Read this: Meera Syal

BBC sounds music Radio podcasts hello, this is the media show from BBC Radio for the comedian writer playwright and actor she's perhaps best known for playing Sheila the mischievous grandmother in the award-winning BBC Two comedy the kumars at number 42 you may well also known as part of the team behind the sketch show goodness gracious me my programming Mr John break.

What about an old British comedy show?

Abbey funny welcome to the media show thank you.

That's just enjoying it you watch clips back from some of the shows you've been involved in not that just because I think most actors.

It's kind of weird to watch yourself back you get a bit self-conscious and probably why I did theatres.

How many herself but obviously as I have discovered the programs and discovered that mum and dad were cool once and then we have been rewatching the Carmarthen goodness gracious me with them and I'm surprised that how much of it still work and that particular sketch.

I was watching it earlier and thinking this must be rooted in some of the experiences of those of you writing it btd6.

A lot of the Skechers in goodness gracious me actually simple role.

Reversals, you know what my most famous ones going for an English to get Saturday group of drunk Indians going for an English Bombay was an absolute reversal sketch and a lot of the Skechers in goodness gracious me actually simple role.

Reversals those with a sketches that seem to be so recognisable and resonate with people in mediately because they could see it was rooted in something very real and all be done with flip mirror.

I think that's got that was kind of the beauty of the show really it in the silly and the satiric quite well go to programs that we've alluded to many others to wear the performances on the stage.

You're on the TV or radio have lead-up to Awards this year for you.

You received a BAFTA fellowship this month you accept the women in film and TV lifetime achievement award congratulations industry recognition.

Does it matter?

Silly question to even ask it's very nice to be recognised by your peers for sure women Film and Television this is particularly in a vertical by two members and you don't know if what you're doing has been noticed or appreciated or or or changing anything and so I accepted both with a great deal of soda humility and gratitude.

I take it really fair having survived.

I think is it is real danger with these kind of lifetime achievement that was to see them as well done it off you retire so put the door on your account love and I feel I just have so much more to do.

I'm just getting started in some ways to make the most of it and if you think that your self as a young woman coming into the media would reaching this kind of industry recognition of seemed Bible not in the flight all getting a job with Viber

Sliding doors moment when I graduate just about to graduate from Manchester University I've done England drama, but I couldn't see any room in the industry for someone that look like me that's very sensible immigrants side me when this is not for you.

You don't see anyone like you out there.

What roles are you going to play so very seriously went right put that side had an NHS lined up to do drama and psychotherapy at Leeds and I was going to work with children with learning disabilities through drama, so I had a whole whole kind of Life mapped out and show the time thrown together as an expression of a swansong my farewell to affecting early for a swansong surely my entire life that was the little girl dream inside of me without practical adult graduate side me just went.

How are you going to make a living there anyone you could ask about that.

Check if your assessment of your chances within the industry was correct.

No because I didn't have any role models or peers really.

I'm in there were a couple of old television actors that were in a seem to making a living but they're letting me use to shuttle between here and India and it was slightly different but as for British Asians not really so who's Virgin snow and it was only because that director saw me performers play the Edinburgh fringe and offered me a job with an Equity card and it literally was a sliding doors moment and I got my first job and got the golden Ticket of an exit card, which you had to sort her nose day, so I often wonder if it hasn't happened what what was what's the parallel life in the string universe the living my 2.4 kids most of the pharmacist very happy my own way, but you know much prefer this one this was the route that you that you went on will you pursuing being a straight?

Comedy always part of the equation the comic side of life because frankly it is something that keeps you saying growing up as a friend because you are living in episode schizophrenic life where you're swapping masks and dialect and identities all the time and you fat forging a new one and so that I can see why so many my generation became creatives because you belong and you don't belong which feels awful when you're younger because or young person wants to do is be long, but it's only when you get a bit holder that you think I will that's a gift.

That's the every creative person feels alone every creative person sees the bigger picture every creative person feels misunderstood and isolated and turns that observation of the world into something beautiful and it's what makes someone to communicate and tell that story so the root of my discomfort was also the root of my creative joy.

The talking about creativity I wonder if you can describe the first created moments when you and the others started plotting goodness gracious me when you thought Holland there's something here.

I'd work with him as he was a script editor on a show I be a guest on the Real McCoy it to the first black British sketch on British television and hugely popular so annual got together.

I've been doing different bits of stand-up around London very much and underground movement but all from this first generation that will finding a very unique sense of humour between the class of the two living through which seems to be very nice.

She knows many agent agents performing to other Asians and he brought us together in a room and I all I all I can describe it is a sort of very deep coming home when you suddenly have this shorthand with people that you've never had in your entire life.

You've always felt.

Why am I the other one in the corner sniggering?

Is anyone else finding this funny and then suddenly you're in a room where people you sort it almost shamefaced yo32 topway.

Yes, I do and you just fine.

That's the kind of tip of this massive iceberg of of this as I said very unique sense of humour that we haven't been operating a little island defined each other and an expression for this was just so wonderful we also thinking how do we translate that into something which which the media which the TV commissioners or the radio commissioners might want to take on and it seemed like a mountain and it was a mountain it took a very long time to get that show on what happened.

Well.

I approached Jon ploughman.

Who was a very respected comedy producer at the BBC friends and son-in-law the list is endless.

He was Top of his game and it was used before we got nearer television.

We we had two first do.

Alive alive show the Riverside Studios and John was invited in front of all their friends.

We have two days to put it together as it was really trying all the characters and stuff.

We've been doing privately on on 1 and One Nights he went.

I think there's something here then we did radio pilots didn't go to slot then week ending went off air for summer break with a given 6 weeks and said all that is like to see what you do with it and I think the Turning Point was but it was sunny become hugely popular on radio and then people on Asians aren't listening to this Asian don't listen to Radio 4 on a Friday night this means that middle England gets the show and if middle England gets it we are interested because we then had to do a pilot for virtually no money.

I mean we're literally humidity vpilot.

So they will they really put through this was not stewing and then only.

After that pilot went down well.

We allowed to have a series it felt like a very very long haul if you remember the first night it was on BBC2 can you remember the feeling of having it on I cannot and I think I watched it with loads of friends and family and yeah, it was so real and then of course we waited this was pre-internet days.

We waited for the reviews to come out and it seemed like it worked.

I think that's a reasonable conclusion.

I have to say when I was researching a head of speaking to you.

I was not the right word certainly surprised shocked as well to see that you say after the success of goodness gracious me you don't feel that the BBC and others within the media did very much to nurture you all individuals or the Dave no to build very much on the the success that you had tell me why you say that because it's true.

I get we did expect it to be different because of the impact.

Because of the kudos it gave the BBC and all kinds of levels because of the barriers it broke down and because it was unique I mean I don't know what more we could have done it.

Take pretty much every box we have we had the reviews we have the Awards we had the audiences so first.

It was very hard to ask that it was for no reason stopped after 3 Series other than we don't really want to do anymore which is really hard to me when something is doing so well, although having said that we went on to do many many many three or 4 specials because I think they realise they are not offended that but I think you'll see the same comedy troops again and again because broken comedy sketch comedy was really big about time.

There was quite a few very popular so so we will see the same people at the awards ceremony is all what was really interesting.

We had a direct parallel.

We would see how they are as individuals and groups were developed and nurtured can give giving other products and we weren't.

That was quite sound so people assume the commands came off the back of that it really did not that was a completely separate project that took again quite a long time to get on so what was the people who don't remember the series at the time? What was the gap between all the successes of goodness gracious me and then you coming back with a show that was arguably even more successful in that for years.

I love you say I want to talk about the kumars at number 42 before we do that.

That's here little from one of the shows.

This is when Graham Norton paid your love.

Is it the whole thing seems to be really working for you.

Can you play me to stick with it all far is very powerful and very good money in India

There was a time when I thought somebody was gay you enjoy that one all over again life hasn't changed many people listening will have seen it, but haven't seen it.

Just explain the the central premise of the program is a spoilt Wannabe television interviewer who so desperate to be the next Parkinson and that his parents building a studio in the back garden and so we it's a classic sitcom and a chat Sue Larry Sanders a place where we would have real guest coming but they were coming into a Punjabi family home to be interviewed and that was what made it very different but lots of companies turned it down.

It's only because Jimmy mulville.

Really loved it and and sort of dog is heels in and I do find that you need sometimes.

You do need that meant or especially when you're trying to tell the stories that aren't the usual stories or larvae more of kilter stories other ones again that don't fit the algorithm to sponsor near the top of the industry and that's where they can be used for I still feel I need one.

I mean you know that I'm still trying to get Project off the ground and I do feel that sometimes even at this level of the industry.

You do need that support that championing for some things and Jimmy was very much on that show thank goodness very good judge of this particular format because I was reading it's been sold in different parts of the world that one about a Greek community in Australia what about Armenians in Russia Latinos in the US to enjoy watching those I love the idea of it and what was really interesting is what minority group was chosen in each country so in Australia it was Greeks in.

Latinas in Holland it was surinamese and throwing my family and that was absolutely fascinating, but it kind of prove the point.

I think that many of us creatives know that the best you know the ones that land are universal but you get back being really specific weirdly very specific to your truth and that truth translate universally and every has got a family and everyone has got an embarrassing family at some point or the other and I think those with and those that it it's all about your family when you think back to growing up in a small village in the West Midlands I'm curious to know what media you and your family were consuming at home well.

We had one very small black and white telly in the front room which you had to share but then the kids programmes went off at 6, there was nothing for you to watch really annoyed with three Tunnels and you had to get up to change the channel kids if you listening so I went.

A huge amount of programs for kids but for me it was a window onto a world that I am I just couldn't I was going up in a little mining Village so different parts of the world always all terribly exotic but also being excited by the storytelling or did you feel excited even in an abstract way that you could one day be one of the people was on the TV I didn't know that was a job like that the first time.

I realised that being an actor was an actual option was when I was taken to pantomime and this is my pantomime just so important for kids because it's often their first experience of of Theatre and Performance with the Sunday school in the village and it was Dick Whittington at Stoke and there was a bit where they take a child from the audience to come down at the villain on the head to show that he was going to be a good boy and I got chosen brilliant and it is actually one of those classic moment to be great scene in the film so I walk.

Dermadoc stares into the Circle of light and I feel the light of my face and the actors of this clothes and I can see their makeup running and I can see their laboured breath and I put the villain and smiles and I go what is this placed? I don't know what it is, but it's home.

This is there anything is possible? So that was the moment I realise I had an accident.

That's a bit thing should I have a girl growing up in a mining village and doing a school trip to Stoke with mentioned that you studying at University of Manchester also want to do to ask ask you about bars on the beach because this is a quite significant thing for you to take on a screenplay for a feature film all about a group of Asian women from Birmingham on an outing to Black Bull there are lots of things.

I've asked about this before we get to that.

Let's hear some of it.

Women's centre, I'd like to welcome you all to our first Blackpool Illuminations out.

It is not often that we women get away from the patriarchal demands made on our daily lives struggling between the double yolk of racism and sexism that we bare.

This is your day have a female fun time.

So you wrote that in 1993? What made you take that on one undertaking do not just write a screenplay, but be involved in producing it as well.

It was absolute desire and it's never left me to tell the stories that are being told because there was such a Stark contrast between the kinds of parts.

I was being offered as a Performer and what I saw in my real life a huge schism and joked about it a lot, but it really was victim of arranged marriage woman in corner shop.

You know Karen but committed to work out with two lines very limited and not at all reflective of the extraordinary dynamic matriarchs that I grew up surrounded by and I just couldn't understand why the stories want me to do you think between 1993 and now it's got easier for those stories to to find platforms to get commissions to get funding from the media at the moment.

Can't I think really I thinking in some ways, I don't know how is it will be to get bhaji on the beach off the ground now the independent film market is really being squeezed.

I think if we were trying to sell it will go on who are the stars that can sell it but I can't think of many still that we have it could sell a movie.

I mean it's become a very different kind of market place this was missing from film On 4 and their remit was absolutely to give those voices that haven't been heard a chance to be heard and it was a quick as commission I've ever got in my life and I went in chatted countdown timer for 5-min with commission just looking as you're talking some new research on the creative diversity network was found the number of female writers and directors of British TV shows fell between 2016 and 2022 and the gender gap for female directors and writers increased over the past 6 years and not surprising from people in in the industry that slightly feeling that paint.

I think you know everyone's trying to compete with the Stream

The things that you you we're back to the algorithm and I'm not the only one that we've been told this is fantastic writing to fantastic script, but it doesn't really fit sorry mate at the moment and stream it another word for algorithm.

I don't know I understand why people being cautious and it's all kinds of budgetary squeezes on you.

Don't know the exact reasons you just know the effects and the effect at the moment for a lot creatives.

Is that this isn't the time to put anything that's to outside the box which is a something to say but everything is cyclical isn't it to describing a challenge really in terms of what gets commission but you've also repeatedly turn to the issue of diversity within the industry for example recently said diversity and TV is not just in front of the camera, but in the writer's room in make-up vans around tables.

Where deals are done.

You have any don't think that part of the industry has shifted anywhere near enough.

Hi there.

I would have noticed that is really heartening.

Because it's all proportions, isn't it? But I am there are certain companies that much better than others doing it and you do notice it when you walk on a set so it said there's a new awareness and I think that people it's not a good look anymore.

Thank you and that's a great thing even if people don't think it in Their Hearts they know it's not it's not good.

Look and I don't care if that's the reason that people as long as it does change so I would say there is movement there and you know that thing I mean when you get an award.

It makes you look back.

It makes you reflect and if I collect on what the industry was like when I answered it there have been no it's so much progress who would have believed it on the day the Indian Rupee singer has been made the director of the National Theatre she's amazing news, so I always try and that's why I said it cyclical I was trying to keep that in mind because I'm an optimist and I think anybody there.

In this industry is actually however depressed.

They get is fundamentally an optimist because you have to be 1 to be a self-employed creative of course you have to hope there is something I was around the corner and that's why we do it, so whatever I say in all of the things I sorted fight for an advocate for it is a new the Spirit of hope that I think we can change things together.

We just need to remind occasionally look back a reminder self how far we've come, but never get complacent you talk about optimism.

I wonder if you are optimistic about comedy the 90s often pointed out as an old major certain type of comedy but this year does a few weeks ago Ofcom describe TV comedy in the UK as at risk because of declining hours of new programming that strong phrase is it one you would I would actually you do notice.

It's you turn me on I think I'm dropping age of classic comedies in the 70s.

I think I'm some of which wouldn't pass muster now and some of the attitude but actually.

You can still look at things like Dad's Army which one the love of that will never leave me when that whole period is 70s comedies ranging from a truly terrible to be absolutely brilliant, but that was flourishing environment and you were allowed to make mistakes.

You were allowed to check something out there and see if it's stuck I think now because comedy is such an ephemeral thing.

It's the risk-taking that's gonna think that looks a bit out there, but let's let's do a serious and see because sometimes the dual is always apparent who's worried about the risk is at the commissioners, or is it the comedians who were thinking if I say a joke and it's a bit out there could be a backlash or this good cost me my reputation or something like that.

Where does the risk lie? I think it's much more about are we going to get the viewers for this because the hardest thing in the world is to to make people laugh.

When famously Fawlty Towers did terribly in its first outing Monty Python 0ne.

What the hell that was about the producer.

Just just went up.

I mean, they could do nothing sitting in the bath with a cigar and give them a bit more money from Oxbridge so why do you think the the decision-making as perhaps become more conservative with a small see it's a constant competing because people's attention spans are social they can just click click click.

You have to remember when I'm not the 70s comedies are on and there's nothing else to wash off the time and cost comedians on television.

I know they're quite a few comedians have never gonna television they've got an amazing online presence they sell out to yours and they're very happy with that and they don't feel I have to compromise all 21 and bedroom to do their work.

They don't very well.

Thank you very much.

So there is also that we mentioned the BBC and number of times and of course for better or for worse.

It's a major part of the media landscape of the UK have seen the discussions around the licence fee in the last few weeks.

What's your view of how the BBC is funded and how it fits in with all of the other elements of the media world.

I owe so much to the BBC I mean, they gave me all of my first breaks really however much would a favourite auntie my heart is totally with the BBC's institution and it's so important that we have a public broadcaster.

It really is so yeah.

I hope the next government leave well alone.

Do you understand people who say I'm getting my media from here there and everywhere now.

I don't necessarily want to pay on the way up to £200 a year.

I do but actually a few subscriptions can add up and you have to look at the whole so the structure and output over the years and have a different kind of levels.

That's the BBC work on I mean of course there is an improvement there definitely is and you know is having talks about my appointments with it earlier on but I think I would rather try and improve where it is.

Totally dismantle it now.

We mentioned that you've been picking up from Awards this year and you're doing some Radio 4 comedy as well, but as well as that you have something called Mrs Sidhu investigates For People People listening will know but for people who don't know it tell us about it.

It's am serious for acorn TV which came out in September and it began as a Radio 4 comedy is made the dumps television about Mr do who is the chef turned sleuth very much for the Miss Marple camp, she's a widowed caterer is a little bit bored with a life and ends up falling into private Investigation really because there's nothing more visible than brown woman so she can't and also she said some delicious food and people give up their secrets so it's cosy crime to the nth degree, but just such fun to do when it came out in September I had two series come out in September that and a major role in the Wheel of Time Amazon big fantasy series.

Talk about either because of the strike but I respected so I'm so glad you asked me about it cos we're really proud of it and it did enormously well and I think the first ever British Asian sleuth on on television, so there you go and watch a thanks for coming to see if we appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much indeed for listening for me Ros Atkins and the team.