Goodness Gracious Me

[Miguel Wilkins]

Goodness Gracious Me

The Radio Series

[Miguel Wilkins]

'We'd been shown with blackface, head-waggling and the terrible accent, and we wanted to own that and turn it upside-down'
On 30 years of Goodness Gracious Me
chortle.co.uk
15th July 2026

Goodness Gracious Me would probably not be made today because of the political landscape – and because it would not 'fit the algorithm' – its creators believe. The groundbreaking sketch show, which ran on TV from 1998 to 2001, explored British Asian culture, and its conflict and integration with Western life.

But asked if such a programme would be commissioned in 2026, co-creator Sanjeev Bhaskar said: 'Instinctively, I feel that you would get a load more objections. We as Asians and as British Asians doing comedy, you're politicised anyway, whether you intend to say something or not. But I think there's [now] such an acute lens and particularly this binary kind of "whose side are you on?", all that sort of stuff, I think there would be greater objections now. Also, I don't know when the last really challenging thing on TV through comedy was, you know? People are going for safe because that's more commercial... Also who would put it on?  Who would be brave enough?'

His co-creator – and wife – Meera Syal added: 'I don't think it would be made because we don't fit the algorithm. We never did fit the algorithm.'

Their comments came at a reunion at the BFI Southbank in association with the London Indian Film Festival.

The third creator of the show, Anil Gupta, explained that the programme originally came about when he and fellow producer Sharat Sardana got a flyer for a live show called Poppadom Preach from a group called The Secret Asians.  He said it felt like it would be '50/50... is this the worst show you've ever heard of, or maybe it could be brilliant. So we decided to go and see it and it was Sanjeev and Nitin [Sawhney] doing their double act and I think Nina [Wadia] was a guest on the show.'

Gupta said they were impressed. 'We went and spoke to them afterwards and said, "We're from the BBC and we might want to do a show." And they looked at us like, "Yeah, pull the other one." 'Then I went to see my then boss, Jon Plowman, and said, "I think I want to do an Asian sketch show with these people in it." He said... "Well, what does that mean?" 'I still didn't really know. I persuaded him to give me some money, and I said, "I'll put a show on, and you can just come and see it, and then you'll know what it is."

'So we all got together on a Monday in a rehearsal room with nothing, and I said, "I've booked the Riverside Studios on the Saturday, so we better have something for then."  So we wrote it and rehearsed it in a week and put it on on the Saturday. 'Jon came along and went, "Oh, yeah, OK." I said, "Let's do a radio pilot because that's cheap" – that's what I've learned: if it's cheap enough, they'll let you do it.'

Gupta also recalled the writing process, including one afternoon with himself, Sardana (who died aged 40 in 2009) and Bhaskar riffing on an idea about a guru. 'We were laughing so much that some guy came in and complained that we were making too much noise. And we were like, "What? There's too much laughter in the comedy department?"' The team also spoke about the issues they were addressing through their comedy, such as the memorable sketch in which Indian colleagues struggle to say the name of their white colleague, Jonathan, in a reversal familiar to many Asian people.

Bhaskar said: 'The serious satirical element behind it for me is that in the pressure to assimilate, people will erode your identity.  And the first thing they'll erode is your name.'

Speaking of The Coopers, a snobbish couple who claim to be entirely English with no Indian blood whatsoever, Gupta added: 'It encapsulates the secret sauce of Goodness Gracious Me, which is it is at its heart an incredibly dark subject, about these people who feel so ashamed, oppressed, disempowered of themselves that they have to pretend, put on these false personas, try to try and assimilate themselves in a world where they're never going to be assimilated. You know, that tragedy at the heart of it, which is that you can do all this and they're never going to buy it. And yet, you've got Dennis Cooper, this absurd, genius comic creation, doing this silly knockabout stuff with a funny moustache.  And everyone's going, "Ah, it's just really funny."  The dark undercurrent is smuggled in, it's hidden beneath it.'

Bhaskar added that the success of the show, which originally aired on BBC Radio 4 from 1996 to 1998 before transferring to BBC Two, surprised executives. He said: 'I think the BBC initially thought this was going to be a niche show, just watched by South Asians. I think both with the radio series and the TV series, the first timeslot they suggested was 11:30pm on a Wednesday. And I remember saying, "What's that, Asian prime time? Shut the shops and go home. But with the radio series, they knew that the vast majority of the South Asian populace were not big Radio 4 fans. So when the numbers came back, they knew that Middle England was tuning in.'

Syal said that when they took the show on tour, audiences were 'at least a third to  maybe non-Asian - so then we really could see that it had a very wide reach. People are shouting the lines back at you. They all know the punchlines.  It was really magical'

Bhaskar said the show was 'the first time that we as British Asians controlled the narrative. Otherwise we were all responding or reacting to something, but we owned this.'

Syal agreed: 'We've seen ourselves represented in so many bad ways, literally with blackface and the head waggling and the terrible accent, and we felt we wanted to take ownership of all of that and turn it upside-down. The difference when you grew up in the 1970s, as I did, that you used to dread the playground the next day when some of the comedy programmes came on, Mind Your Language, Alf Garnett, whatever, because you knew we were always the butt of the jokes. We were never the people making the jokes and you knew that those catchphrases were going to be said to you in the playground the next day. For all of us was such a sign of progress that with Goodness Gracious Me, we were making the jokes this time, we weren't the  butt of the joke.'

She also spoke of how it was  'really liberating to play ugly, funny, risque, break taboos, and just be stupid sometimes. [To do] all of those things that women aren't usually supposed to do. 'What I found really interesting is when we were on tour, at the end of the show, there were  loads of women waiting for the male members of the cast, wanting an autograph. But when we came out, the men would take one look at us, put their hands over their genitals and run away. And I thought, yeah, because funny women are powerful. Funny women are subversive and funny women are scary and you don't see funny brown women.'

One character that stuck a chord with many viewers was Mr 'Everything Comes From India', who claimed everyone and everything came from the subcontinent. 'He was the most relatable sketch character,' Bhaskar recalled. ' I remember having a half-page interview in the Jewish Chronicle, because they said, "Well, this is Jewish humour," and then the Welsh would say the same, Scottish would be the same, and somebody said, "You know, we're from Nigeria, and my parents say everything came from Nigeria", so that idea of just claiming ownership, I think, spread across the board and  got that.'

But of course there were some complaints, as Bhaskar recalled. 'There was – and I don't know if it still exists – the BBC log where people could phone up and complain about a programme or share their views. I remember being fed back that across the first series, the same six people had rung in every week to say this was racist and anti-white. Then I was a guest on Michael Parkinson's show, and I brought this up and said, "I just want to thank those six people for being a loyal audience who tuned in."'

Another of the show's stars, Nina Wadia, recalled a peculiar reaction to the show from one white viewer. 'We were on tour, we'd gone to a pub and we were up north. This woman came in and said, "You know, I just want to say thank you... Having watched the show, I've now got something I can talk about with the woman who runs my corner shop. She thought she was giving me a compliment. And I was like, "Well, you could just talk to her about anything...' But these two women bonded over our show and developed a great friendship over it. So I came away going, "I'm not sure I'm really happy about this, but actually it started a dialogue and that's incredible."'

Fellow star Kulvinder Ghir added: 'The other really important thing is, is that we embraced it. We weren't shy of our culture, we were proud of it.  And if we can embrace it, then we can share it. If we shy away and we're not confident about it, how can we share?'

Bhaskar also recalled some welcome – and unwelcome – fans of the show. Recalling working with two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz on Terry Gilliam's 2013 sci-fi drama The Zero Theorem in Romania, he said: 'I was quite excited to meet him, because he's Christoph Waltz, he's kind of amazing. And when I turned around to meet him, he went, "How big is your dunder?"' Bhaskar reacted with shock that the star would have known one of the Goodness Gracious Me catchphrases, but Waltz explained to him: 'You know, I was living in London, and I loved your show...'

Bhaskar also had an encounter with film producer Harvey Weinstein before he was exposed as a sex offender, who was impressed by a sketch the comedian had made in which he played a Muslim who had converted to Judaism and effectively become Woody Allen. 'I got a three-picture deal on the back of that,' he said. 'But  I didn't write anything for them [Weinstein's company Miramax] because he freaked me out the one time I met him. I just hid for three years until the contract was over.'

Asked about what advice they would give to other creative people trying to follow in the Goodness Gracious Me footsteps Ghir said: 'Be fearless, I think' But broadcast journalist Samira Ahmed, who hosted the event, suggested that was easier said than done. 'I think it is harder to be fearless,' she said. 'I think at the BBC, there's much more fear about the reaction, and everything's put through so many more filters, I suspect.'