How did you go from investment banker to standup comedian?
I didn\u2019t go on purpose from one to the other. I transitioned from banking to stay-at-home mother to standup comedian. There was absolutely no previous thought process. I got on stage almost by chance, and a lot of alcohol was involved. Standup found me, and I\u2019ve never left it alone.<\/p>\n
What inspired your latest show, Swanky?
It\u2019s just the continuing story of Sindhu Vee! The trials and tribulations, the victories and losses. My parents passed away in quick succession recently and, in their absence, I realised I had to champion myself. I took a long hard look at my life and I thought: actually it\u2019s not going that badly. A word my father used for things that were good but kind of like mysterious and cool was swanky. I suppose one could say that my life is swanky. Why not? Then I got a very swanky hairstyle and a dress for the poster. In the absence of my parents, I had to do it. They were big champions of me.<\/p>\n
Do you have any preshow rituals?
I don\u2019t typically wear a lot of makeup, but for shows I have a very small, neat makeup routine. I listen to a playlist which is made up of primarily old music that I\u2019ve always loved, nothing new. It\u2019s music that makes me feel reckless. I\u2019ll always have two pieces of milk chocolate before going on. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n
Did you decide to become an actor, or did it happen to you?
I think a lot of standups will tell you, as you start becoming known, sooner or later your agent will get a call and say: \u201cWould you like to read for this part?\u201d That\u2019s how I got everything from Sex Education to Matilda to Feel Good to Starstruck. I didn\u2019t think I was an actor. I genuinely thought, \u201cThis is a diversity casting issue.\u201d It turns out I can act, and a number of people who have absolutely no upside in lying to me about it have said, \u201cNo, no, you can act.\u201d So that\u2019s been fantastic.<\/p>\n
Standup now is very familiar. I understand it. Acting is like being in some seductive foreign country where you want to try the food and wear the clothes. It\u2019s all very cool, but you don\u2019t really know what\u2019s going on. So I\u2019ve been lucky to have directors who have been very generous.<\/p>\n
\u2018You can be funny without punching down\u2019 \u2026 Sindhu Vee. Photograph: Matt Crockett<\/p>\n
What\u2019s one of the strangest fan encounters you\u2019ve had?
One happened a couple of weeks ago in an airport lounge. We were all getting in the lift to go to our flight and suddenly someone said, \u201cOh no. Really?\u201d, then started sobbing. We all turned to this woman. She was staring at me, so everyone then turned to stare at me. Because it was in America, I thought, \u201cHave I said something and she\u2019s offended?\u201d She was crying and she said, \u201cIt\u2019s you and I have been trying to see your shows.\u201d Then she asked, \u201cCan I give you a hug?\u201d And I could not, in front of 30 people, be like: maybe that\u2019s a step too far. So she walked across the hallway and hugged me and sobbed. I told her it was fine, wished her well, and she calmed down. I would be nowhere without fans and without my audience, but I find this a little disconcerting.<\/p>\n
What was one of your all-time favourite gigs?
There was a gig in a big marquee in St Albans one Christmas many years ago. We got there and it was cosy but gross because everyone had been stuffed in. It didn\u2019t have glass windows, but if it did, they\u2019d have fogged up from everyone\u2019s breath. I remember I was trying out a joke about Santa Claus. I was sort of commenting on poverty in India and how that made Indian Santa Claus very skinny, so it was difficult for children to believe in him. It was a little bit tricky because I think it\u2019s not easy to make fun of poverty. But again, as a comic, I think: this could be funny. It went down really well, and that\u2019s when I realised how you can bring people into seeing that something is funny without punching down.<\/p>\n
Can you recall a gig so bad it\u2019s now funny?
I gigged in Delhi early on in my career. I had to do 20 minutes and for some reason the MC brought me on and said, \u201cHere\u2019s Sindhu, who left India to go to the UK and become a comic there.\u201d It really alienated me and everyone was furious. I started some of my best material and someone said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you fuck off back where you come from?\u201d I was like, \u201cBro, I\u2019m from Delhi.\u201d Everyone hated me. People jumped on stage, stood in front of me, and said, \u201cLook, we can tell jokes better than her.\u201d I went home and drank half a bottle of whiskey.<\/p>\n
What have you learned from standup?
If you can make people laugh, no matter how divided they are, they will feel all part of the same humanity while they\u2019re laughing. Human beings have a capacity for that. I\u2019ve always known it, but now I\u2019ve experienced it. My audiences are from 20 to 80 years old. Politically, I think, they\u2019re quite varied. But they can all laugh at the same thing. I think that means I\u2019ll never be cynical about what human beings are capable of.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next for you?
There\u2019s this skin treatment called XERF. It\u2019s a kind of a radio frequency thing on your face. One day I may get a facelift because never say never. But before that, you can try this and see what it does to your face. I\u2019m going to try it \u2013 I\u2019m so excited. So if you see me in the papers with a super sharp jawline, it\u2019s because I\u2019ve done XERF. And I\u2019m in The Split Up, coming out on the BBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How did you go from investment banker to standup comedian? I didn\u2019t go on purpose from one to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-633597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}