

I think it was called The Crust.

That was decent, but I just like pizza.

So I just think members are like looking at pizza.

And on that insane note, which makes absolutely no sense.

Well, Raul, thanks for coming.

I feel like we could have talked for another hour and a half without any issue here.

Maybe we can come back on again and we can talk a bit more too.

Just get straight to the TV.

Straight to the TV.

I'll make a list of all the TV shows I'm watching.

We'll do another one in like nine months or so.

Sounds good to me, mum.

Thanks for coming.

Thank you very much for having me.

That was Raul Kohli, came around the house, talked to me about lots of stuff.

We finally got around to some television, took a little bit of the time, didn't it?

That's all right.

That's what happens.

Sometimes a man comes around, you give him a cup of tea or whatever, and then we chat about something completely irrelevant for a long, long time, and then finally we remember that we're supposed to talk about TV.

But I found that very interesting.

It was a great episode for me.

Did sound a little bit like a milk bottle.

Sorry about that, guys, I've tried everything with that.

It is just a sound issue on the day.

Lots of reflection.

Didn't quite pad the room out yet.

That was one of the early ones, like I said.

Now to today's outro track.

Today's outro track is a song called Om.

Now I believe this was written around the year 2000.

It contains three different ideas, heavily influenced by my trip to India in the year 1999 and recorded in early 2001.

Now this was recorded before I had any kind of decent computer or laptop that you would think of in your mind.

It was recorded using an Atari from the, I want to say early 90s running something called Cubase, which was like one megabyte.

I think the whole machine was one megabyte.

That's all I remember.

Doesn't have to get all geeky.

And the track was put together on a floppy disc, at least the rhythm track and then everything else played in to some kind of hard disc recorder that I had.

I don't even remember what I recorded it on, but it was pretty loose and it wasn't great.

And I've tried to clean it up a bit, but we were talking about India a lot.

And I was thinking about a song I might have written that was influenced by that.

And I guess it's my basher, a sort of cooler shaker kind of vibe, even though it was nothing like their style at all, but yoga-ish, if anything.

Cool.

So this is the Om Trilogy, I think is its full title.

But look, this was never on any proper, proper albums.

This was just a home record in 2001, so bear with, and have some sympathy for what I was trying to achieve.

Well, that was that.

I don't know what I can say about that.

I have tried yoga many, many times, been to India a number of times and I've attempted to take all that in.

But unfortunately, I have a real severe fear of religion and sects.

And after a little while, it all gets a little like that and I run away.

But I hope you enjoyed that song at least and come back next week and follow us on all the places where podcasts live and leave a review.

Even if you say it's shit, please don't say it's shit.

Say it's good, because it is, isn't it?

See you next time on Television Times.