Raul Kohli picks his comedy favourites

Fringe comedian Raul Kohli picks his Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites:

South Park 

Before stand-up, there were cartoons for me: The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park are the most notable ones.  As a child, The Simpsons was my favourite, as a teen, it became Family Guy. It was like the Simpsons but with a randomness I’d never quite seen before. 

But as an adult, it’s become South Park. Whereas the Simpsons and Family Guy have gotten steadily worse as the writers fail to understand how the Griffin and Simpson family fit, in today’s world, the South Park writers seem to perfectly understand where Kyle, Stan, Kenny and Cartman do. 

Every single episode seems to nail a very contentious topic, and if more people got their morals from South Park, the world would be a better place. 

Four Lions

Chris Morris only puts out genius. And this was genius. 

I was in my first year of university when a French Welshman by the name of Nico asked me if I’d seen Four Lions. Never heard of the thing. I wasn’t really into comedy or art as deeply then so I didn’t know who Chris Morris was either. 

We watched it and I have never laughed so hard. It’s as if the Inbetweeners were terrorists. Studying in Sheffield at the time, the places really meant something, being British Asian, the accents and characters (terrorism aside, LOL) really spoke to my understanding of who we were. How daft they all were, how ridiculous it all was and it just made terrorism feel so much less scary, the way he humanised these idiots: RUBBER DINGHY RAPIDS 4EVA BRO. 

The Thick Of It 

Just a brilliant satire from start to finish. Every character is nailed and obviously none more so than Peter Capaldi’s. Malcolm Tucker. 

Like Chris Morris with Four Lions, what Armando Iannucci manages to do so perfectly is satirise the ridiculousness of politics and the people in it so that you immediately realise it’s not this perfectly well-run evil conspiracy... it’s quite an incompetently run evil conspiracy with some psychopaths leading others who are thick as shit. 

Chris Rock: Bigger & Blacker 

This was the first stand-up special I ever watched. I was 9 or 10, it was a pirate DVD and I probably didn’t get half the references – but U understood Rock’s energy and the crowd’s reaction. 

I pissed myself the whole way through, and I remember vividly seeing his joke: ‘We don’t need gun control, we need bullet control. If bullets were $3,000, you wouldn’t have no innocent bystanders’. And I just remember thinking this was hilarious, poignant but also probably a decent solution to a complicated problem. That has gone on to shape a lot of my comedy to this day. 

Katt Williams: The Pimp Chronicles, Part 2 

I was 19 and just toying with getting into comedy, and this was a catalyst. 

I watched it in Amsterdam at a friend of a friend’s sampling some of that city’s finest produce – which Katt speaks of a lot in the special, and he hit home every single time.

But there was also brilliant political material as well as, like the use of language in justifying the Iraq war via the term ‘insurgents’ explaining:  ‘Brothers [he did not say "brothers"!] watch the news like "I ain’t got one insurgent friend. Kill all of them.:’

But there were callbacks and challenging the audience in a way I’d never seen. The African American community by and large thought Michael Jackson had been hard done by with the child molestation arguments, but Katt came out and shattered that illusion, and fought back against it with one of the most hilarious sets I’ve ever heard.

 I learnt a lot about stand-up from watching this. And for this special alone, to me he is the GOAT. This is hands-down my favourite special.

Comedy Central at The Comedy Store

As a teenager I used to stay up late on school nights and watch this. It was really my introduction into British stand-up comedy. It wasn’t even Comedy Central then, it was Paramount. But I saw legends like Jeff Innocent, Kevin Bridges and Jason Cook 

I saw Paul Chowdhry and Paul Sinha and realised people who looked like me could do this, and I remember this little thought in my head that maybe one day, I could do this.

Well, well, well, isn’t it funny how life works out…

• Raul Kohli: Raul Britannia is on at Just the Tonic at Cabaret Voltaire at 6.30pm during the Edinburgh Fringe.

Published: 15 Aug 2024