So what did Ranganathan do? “I ate it!” exclaims. “I could not bear to tell him, so I ate it in front of him, man. I just sat there and went, “It has so many dairy products!” “I just thought that my morals were not as important as making this man feel good that he had done this.” The destruction of the tres leches is what Ranganathan’s wife, Leesa, would call, with the naked eye, “a Romesh state.” What is another example? “Well, before I got an agenda, I was often supposed to be in two shows at the same time that it was geographically impossible to attend,” says Ranganathan. “And I would say to Leesa, ‘I have a situation. “I’m supposed to be in Lancashire in 45 minutes, what do I do?” Once, early in his career as a standup, Ranganathan called a supporter and told him he was standing on the side of the highway with his car damaged. He was actually ready to take the stage at another concert. Ranganathan has never spoken publicly about it and now makes him feel physically unwell. “I was on the phone and I was thinking, ‘This is crazy. “This is not normal,” he recalled. I thought, ‘You have to tidy yourself up.’ And I did not do it, but I’m better than I was, let ‘s put it this way. “ Facts about the house: he stars in Avoidance, his new family comedy series for the BBC. Photo: Rich Hardcastle / BBC / RangaBee Productions If you’ve seen Ranganathan play – he appears credible these days, occasionally even on time – you will recognize these benevolent, chaotic traits. They also appear in his television work: The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan, where he travels to some of the world’s least tempting holiday destinations, or Rob and Romesh Vs, where he and his comic book colleague Rob Beckett take on strange challenges, such as training to become strong or run a restaurant overnight. Every defective Ranganathan man is also at the center of the Sky’s A League of Their Own panel, in which he succeeded James Corden as presenter. And, it must be said, Romesh’s situations, although they must be crazy to get involved in them, create great jokes. Personally, when we meet in a photo studio in Brighton, it seems that there is very little distance between him and his personality on screen. It’s an established trope: you can interview comedians and not burst out smiling. On the contrary, an audience with Ranganathan is often happy and unexpected, as if hanging out with a friend who happens to be a lot funnier than your real friends. Ranganathan is naturally attracted to the mismatched: before becoming a comedian, he was a math teacher and remembers obsessed with one of his colleagues’s shoes, how shiny they were. “So for about a month, I dived into various shoe polishing techniques,” says Ranganathan, who is dressed in black, from a hoodie to an (admittedly virgin) Air Maxes. “Like applying an initial coat, letting it harden, then applying a coat of polish over it. It became like what I was talking about. Like, enough. “ Ranganathan is happy that his work on television is less “executive” than ever. “When I started, I did a panel show and you’re trying to find the joke,” he says. “Well, my thing was like this dead grumpy sting, right?” The truth is that this is inside me, but there is more to my character than that. Top form: hosting the A League of their Own with Roisin Conaty and Tom Allen. Photo: Sky UK / PR “While now, it ‘s partly that you feel more comfortable,” he continues, “and partly because I trust the process. Like in Misadventures that we go back for centuries. if they can not find an hour of funny stuff in it, then I should not be a comedian. The same goes for Rob and Romesh: if Rob and I have a restaurant for one night and nothing happens, we should both look at ourselves very carefully. “ These days the fact that Ranganathan is enjoying great success just by being a Ranganathan is the cause of some plaque in his home. He has three sons, who are in their early teens and younger, and never see anything of his trivial production on television. “I’m trying to figure out if they’ve watched something I’ve been to… No, I do not think so,” he says. “With something like Misadventures, because only I’m me, although in a different country, they’re just not that interested. “Do you know why they want to see the man who lives with them for another hour?” Ranganathan lived a fairly stable life, albeit with two major upheavals. His parents, Ranga and Shanthi, arrived in the United Kingdom from Sri Lanka in the 1970s and settled in Crawley, West Sussex. Ranga was an accountant and did well enough to be able to send Romes and his younger brother Dines to the Reigate Grammar School for a fee. Then, at a time of three months when Romes was 12, Ranga announced that he was leaving Santi for another woman. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested for fraud, the family home was recovered and Ranga was taken to prison. Romesh moved to the local area and Shanthi and her two sons lived in a B&B for 18 months before finding a town home. “I loved my dad’s hero,” says Ranganathan. “I would not say that I preferred him to my mom, I certainly would not say it, but he was the most fun of the two. And this happened because my mom was dealing with both how my dad was and with two kids who thought my mom did nothing for nothing. “But, as it turns out, he did not make enough agreement on that.” Ranganathan smiles ironically. “I saw my dad right,” he says. “It simply came to our notice then. And it really upset me. “ Bending their muscles: Rob & Romesh Vs Strongman. Photo: Stuart Wood After her imprisonment, Ranga returned to her family, apparently punished. He started running a pub, the Prince of Wales at East Grinstead, which sounds like he could have done better than accounting anyway, before he died of a heart attack in 2011. “My dad was a good party animal,” he says. Ranganathan. “He drank so much and he liked this whole way of life. It was a personality-driven pub: like you go to the pub and the big reason is to go see Ranga. And I’m not really like that, even though I’ve become a bit like that because, as a standup, you’re the one to no degree. “ The extent to which Ranganathan becomes his dad is clearly of concern to him. Shanthi, whom you may know from their travel documentary Asian Provocateur or their sharp, very funny fight on the current BBC show The Ranganation, and Dinesh’s brother often tease Romesh about how much he looks like Ranga now. “Well, I look like my dad, I’m like my dad,” says Ranganathan. “My sense of humor is the same as my dad’s. Basically I look a lot like him. There are many things that I find scary about this. So, for example, I did not like the way my dad treated my mom and my dad was careless in many ways. And I am careless in many ways, not intentionally, but I accidentally find myself indifferent. “My dad and I are very similar in that we expect very little from the people around us,” Ranganathan continues. “But we also offer very little to these people around us. So, you know, low expectation, low delivery. Both my mom and my brother are not like that: they have high expectations, high returns. So my brother and mom are great at doing things for your birthday: having dinners, fastening. But they also expect you to do this. “While I do not think if you forget my birthday, but it is also very likely that I will forget yours.” “I told her, ‘I have a situation. What to do;” with Leesa’s wife. Photo: Landmark Media / Alamy The second upheaval of Ranganathan’s life took place by himself. He taught math for nine years at the high school he attended, Hazelwick School in Crawley, and for the most part he enjoyed it. He met Leesa, a theater teacher, there and became the head of the sixth uniform, which increased his salary. So when he decided to make a full-time comedy in 2011, he knew he was taking a risk. Then, three days before he left school, Ranga died and Ranganathan and his brother had to find the money to settle his affairs. They even took over the Prince of Wales pub for a few months, but “ran it to the ground”. Ranganathan had young children at home and suddenly had no normal income. At one point, the family car was confiscated because he could not pay the tolls and then, because the fines were increasing daily, he just had to abandon it. “You have a conscience: I have to get us out of this,” says Ranganathan. “Because I made this career choice, this is how we live. And it is not something noble. “Getting into comedy is not a noble thing.” Both of these episodes from his life remain fresh and alive for Ranganathan. And if he feels that he is very much on the television network, they explain it in some way. “My dad had it, my brother has it and I think I have it where you want to work because it could all go away at any time or things could go well,” says Ranganathan. “My dad was doing well and then everything went wrong and I felt so fast. Then, when I started making comedy since I was a teacher, we were broken. I have…
