Nish Kumar's certainly not the new Russell Brand but he could be the next great political comedian

‘My mum thinks I’m a dangerous subversive’

(Charlie Forgham Bailey)

For the modern comic, there’s no greater endurance test than the ritual slog of the Edinburgh Festival: as well as trying to stand out in an ever-more crowded field, you also have to a find a way to keep yourself and the material feeling fresh, while performing it in a sweat box of a venue almost every day for a month. Lucky, then when, the world beyond the Fringe offers you a helping hand. Such was the case this summer for rising star Nish Kumar, with his latest hour, Long Word … Long Word … Blah Blah Blah … I’m So Clever.

It was his fourth Edinburgh solo show, and saw the south-London born stand-up put his political beliefs front and centre for the first time, railing against everything from the “political correctness gone mad” brigade to NHS privatisation and climaxing with an especially good analysis of the problems of the Left. Clear-sighted and impassioned, it was a set that gained topical charge through August, thanks to the unexpected rise of a certain Islington MP pushing the question of the Left’s future right to the top of the news agenda. “Especially towards the end of [the month], the Corbyn situation was changing on a daily basis, and it was really exciting, adjusting things – it challenged me to stay present with the material,” says Kumar.

(Charlie Forgham Bailey)

The result was something of a game-changer for Kumar, and he was rewarded with his first Fosters Comedy Award nomination, the news of which was announced on his 30th birthday: another stroke of serendipity, given the show also makes play of his career anxiety on the eve of entering his fourth decade. Certainly, the stars seem to be aligning for him: this year, he has also been made host of the current affairs sketch series Newsjack on Radio4 Extra, as well as picking up gigs on prime-time showcases such as The John Bishop Show and Live at the Apollo.

I catch up with Kumar on a morning in early October, as he prepares to tour Long Word … Long Word … Blah Blah Blah … I’m So Clever around the UK, when it should provide yet greater food for thought. It’s the end of Labour conference week: in the Edinburgh version of the show, he decried the Left’s recent inability to make cogent and convincing arguments while coming out in support of Corbyn as “not the best guy but the only guy right now”.

So, I wonder whether the first few weeks of the Corbyn era have allayed his anxiety at all?” He is ambivalent. “It really feels like a moment for the left ... but the problem is that it’s still so easily dismissed. There’s a danger of us [who support Corbyn] getting locked in the bubble of social media, but the fact is that most of the country – and friends of mine who are Labour supporters – are dismissing this guy saying it’s not realistic … the downside is that it’s a shame people are not getting behind [him] but,” he adds “the plus is [I don’t have] to change the show that much.”

(Charlie Forgham Bailey)

Though previously Kumar had touched on politics, mostly via his discussion of race and racism, he was far from what you would term a political comedian. However, he says he has not undergone a political awakening so much as a comedic one. “I’ve always been interested in talking about politics but it took me years to work out how to do that in comedy … watching Bridget Christie’s shows [was an inspiration] because they have really heavy subject matter but she is such a goof. Watching her, I thought ‘woah actually yeh, if you’re silly, you can also be very serious’; they’re not contradictory elements, whereas for a long time I thought they were.”

Saying that, though, there are moments of righteous rage that make one bristle. “It’s just a matter of light and shade so you have silly bits and that buys you the right to be quite angry.”

The initial provocation for Long Word … was a comment his mother made that “all comedians are left wing, it’s boring”. A centrist Labour supporter, she has “always described me as a dangerous subversive”, he adds, “which is I think is overstating it – ultimately I’m a good middle-class grammar school boy – but [my family] come from a long line of Marxist agitators from Kerala, and I think she believes that genetically, it’s like The Manchurian Candidate; I’m going to see something on TV and it’s going to activate [me] to smash up a bank.” This led him to muse on why exactly the stand-up scene might have become so leftie-heavy since the Alternative Comedy boom of the Eighties. His theory? That right-wing comedy is simply more difficult to pull off in the same way “it’s hard to write a genuinely left-wing action film”.

Of course, Mrs Kumar is far from the only person to have griped about comedy’s left-wing bias: a favourite bugbear of the right-wing commentariat, it’s also recently become a fixation of Kumar’s contemporary Andrew Lawrence, who has taken to ranting about the apparently BAME-bias, female-bias, “liberal back-slapping” comedy industry, both on stage and social media. As one of those BAME comedians apparently getting gigs on the basis of their skin colour alone, Kumar enjoys a sly dig at Lawrence in his show. However, at the same time, he sincerely welcomes more political diversity on the stand-up scene. “I have no problem with any of Andrew’s opinions. I have a problem with the fact he hasn’t backed any of them up,” he says. “Andrew Lawrence is an amazing comedian ... one of his shows called Soul Crushing Vicissitudes of Fortune is one of the best Edinburgh shows I’ve ever seen … if he put that passion and craft into writing a really good hour of conservative comedy, that would be amazing. But don’t resort to comments about ‘women posing as comedians’ and ethnic minority comedians. Its cheap and it debases you and your beliefs.”

(Charlie Forgham Bailey)

Kumar himself is conscientious when it comes to justifying his opinions. Boisterous as it is, Long Word ... is also carefully argued and offers a refreshing antidote to the kind of flippant, toothless satire that amounts to “modern politics is rubbish”.

Not that we’ll be seeing him swap the stage for the rally platform: at one point in the show, he deals with the folly of Russell Brand’s intervention in the recent election, gleefully declaring that “people like me are everything that’s wrong with politics right now”. Though when I ask him just how worthless comedians are in the context of serious debate, he recants slightly. “I’m passionately of the belief that comedy actually can’t change anything, but I am being forced to question that,” he says, praising in particular the impact his idol, John Oliver, has had on American television. On the other hand, we discuss the decline of political comedy on British TV; give Kumar time and it strikes me that, with his combination of genial charm and understated intellectual rigour, he could be someone to help reverse it.

Back to more pressing concerns, though: has he yet managed to convince his mum that he isn’t boring, I wonder?

“Yes, my parents see all my Edinburgh shows, and actually I’ve done some stuff this year that they enjoyed without equivocation,” he says. “They worked really hard to give me a good education and set me up really well and I think now I’m at least repaying that by doing some cerebral content. They think “well at least he’s using his degree...” but also they found the show funny: so yes, I think they finally stopped being bored!”

‘Long Word … Long Word … Blah Blah Blah … I’m So Clever’ begins its UK tour at Bristol’s Colston Hall on Wednesday and runs until December (see nishkumar.co.uk)