Sanjeev Bhaskar: Why race is a laughing matter

There are three of us in this interview; Sanjeev Bhaskar, Kim from BBC publicity, and me. We are in Bhaskar's dressing-room, in the bowels of Television Centre. Unfortunately there are only two chairs. "I'll sit on the floor," says Bhaskar. "I'm Indian. Sitting on the floor is my heritage."

In fact, Bhaskar grew up in Hounslow, Middlesex, where racial-identity issues were muddied by the prejudice he felt from Asians as well as whites. "I got it from the white kids for obvious reasons, but also from Asian kids who said I should nail my colours to the mast. They were saying, 'You can't have those white friends' and I was like, 'You're kidding, I've known these guys since I was six.' "

"At the time, the late Seventies, the Southall riots were kicking off and the National Front were outside our school recruiting. Funnily enough, the only person they recruited was this Sikh kid. We convinced him that their policy of deportation was free of charge, so he went over to a guy with a clipboard, and said, 'You want to send us home, don't you?' The guy went 'yeah', so this Sikh kid signed and wandered off. There was complete shock on the NF guy's face. Of course, for the rest of us, being sent home meant something to do with the 110 bus. We were like, 'You're paying for us to go home? But it only costs 15p.' "

In conversation, as in the television sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, and his chat show The Kumars at No 42, Bhaskar eloquently and relentlessly extracts comedy from his ethnic background.

"The Kumars," he tells me, "has gone down well in Australia. But there was a comment on an internet chat site there saying [cue perfect Aussie accent], 'This is a load of rubbish. We should be past a time when we have to use race as a basis for humour.' And I thought well, thanks. That pretty much leaves me out in the cold. If I do a drama based on the Asian community, will you say we should be past using race as a basis for drama?"

Ann Winterton MP, I point out, also has a tendency to use race as a basis for humour. Was Bhaskar offended by her now-notorious joke? He smiles. "It was offensive to me because it was such a crap joke," he says.

Is there then, such a thing as a good racist joke? "I think there are good jokes based on race. Let me tell you about this uncle of mine, who came over from India at the same time as my dad. This uncle, incidentally, had a habit of starting to tell what sounded like a funny story, then suddenly taking a detour in the middle. I remember him saying [cue perfect Indian accent], 'It reminds me of a lady who lived in my village in India. She had one very small ear and one huge ear; one tiny ear on this side, one huge ear on this side. And she got leukaemia and died. It was very tragic.' "

The tragedy notwithstanding, Kim and I are laughing. Bhaskar is laughing too. "There was another one," he says. "What was the other one? Oh yes. He said, 'There was a man in my village with a beautiful singing voice. But he used to wear this ridiculous hat. The hat was too small for his head. Hit by a train. Killed instantly.'

"Anyway, this same uncle once said, 'Black people make natural criminals.' My sister and I said, 'Oh, come on, you can't say that.' And he said, 'I'm not saying it as a judgmental thing. It's just that most robberies take place at night, and they're like shadows. They're all cut out to be criminals.' I said, 'That's ridiculous. What about Nelson Mandela?' And my uncle said, 'Do you know how long he spent in prison?' I said, 'Yeah, but it wasn't for nicking a stereo.' "

"Now there's a funny story, based on race, but not denigrating anyone other than that individual." Getting back to Ann Winterton, though, if a joke makes people laugh, as reportedly hers did, does that not validate it as a joke?

Like a sage, his sagacity emphasised by his cross-legged position at my feet, Bhaskar answers the question indirectly.

"I once took part in a debate on a programme called The People's Parliament," he says. "The question was, should Bernard Manning be banned? Darcus Howe argued for, and I argued against. My argument was that if Bernard Manning incites racial hatred, he must take responsibility, and we as a society must take responsibility, but you don't deal with it by banning the joke. In Ann Winterton's case, she told a joke, it was reported, she's now out of a job. That's how society runs when it's working. As a cycle that's kind of complete."

Bhaskar has had 38 years to formulate his views on racism and comedy. As a child, he says, at a school where 30 per cent of the pupils were Asian, he gauged how offensive a television programme was by the extent and nature of the name-calling in the playground the next day.

Examine Till Death Us Do Part, and find it to be anti-racist, but that's not where the dust settled. To lots of people, Alf Garnett seemed like a heroic, right-wing figure, and we had to deal with the aftermath of it, which was kids doing Paki jokes.

"I actually think Till Death Us Do Part missed a trick. It was fine to have Alf Garnett mouthing off, with the other characters as the liberal conscience, but the other characters never had lines as good as his. In comedy, you're attracted to the people with the best lines, like Chandler in Friends. Having Tony Booth going [cue perfect Scouse git accent], 'Oh, come on!' It wasn't exactly a witty riposte." Bhaskar's own sharp wit doubtless served him well enough during the seven years he spent in marketing, but has been put to rather better use in the seven years since. Indeed, biblical parables spring to mind about seven lean years and seven fat, not that there seems much chance of the lean years returning.

Since 1995, when he joined Goodness Gracious Me, then on Radio 4, his career has soared, both as an actor and writer. The production company Miramax has given him a writing contract, apparently because boss Harvey Weinstein so enjoyed Goodness Gracious Me. Bhaskar even had a cameo opposite Julia Roberts in Notting Hill, and later this month, on the night that The Kumars at No 42 returns to BBC2, he opens in the West End play Art.

Meanwhile, his parents – who, when he spoke of wanting to become an actor, said, "don't you mean doctor?" – are thrilled with his success (if only he would let them find him a wife, he says, their happiness would be complete). Moreover, he has received that ultimate sanction of star status, not one appearance on Parkinson, but two. "The first time I did Parkinson," he recalls, "I was renting a grotty, one-bed flat. A nice Merc drove me to the studio, and it confused me. I thought, 'Am I the guy who belongs in that horrible flat, or in this chauffeur-driven car? Since then, I have become a first-time buyer, in Islington. And this time, when I did Parkinson, I got into a nice car having woken up in a nice flat. I thought, 'Yeah, why shouldn't I be here?' "

'The Kumars at No 42' starts on 27 May on BBC2 at 9pm. On the same evening Sanjeev Bhaskar opens in 'Art' at the Whitehall Theatre, London W1 (020-7369 1735)