The British have always been good at political comedy and political satire. I remember being in the UK as a teenager and my granddad always watched Have I Got News For You - (a program that hasn’t changed in over 30 years and is still very good). There have been many other programs finding the humour in the news and politics especially, and one of the current ones is the Mash Report with Nish Kumar. Nish is known for Mash Report, but also his stand up comedy and other comedy performances often dealing with politics and news.
So for this shoot with Nish I started thinking about what I could do to include a bit of humour and visually show that Nish deals with current events, news and politics in his humour. I started thinking down the lines of using newspapers as props. We all know the classic newspaper hats - but how about newspaper flowers, newspaper wigs, newspaper chairs and a newspaper cape?! I spent an evening looking into how to make it all. Emptied cupboards for tape and glue, found a good arts and crafts shop to get other bits and pieces, and lastly emptied my magazine stand for old newspapers.
I had planned to have a boys drinks and catchup session with my friends from Norway over zoom. Instead, I sat there, half chatting on zoom, whilst swearing over the newspaper roses for not doing what I wanted them to do. I got there in the end, but instead of taking 30 minutes which I had at first thought would be the case, it took 5 hours. (Anyway - now I am an expert in case anyone is looking for someone to create newspaper props.)
Armed with my newspaper props I turned up at the south London studio to prepare the final things. Nish turned up and we were ready to kick off. Nice guy! Just as you see him on TV. We talked about his A-list friends whom I have worked with (James Acaster and Joel Dommet especially), the cricket club incident - (a live show at the cricket club where he was pelted with bread rolls - and they missed,) and his up and coming comedy show. All to the backdrop of some slow dance country music.
Shot for Observer Magazine
