Romesh Ranganathan: Hustle tour comes to Leeds First Direct Arena

Hustle is about the culture of “making every minute of every day count,” says the comedian.

“Getting up at 6am and making a list of objectives and spending the day trying to achieve those objectives. You know, if you’ve got a spare hour, you need to be looking at how you’re going to turn that into an opportunity, blah, blah, blah. That’s what I kind of feel hustle is.”

Only, some might say the comedian is describing himself. Known to audiences for The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan, The Ranganation, Rob and Romesh Vs, Avoidance and as the host of The Weakest Link and A League Of Their Own, he is hardly taking it easily with his workload.

“But I wouldn’t do all of these things that I do if I didn’t really enjoy them,” he says. “If I started to hate The Weakest Link I’d quit. But I do really enjoy all the things I’m doing. The Weakest Link is me making celebrities **** themselves by asking questions. I’m not trying to take over the world, there’s no grand plan. I’m just trying to have as much of a laugh as I can.”

The former maths teacher, who is married with three sons and lives in Crawley, has been touring arenas and brings Hustle to the First Direct in Leeds next week.

What can he tell us about it?

“Every show I do I try to be honest and I think this is my most honest show. Sometimes when you’re trying to look for the comedic angle you exaggerate a viewpoint and I’m doing that less now. Hustle sits more closely to how I actually feel about things. In the past it was based in honesty, but taken to an extreme, like when I was really hard on my family. I don’t want to be a comedian that slags off his wife, you know, but finding the comedic angle to really loving your wife is slightly tricky!”

The tour announcement said the show “examines the human condition” – an ambitious feat for arena gigs.

“One of the seeds was getting annoyed by this whole thing about the hustle culture of working too hard,” says Romesh. “And I know that sounds ironic coming from somebody that’s been on fifteen TV shows in the last year, but I was thinking about whether working as hard as you possibly can and being successful at work, if that equals happiness. If you enjoy your work, that’s great. But the whole idea of success at work being the be all and end all is something I disagree with.”

Has success brought him happiness?

“I’ve never experienced a jump in happiness as much as when I was first able to pay my bills with comedy, like being able to pay for the Tesco shop from jokes. That to me was mind blowing,” he says. “But you get to a point where you go, what is my balance? I think lockdown helped me realise that the things that made me happiest were having breakfast with the kids or going away with them for a couple of days. I feel very happy. Whether my wife Leesa would say that manifests itself in me walking on air 24 hours a day is a different question.”

He is clearly a busy man, so deciding what projects to take on is a tough.

“It’s a question I’ve wrestled with. The truth is that shows come in or I think of ideas. So for example, I did Romantic Getaway with Katherine Ryan and the BBC sitcom Avoidance because me and my mate created these shows, and we just thought it’d be cool to make them. When other stuff comes in I think will I be any good at this and will be fun? A League Of Their Own is walking into a studio and taking the **** out of footballers. That’s not work.”

Like many comedians, he seems to be both confident and insecure.

“Definitely,” he says. “I’ve managed to get the insecurity to be less crippling than it was. The difference is I now think what can I do about it if a bit in my set failed? I can work on it and make it better. Whereas before, I’d sit in the dressing room looking in the mirror just going ‘You’re a fraud.’ I’ve learnt to manage it, but I don’t want to get rid of it. Because I feel like it’s a bit of my kind of creative engine.”

He concedes, though, that good fortune has played a part in his career. “I feel really lucky. I was ready to give up on a couple of occasions and then something happened. Like winning The Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year in 2013. I was on the phone to Leesa getting on the train and going ‘I don’t know how much longer I can do this.’

“I thought I’ll just do the competition and stop. If I hadn’t won I might have gone back to teaching. It’s these little things. I got Live at the Apollo because I was doing warm up for Seann Walsh and the right people saw me. I’ve been fortuitous.”

Meanwhile, he also works as a patron of suicide prevention charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).

He says: “One of my friends took his own life. I looked at that and my own mental health struggles and I thought how can I help? I did a couple of events and we gave CALM the money and and then we talked about me being a patron with the target of raising a million pounds in a year. It’s also about getting people talking and recognising the signs of somebody being on a bad path or seeing the signs if you’re on a bad path and reaching out for help.”

What does he want fans to take away from Hustle?

“It’s about the acceptance that we are all doing alright, that this kind of comparison of yourself to some sort of ideal that social media has contributed to, the hustle culture, that you’ve got to be smashing all things at all times is just not true. I think being alright is good, don’t beat yourself up about it. I want people to come away feeling uplifted. I’m saying it’s cool to be doing whatever you’re doing.”

Romesh Ranganathan brings Hustle to the First Direct Arena in Leeds on Friday, June 7. Tickets: romeshranganathan.co.uk/tour/