YouSaid · the spoken record

Sanjeev Bhaskar

lines on the record: 50
first: 2008-10-12
most recent: 2008-10-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It would be without a doubt, Susanna McCorkle in the waters of March, I think it's the one thing that tells you that life is in all the details and don't miss them because they're all fabulous.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, it was a toss up between conversations with God Book one and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm going to have to go with Hitchhikers because I think it's played such a huge part in my life. From the answer to Life of the Universe and everything being forty two and thus using it in the title of the Kamars, to it being what we Brits do really well, which is absurd humour. And I think that book contains it. It's clever, it's funny”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Susanna McCorkle and the waters of March, and I think it's the most beautiful song I've ever heard. I find it incredibly moving, and it's also a song that instantly reminds me of Mira as well, and family and friends, and those that you love because I think it's Mira and I, if we have a shared philosophy is that life is made up of a series of moments. And the broad spectrum that is life, that are these moments that are captured in this song, I think certainly says to me how extraordinary life is and and how important it is to live it.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's I've you know I've been isolated before so I know I can survive it. So that side of it doesn't bother me, but also I do know that change is inevitable so no one can tell me that I'm going to be maroon there forever. Something may change. I'll probably cry a lot”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did, yeah. What did you do? I did an advert for some chocolates, and I thought it just would be, I know my dad, you know, he always would be flirted with the idea of the media, and I thought, well, let's just get them in. It was a two day shoot, and they turned up on the first day, early, obviously, and somebody came up to them and said Oh hello, you are and my mum said We are Sanjeev's parents and this guy said That's very good”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the fact that I'm married and got a family and all the things that they would have wanted to see, I've just about managed to achieve while they're still around.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're just jumping on a bandwagon. What do you mean? I don't think they've understood anything I've ever done, and they've done that thing that, you know, everybody else is laughing. Haha He's hilarious, you know. No, they are. They are proud, and I think that if there's one thing that I'm relieved and grateful for, it's the fact that, you know, while they're still around, they've seen me go from the dim dark days of my early thirties to the point that they can be proud of me.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David Bowie, Dave Fid Bowie and Life on Mars. Life on Mars, I think, is a great song anyway, but Life on Mars kind of epitomizes that moment of me kind of going Actually, do you know I am successful and that's okay. I may not be successful forever, but for now I am, and that's all right. You know, I don't need to be embarrassed about it.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They live in the present they don't they're not saying listen I might have a poo in about three weeks and I suggest you get some nappies in It's coming it's here it's now you know move quickly so”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that, again, your friends and your family are key in those kind of relationships are key. We're on this planet to connect with other people. We're not here to kind of live in bubbles. And through that, a little bit of therapy, a little bit of counseling. But I think after certainly getting together with Mira and I think getting married and becoming a parent certainly, the one great thing about becoming a parent of the many, many great things is that you are forced to live in the present, and it's the one thing that we're not socially taught to do. We read history, we look backwards, we have ambition, so we project forwards and we forget about the present all the time. And I think that once you have a kid, then”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that for the first half the career so far, I don't think I dealt with it particularly well at all. I just couldn't connect with this person who lived this lifestyle or met these people. I remember the first time I was on Parkinson, I was living in this dingy one bed flat in Islington, which had no natural light. I remember this lovely car picked me up, and I was on a show and I met other famous people and I got in this lovely car and I got dropped back to this flat with no natural light and I thought who the hell am I? Am I the guy who lives here? Am I the guy who does, you know, shows like Parkinson? So I found that really hard.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By letting her be the important one because she is more talented than I am. And I have to say that for legal reasons. No, we've always said that we're rubbish celebrities. You know, we're not particularly good celebrities. We don't really do the party thing. We don't really do the premiere's thing. We don't really do the spreads in the lifestyle magazines and all that kind of stuff. There's a certain responsibility, I think, that comes with being in the public eye. And I do feel happily a sense of duty towards that because it's also allowed me the life I lead.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The clash and London calling, I think this is a great record, and punk at the time, again, I was slightly too young for punk, and it just scared me. And I kind of now get it. And one of the reasons I get it is that I met and became friends with, alas for a very short period of time before he died, Joe Strommer, who was lead singer of the clash, and I think that we're in need of something like that. I think we're in need of a punk like youth identity and revolution. And also I think that Joe Strummer, who was one of the most generous people I've ever met, has provided me with what I like to feel is my most celeb moment, which was when I first met him I was backstage at some music awards. And basically he said to me in the moment he kind of came up and introduced himself and I was kind of, oh my goodness, you're Joe Strummer and he went, yeah, I know, I always have been. And he said, come and meet Johnny Depp. And that was just, I mean, I just thought, well, it's just not going to get any better.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not in that order, obviously. We knew that we were going to be politicized, and that would happen whether we did it or not. And so we thought, well, let's not do it. Let's concentrate on it being funny. And I think the fact that you had British Asians on screen who were reflecting a confidence within the wider community, I think that was a far stronger political message than us doing overtly political subjects.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well as long as I'm getting a job, I don't care. Yeah, they do say that. I think, I mean, certainly with the stuff that I've done, the criticism is without basis, simply if you look at the audience figures and, I mean, there are probably one and a half million Asians in this country. And”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they were, yeah, but I had the same thing when it came to the Kamars as well. I mean, it was rejected for about four or five years before anyone took it up. And that was just a bunch of people saying I don't get it. But I'm grateful that they at least gave us the opportunity to try. But yeah, I think we had to go through more than other people did.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but strange, you know, because it was the first reaction we got generally was Asian scared show Asians funny Known them to be funny, and I had to kind of, you know, retrospectively had to say, we've always been funny, we just didn't feel the need to let you know about it.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is a song that's become important for lots of different reasons. It may always be a huge Monty Python fan. And look on the bright side of life, I think is one song that epitomizes my journey so far, it's been that there's a kind of poetic justice to the fact that I've ended up in the West End, playing King Arthur in Montythan's Holy Grail musical spam a lot, and I get to sing this on stage, and every night when we get to this song, I have to pinch myself.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was the bleakest aspect of it, because at that point I thought I've got no conviction that I'm going to win this case. I may lose it, and I will work in a factory somewhere, and we'll be paying back a debt for the rest of my life. And that's, I was thirty at that point, and I thought that's it. That's what it's going to be.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you know it wasn't, but also I wouldn't have had a notion of where to direct it. I went down and picked up the dole money and came back. And that was kind of it. That was about as energetic as I could be.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would get up late, I'd have a fried egg on toast, and then I would go to the video shop, get three videos, sixty p each, come back, watch them back to back, my mum and dad would be back from work at that time. I'd have a cup of tea with them, and I'd then go to my room for the rest evening, come down, have dinner, go back to my room. That was it about three months. And”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I had to move back in with my parents, which at the age of twenty eight, particularly judging from what my peers were doing were doing at the time was particularly difficult. The one thing that I'm grateful for was the fact that culturally it wasn't seen by them as any kind of failure. So yeah, for about six months, no, for about three months, I was really depressed.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was I think it was about fifteen thousand pounds, which probably doesn't sound a lot now. Sounds out quite a lot. Well, again, looking back on it, a really interesting period, but quite bleak. I've got a series of marketing jobs, and the last marketing job I had, I had to sue them, I took them to court, sued them for breach of contract. They weren't paying me, they weren't paying me the expenses, and I was going to use my credit card to kind of keep the company going. And during that two years, I couldn't get any kind of job at all because my references were tied up with the court case and”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the great things I think about university is the broader education. One of the great joys of that was that classical music for me stopped becoming the thing that you marched into assembly to, and I got gained a greater appreciation of it. And Mozart, I think, is extraordinary anyway, but is requiems, I think, are phenomenal. And I thought it was just amazing to me that he could, someone who could write something as complex as the Requiems, could then have the confidence and clarity to write something so simple and so beautiful.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A Jenaba's clothes, and it was part of that mentality of we don't know when we're going to have to move and when the National Front were in power. There were times when you thought, well, I really don't know which way this is going to go. I don't know where the mood of the nation is going. You had the suitcase on top of the wardrobe, you grabbed that and you ran.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, and I think part of that, what helps is that, is finding other people, finding other people that share that experience. I mean, one of the things, certainly with good and gracious me, that bonded us all immediately was this kind of outpouring of shared experiences.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something. So, yeah, I'm very much embarrassed about the fact that my mother didn't wear skirts or that we had food that was very different. We didn't have boiled food at home. You know, what a godsend that was when I looked back on it now, but it took me some time to appreciate that I had this kind of fabulous wealth of experience.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I did, yeah. I was kind of embarrassed about being Asian. I remember kind of trying to toy with the idea. Somebody kind of said to me at the swimming pool once, and I asked him about nine or ten, and they said, What's your name? And I went Stephen And it was just so utterly lacking in confidence. If I'd gone it's Steve, they would have gone, oh, Steve, do you want to come play? It was a question mark at the end of it as well. Steve? Maybe Samuel?”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, we just figured that there was nobody out there that reflected our experience of being both British and Asian, and I think coming through a period of time where you'd had programs like Mind Your Language or Love Thy Neighbour until Death has to part, where the being foreign was the gag. In something like Till Death Us de Part, it wasn't, but to all intents purposes, if you were a minority, what you got called the day after the show was on were the names. Nobody kind of deconstructing what Alf Garnet was like and his ridiculous bigoted position. You got called the names.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah, according to my mum when I was about three, a rather frighteningly moment my sons indicated something very similar and he's nearly at that age, so So young enough to work on the subliminal marketing a little harder, continued.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but yeah, I mean, for me, that's the earliest indication of subliminal marketing. Except I said I want to be an actor, which my dad then said we pronounced it doctor.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I didn't do anything at school at all, and when I got to university to do a marketing degree, I did drama, free choice drama, so it was weekends and evenings. I just thought, well, if I can't be any good here, then there's absolutely no point in me trying to pursue it. Then I just kind of kill that off and focus on marketing”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe I can, and I say it empirically. And also this is pre the days of kind of polystyrene cups. These were the thin plastic cups that would change shape as soon as tea had hit them. So you would just hear in the darkness lots of people going Where are you? Where are you? In a similar accent. And then a bit of the screen would light up because it was a kind of sunny scene or whatever. And you'd catch sight of the going, you're not my family. Give me the samosa's back. It was just fantastic. It was like a fair. It was like a festival that was going on.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“in darkness, and you know, and I don't obviously mean this in a racist way, that one Indian family looks exactly like another in the dark.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a song from a film called Arnand, which was a Bollywood film. Every weekend we would go to Southall where there were the three cinemas that just showed Bollywood films, and thinking back on the capacity of the cinemas, there may have been five or six hundred, maybe seven hundred, but about four and a half thousand people would turn up to each of these cinemas to watch them, and Bollywood films were traditionally three hours long. There'd be an interval in the middle. But at the intermission, you know, two and a half thousand people got up to go and get their samosas and their tea, and there would be one small kiosk with an asthmatic elderly lady who would be serving. And so the queue would be a mile and a half. It would stretch outside the cinema. And so finally you'd get there and you'd order twenty teas and forty samosas to take back to the rest of your family that were waiting in the cinema. And you're coming back into a room full of four thousand.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I became aware this was slightly older than seven, but NF being painted on our front door and things like that, and the school, the secondary school I went to, was on the borders with Southall, and there was a major national front march through Southall around nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty. And it was very, very frightening.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Utterly confused, but the desperation to join in overpowered any sentiment of being an outsider in some way. And then I started to see the world slightly differently. I suddenly then the way that my parents were talked to in public by people, not insulting, but patronizingly, that suddenly became more and more clear. And then the kind of the funny looks and the giggles and all that kind of stuff, they took on a completely different hue.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This may have been something to do with Kiss Chase. Which is a shame it hasn't become an Olympic sport maybe by 2012 it could but when I was at school Kiss Chase you ran after a girl and once you caught them you kissed them and I was allowed to run after them and catch them but I wasn't allowed to kiss them and I couldn't understand why I just thought well there are guys over there who certainly smell worse than I do and they're allowed to join in and then if it dawned on me it dawned on me that this was about colour and I joined in anyway I joined in with the running and the catching. As a kid you're desperate to be part of something bigger, part of a group or a club or a niche in some way but that was the first inkling of kind of oh wait a minute I am different.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There will never be a greater pop band than the Beatles. They first of all they kind of epitomized a kind of optimism in Britain in the sixties. You know, this was Britain taking over the world again. These are perfect pop songs and they will be sung and they will be listened to in a thousand years time. It's just amazing.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It certainly helped, yeah, and I think actually becoming a parent myself, I think, probably opened a greater window on that because suddenly wanting to protect your children almost at any cost.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he finally relented and told me I then asked why he hadn't told me all those years before and I think what I garnered from the conversation was that the crushing nature of having to give up all your dreams or your biggest dreams, he didn't want his children to go through the same thing. You know, it gave me an idea of how desperately he'd wanted to do it. I know how good.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As well Oh workolic, yeah. I mean, it was beyond a kind of work ethic. I mean, one of the things that I only found out probably in the last five or six years was that my father's big dream when he came to Britain was to be a film director. And I remember as a child finding various a fan of prospectors for Pinewood Studios and another one I think for Twickenham Studios and as a kid I was just fascinated by these. I just, you know, they were all back projection and huge lights and all that kind of thing. And I never really questioned where they'd come from. But that's what my dad really wanted to do, and I think that that all obviously ended as soon as duty called.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was, I think it was even less than three pounds, actually. Yeah, he came with literally nothing, and the immigrant story, I think, is an extraordinary one for those people who did come here with nothing to actually have built up to anything, let alone having achieved status and become part of the fabric of this country, I think is an incredible achievement. And I think that I'm never going to achieve anything greater than what my father did.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a little bit of India that was existing in West London. You know, within the house my parents, my father came to Britain in nineteen fifty seven, my mum came here in nineteen sixty, I think.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Elvis Presley, I can have first heard Elvis when I was probably about four years old, and there was something that I really connected with, with his voice. Now at that point I didn't know what he looked like, and later on I saw the films and thought, wow, what an incredibly good looking guy, and I think this particular song, if I can dream, I think he never looked better. It was the nineteen sixty eight comeback special wearing black leather which I tried to wear once and is incredibly unforgiving. But I think this was his rebirth and within the decade he was dead.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a lot of it was to do with that. Yeah, I just thought, do you know, the best that I can ever end up as is a statistic, as a number of people unemployed, or the number of people who work in blue collar jobs or whatever. And that was, yeah, that was depressing.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I mean in a way it may feel like a very strange dichotomy, but even when I was quite young, I thought that I was destined to achieve something, and I suppose the most depressing aspect of that period of my life was that I just thought that the most that I could ever achieve would be mediocrity.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, at times it's felt like living someone else's life, but I'm not going to give it back to whoever owns it legitimately.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The fliers for the show had gone out and a couple of producers from the BBC had seen it, and apparently they said, well, look, this will probably be rubbish, but let's toss a coin and see whether we go straight to the pub or go there and then to the pub. And fortunately for us, the coin landed right, they came to see the show and came backstage and said this is the kind of material we're looking for for a new sketch show.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it was during a period of time where I was out of work and living up my parents, and being very depressed, I got together with a friend of mine, Nitin Sawney, who's a composer who had been at university with. We'd sort of done a double act thing at university, and we thought, well, you know, let's resurrect that. We had time in our hands. We were called the secret Asians, which was a pun and the comedy didn't really get a lot better than that. I can remember the show was called Popadom Preach.”
2008-10-12 · Desert Island Discs · Sanjeev Bhaskar · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source