Eight things we learned about Romesh Ranganathan’s Desert Island Discs

Romesh Ranganathan is a familiar face on British television screens as a stand-up comedian and presenter of shows including The Weakest Link, The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan and the BAFTA-winning The Ranganation. He also co-presents Rob and Romesh Vs with his good friend Rob Beckett, which won the Comedy Entertainment BAFTA in 2024.

Romesh presents a BBC Radio 2 show each Saturday morning (10am – 1pm) and For the Love of Hip Hop at midnight each Saturday, which is also available on BBC Sounds.

Here are eight things we learned from Romesh’s Desert Island Discs…

“A lot of people say to me that they think I’m putting on an act when I’m on stage. I think I’m putting on an act when I’m off stage… When I’m doing stand-up, I’m saying what I think, unfiltered. Obviously there’s comic exaggeration, but I’m not worried about the social repercussions of what I’m saying… The sweet spot for me has always been when you say something you’re slightly nervous to express and you can feel the audience resonate with that.”

2. His parents gave him a birth name he never uses

Romesh was born in Crawley in 1978 to parents who had come to the UK from Sri Lanka. His full name is Jonathan Romesh Ranganathan, although never uses it.

“Everybody called me Romesh. That was my name but every time a teacher said the first register of the year, I’d have to go ‘can you call me Romesh’. The whole idea that you would change your name to make people in Britain feel more comfortable, that feels so ridiculous when you say it now,” he says, “but my parents were obviously in a position where they’d just come over from Sri Lanka, and they were like, ‘We’re bringing up kids over here. How do we make it easier for them?’”

3. His time as a rapper was short-lived

One of Romesh’s music choices is Lose Yourself by Eminem from the movie 8 Mile, which is about a wannabe rapper who earns his stripes in rap battles. Romesh is a huge hip hop fan and competed in a rap battle when he was in his twenties.

“It was bad,” he remembers. “The atmosphere was just like 8 Mile – very aggressive and they sent you a set of rules and things like that. It was at The Scala in [London’s] King’s Cross. I think I got to the penultimate round of the battle. I can tell you the lyric that led to my immediate exit from the competition: ‘This is Ranga, rocking at The Scala. You can’t handle the heat of my chicken tikka masala’… I was out of the competition and as I was leaving, I imagined it like a movie, when they’ve strapped a camera to the actor’s head and it’s facing down at them and they’re just walking through, like really morose. That’s how it felt – I’m walking through the crowd and they’re all shouting, ‘That’s pathetic! Chicken tikka masala? That’s a really mild curry! And then I decided I’m never going to do it [a rap battle] again.”

4. He tried to keep up appearances after his father went to prison

When Romesh was 15 his father was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud. Romesh and his mother and younger brother had to move out of the family home and the council put them up in one room in a B&B, which Romesh kept secret from his friends. “I remember once I was trying to make my own way home because I didn’t want anyone to know where I was living, so my mate’s mum said, ‘I’m going to drop you home.’ So I just picked a house a couple of doors down from the B&B and got her to drop me off there and she was waiting for me to go into the house. I think I snuck down the side alley, just so that they would go!”

Photo: Romesh Ranganathan in the Desert Island Discs studio.

I’m yet to do anything, standup-wise, that I’m truly proud of… I don’t think my comedy is good enough yet… It’s how I feel.

5. His proudest career moment came before comedy

Romesh was a maths teacher before he turned to stand-up in his thirties. “There wasn’t a single day of that job I didn’t feel completely fulfilled. I cannot speak highly enough of teachers and teaching. I loved that job,” he says.

“I went to teach at a school that had just come out of special measures. It was a really tough school. A lot of the kids had difficult backgrounds. I was teaching a bottom set, year nine. I went into teach my first lesson with them… And they were shouting, screaming, throwing things around… It took me half an hour to get them sat down… Every lesson, I just worked and worked at trying to get on side with them and get them to enjoy the lessons. One day, I walked in to start the lesson and they were just sat there with their books, ready to start… That’s probably the proudest I’ve ever been of anything I’ve ever done.”

6. One of his desert island tracks reminds him of a disastrous early gig

“It was the first time I’d done a full 20-minutes of material and it was in Hornchurch. I was incredibly nervous,” explains Romesh. “It was at this theatre, but it wasn’t in the theatre. It was in the foyer of the theatre, so I thought what a funny thing it would be to comment on the fact we were in the foyer, we’re not even in the theatre and I thought it was a great opener.”

“Anyway, it turns out the people of Hornchurch love that foyer, that [joke] got nothing. I then proceeded to play to silence, to the point where I said, ‘Thank you, I’ve been Romesh Ranganathan’ and I don’t remember them applauding… In my memory, you could hear the mic click into the stand… I get into the car, in my head, I’m thinking ‘That’s it. I’m done.’ How do I make myself feel better? I put on The Power Of Love by Huey Lewis and the News. I get to the end of the song, I still feel sad, so I put it back to the beginning. I listen to it… for an hour and 45-minutes.”

The Power of Love is Romesh’s third disc. It was written for the soundtrack of the 1985 film Back to the Future starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.

7. He doesn’t think his comedy’s hit the mark yet

“I’m yet to do anything, standup-wise, that I’m truly proud of… I don’t think my comedy is good enough yet… It’s how I feel. I’m really happy with the comedy I’ve done, but every show I can tell you is not 'the show'. I’ve not done 'the show' yet. But what I think the moment will look like is one day I’m going to do a show where I get metaphorically naked on stage and say to the audience, ‘Here I am’, and I haven’t done it yet.”

His fifth disc is Broken Clocks by the singer and songwriter SZA, which he chooses because he thinks she does just that. “What makes her unbelievable is her ability to take her insecurities, her mental fragilities, her thoughts on life, her thoughts on relationships, her thoughts about herself and turn those into just beautiful, beautiful poetry.”

8. He’s contemplating a lighter workload

“I’m taking a step back. I want to be at home a bit more. By the way, this is not an announcement of retirement, but I do feel like this is quite fortuitous that we’re talking at the time that we are because I have hit this period of thinking I’m going to be a bit more measured in what I do going forward. I might take a bigger break between bits. [As] I told you, I have not hit the thing yet, maybe this next thing could be it, but it’s not going to be it if I don’t go off and just live life, just allow those kind of things to happen. You know a walk in the park could lead to my next stand-up idea.”