From Banker to Stand-Up Comedian: The Story Behind the Success of Eshaan Akbar

14:32Eshaan Akbar:Yeah.

14:33Olly Fawcett:Wow. what made you start what made me start was uh i think i was exhausted yeah is the truth right and

14:43Eshaan Akbar:exhausted by look i i i feel very privileged with how good comedy has been to me right and all the amazing opportunities i've had but it has been pedal to the metal since 2014 and i have been driving up and down this country and i've been very lucky doing tv gigs and radio traveling abroad it has been non-stop my when i look when i sometimes sometimes when i can't sleep i just scroll through my google calendar from 2014 to now that must be cool and i just see how the color blocks just get bigger and bigger and it just looks like chaos but the chaos reflects a growth in what I'm what I'm doing but I think what happened last year is I'd reached a really settled point in my comedy career and for the first time my brain had the space and time to go oh by the way you know the mum thing you you kind of just left it in the inbox yeah and I was like hey man you're you're right I need to I think I need to do something about this um because I was scared of derailing how far I'd come.

15:56Olly Fawcett:Do you think if we were doing this a year ago, you would be able to talk about it the way you are now? Yeah, I probably did. Because again, in those early years,

16:05Eshaan Akbar:I was able to be kind of dispassionate about, you know, I removed myself from the pain. But now I'm far more confronting with it because I've gone through therapy, have gone through therapy. but yeah it took me 10 years of distraction 10 years of doing comedy 10 years of trying to achieve something in this business yeah and neglecting a very core part of what was a trigger point for me doing it at all yeah do you think there are i know there's a few comics

16:39Olly Fawcett:that have spoken about you know then maybe not always the happiest people you know everyone's dealing with stuff right yeah unfortunately a tough world at the moment and it always will be in many ways yeah but do you think there are a lot of comics that are using their skill set of humor and giving joy to other people to maybe hide and and suppress a little bit like what you did

16:59Eshaan Akbar:100 100 i think for a i think it was um it was robin williams the late robin williams who you know he ultimately he he he ended his own life right and there's a quote from robin williams where he says, we try and make people laugh because we know what it feels like to be sad.

17:20Olly Fawcett:Yeah.

17:20Eshaan Akbar:There's a real depth to that. And I would say that a lot of comics probably do feel that way. That whole sad clown stereotype is probably true for a lot of us. Yeah. But what I will say is, certainly the comics that I've grown up with and my peers in this business, we are so aware of that,

17:38Olly Fawcett:that we're actually very good at talking to each other. See, I would not have thought you wouldn't be. Yeah. That was my next question is that you don't talk.

17:45Eshaan Akbar:Oh, and by the way, when I say talk, it's literally taking the piss out of each other's trauma. If someone's dad is dead, I'll take the piss out of that. They take the piss out of my mum being dead. Right. And weirdly, for a comic brain, that helps. Yeah. You know, it is much easier and has proven to be much easier over the years to when I'm with my comedian friends to talk about my mum as though she and her death as though it is not something that affects me directly. Right. Right. Yeah. So I try and find the funniest jokes to deal with that. but what then that does is because i've laughed and we've laughed it creates space in my heart my brain to go now let's talk about how you really feel about this and there have been comics that i've shared tears with there have been comics that we've had long phone calls on long drives we were jobbing comics up and down the m4 and the m6 or whatever really talking deeply about what we actually feel but the first 10 minutes is let's just get the jokes out first yeah yeah

18:51Olly Fawcett:Yeah. I mean, it's so nice that you have that. I think it's the similarities of the comic brain. I think that's kind of what resonated when you said that is that you probably couldn't do that with many people. The brain does work differently. And I want to ask you about that in a second. But it's so nice that you are talking in a way because we all deal with stuff and we've all unfortunately, we're all going to deal with with breathing. So in order to have that, it's it's super important. So let's go a little bit back to 2014, 2015, 2016. you said you spent a lot of time driving up and down the country yeah give me a real picture of what a week when you were busy when you got that momentum what did that really look like for you

19:29Eshaan Akbar:well in those early years most of the gigs i was doing were either unpaid or expenses right right expenses only expenses only and also there were wild definitions different promoters have different scales for what constitutes expenses really i mean did i drive up to manchester and come back for a fiver yeah yeah i did yeah did you yeah you drove from london to manchester for a fiver yeah fair could do a lot for a fiver yeah it's so it was like that you were you were just grafting away at it yeah and and what was the focus for you was it

20:08Olly Fawcett:to get comfortable on stage was it to test material was it to hone the skill like give me a bit more of what you were looking what was the satisfaction point because no offense it didn't sound like money was the satisfaction yeah no no what i mean also what was keeping you on that road

20:20Eshaan Akbar:so i am being on stage was never a problem for me because um in a previous life i used to be a bollywood dance choreographer sorry let's just hold on that's definitely fucking not in the notes

20:35Olly Fawcett:no it's not it's not there you were a hollywood bollywood sorry dance coordinator choreographer choreographer choreographer there is video evidence of this there is video evidence of it have i unlisted those videos on youtube yeah i have of course i have oh okay we're gonna do some research on that so wait just quickly tell me about that was this when you were 18 19 i started

20:56Eshaan Akbar:when i was 11 right and i finished when i was about 24 25 wow uh and we do like big performances at weddings and fairs and stuff like that and i'd perform and i'd dance i'd choreograph them

21:07Olly Fawcett:right wow oh you were choreographing and you're in them yeah yeah wow um and so big production right that's not it's not a small scale like in terms of like it's it's high energy it's intensity there's loads of people you know wow it's a lot of fun stuff have loads of colors you

21:21Eshaan Akbar:know amazing sometimes i'd dress up as a woman and perform wow yeah i loved it fantastic stage confidence yeah it's all right no problem yeah in my head and i think this comes from i think what i'm about to say comes from this underlying sense that as someone who grew up in a working class ethnic minority household that went to private school and then worked in banking I always felt like I had to be 20 % better than everybody else.

21:55Olly Fawcett:Right.

21:56Eshaan Akbar:Just to be able to be seen as equal. And so when comedy became a real thing for me to consider, the strategic brain that I had from my corporate days kicked into effect. And it said to me, you've got to be able to perform in every kind of room, in front of every kind of audience. Yeah. if you're going to be taken seriously as a comedian so to me driving up and down the country to buttfuck nowheres was the main driver for me was can i make people laugh in this room whether they are farmers in wales whether they're well-to-do retirees in york whether they're a young london light in manchester or hugely lgbtq in brighton am i able to make all these groups laugh and the answer is yes but it took me five six years of going up and down and really learning and saying okay what is the rhythms that these people like what are the kind of sensibilities these guys have and now i would say i am pretty much 99.9 confident that there isn't a room or a socioeconomic group or a credit rating group that I can't make laugh.

23:19Olly Fawcett:It feels like to me that some of the best comics, the intellect level to understand individual people, individual rooms, exactly what you just explained. I mean, your corporate career is incredibly impressive from just how smart you would have had to be to be allowed in those rooms. Do you think that it's also around like flexing the muscle, the mind muscle of constantly remembering those elements remembering how to fall back on nuances and connect with people is that what you were basically training yourself to do yeah for

23:51Eshaan Akbar:sure and i think like going through the corporate career i did yeah and particularly the kind of personality i am and was i mean my personality hasn't changed too much from my corporate life okay that's interesting in the sense that i stood out in a room primarily because i wasn't like everybody else i was able to build rapport with investors from around the world and those skills apply to comedy right right and it was just for a different purpose here i'm trying to get for example i don't know the ministry of justice in america where they've got you know hsbc on a deferred prosecution agreement checking to make sure that hsbc aren't going to launder money to drug cartels anymore they're coming to me the ceo and the chairman i might be the first or second person they meet but i've got to be professional serious but warm enough for them to go oh listen to what he has to say right because whether you're in high-end corporate or you're doing i don't know customer service at little right yeah the same rules apply people by people yeah that's it and so in comedy the art becomes i need the whole audience whether there's 10 people in a room or as there was after my first live at the apollo performance inst albans four people in a cinema room inst albans what sorry say that again i did after my first live at the apollo yeah live at the apollo performance yeah the next day i had a gig inst albans yeah and there were four people in the cinema room of 30 that's what we call a fall from

25:31Olly Fawcett:grace right at the night before i just done the hammersmith apollo jesus what five and a half thousand four and a half thousand flipping out that's that is the crazy thing i think like obviously i want to ask you about your worst gig and all that stuff but it's just like the for comics you just you know when you're a musician i feel like you kind of go through the levels right yeah you're when you're at arena level you don't really come back down unless you want to you know you want to do something private but for comics even you know whoever the best comic in the uk currently is they're still going to the smaller rooms right they're still kind of coming back down a level of audience if that makes sense yes ollie we are he said they whoever they are it's got me on the podcast come on bro who are they ollie i don't know i have no idea um um you is what i wanted to say i'm the only one who was available listen you're the one that said you did four and some almonds you know what i mean but tell it tell me tell me about i want to know the worst gig in the early days because there must be a great story there or some of the toughest gig when you started out was there a gig that made you not want to do it anymore ever there's never been a gig that's never made me not want to do comedy right because even in the gigs where i've

26:49Eshaan Akbar:died my inclination afterwards has been i need to i need to come back and fix that whatever that is do you know why you've died when you've died do you know the moment uh sorry flopped is probably a nicer word yeah well yeah i'm sorry it's only comedy parlors right yes and i would say that nowadays um i am a lot more confident at calling out the death on stage really oh i do all the time like if it's happening i will say something like oh you're not enjoying this at all we need to do something else and usually just it saves the gig it also makes it better as well yeah you lift up you know that's experience yeah but when you first start out you go i've got i've got six minutes and i'm going to say those six minutes and if you laugh you laugh and if you don't i'm just gonna get in the car and drive and think about it so in the early days the the identification and i think it's a price to business or whatever yeah the more knowledge you get over time the more precise you can become with what the failure might be right okay do you what i mean yeah i have a larger pool of knowledge yeah so in the early days i probably thought i was dying for a a particular reason but in hindsight you go actually was it would have been this yeah and i would say this and this is going to sound really arrogant 98 of the time it's the audience's fault interesting is why because uh they they aren't warm they haven't quite understood of what the exchange is as in they haven't been warmed up yeah they haven't warmed up properly or they they they this is just not something that they want or they expect something else yeah um and comedy differs from music in that sense where a couple of things one with musicians we're tapped into the rhythm of when they finish a song we clap even if the song and we know the words and we know the words that's the second bit right is more often that you see a musician that you like or they do something they can do a cover yeah they can do a cover before they do an original yeah right i can't go on but i'm going that it's it's not going to work they don't know why why are you doing that bit so the reasons why i've uh not been as successful or failed at a gig in my opinion um i've got better identifying what what those are right and the things that but But there's also the only time I've done a gig where not that I've not wanted to do this anymore, but not to go back is I did a gig in Kings Lynn.

29:29Eshaan Akbar:And if any of your viewers are watching from Kings Lynn, I have this message. Fuck Kings Lynn.

29:44Eshaan Akbar:Like and subscribe.

29:50Eshaan Akbar:Why? Why? Do you like Kings Lynn?

29:52Olly Fawcett:there's a story there right so this particular gig do you know what you're the first person to fuck a country or a county on this podcast yeah anyway breaking barriers in 2036 i like it this is the rebirth that we came yeah i'm here alienate kingling that was exactly what we decided yeah let's get it showed on let's fuck off kings lane on the metadata just delete kings They're gone. We're going to be up. Yeah, there's going to be a story here.

30:20Eshaan Akbar:What happened was, at this point, so in comedy, you start off doing open mic and they're kind of five to seven minute sets. Right? I thought it was longer than that. Is that what you get? Yeah, where you first start out. Fine. And then as you progress, you get to do what's known as open spots. Right. And the open spots are in the middle section of a comedy night.

30:41Olly Fawcett:Okay.

30:41Eshaan Akbar:Where there might be four comics and two of them might be middle spots or open spots. Okay. And those open spots are paid anything from expenses to 50 quid, maybe even 100 quid if you're lucky. Wow. Right. So at the time I was an open spot and I had just put together my first 10 minute set. Right. And I go to Kings Lynn and this is in 2016.

31:07Olly Fawcett:So you're like two years. Yeah.

31:09Eshaan Akbar:Two years in. uh i'm in kingslyn and the backdrop you need to this is the country is having a big debate about

31:17Olly Fawcett:brexit of course yeah yeah god that was 10 years ago that's mental yes mental isn't it mental it's

31:23Eshaan Akbar:crazy uh so i got on stage and as soon as i stepped on stage 10 lants got up and started walking out immediately and i was like oh lads where are you going you know all going for a piss at the same time you know something whatever i can think of and one of them turned around and said we don't want to hear what a p word has to say and by the way he didn't say p word yeah he said the word right and i've only got 10 minutes so i'm like okay i guess it's that kind of gig carry on with my set they leave it was so out of pocket yeah i was like right i'm just gonna do my set so i'm doing the set i got maybe two laughs and you know when i said like 98 % of the time it's the audience's fault this is one of those situations where the audience just they didn't want me there and I finished my set and the next comedian that went on who was headlining a guy called Gordon Southern brilliant comics spent his time between Australia and London he's got a keyboard and stuff and he started doing a routine about Brexit and this table of four average age must have been about 86 two older couples shout out stop talking about Brexit the black guy before you was talking about Brexit it and gordon goes black we've not what we are the black guy they go no the black guy before you and gordon goes what ishan and they said yeah and gordon goes well he's he's not black and they respond well he smells black fucking hell i don't even know what that means oh my god so by that point it was so out of pocket i had enough confidence to be like reach out from the side of the stage i was gonna say you're off the stage i'm off the stage yeah and they said he smells black and i went what delicious right and gordon's like i'm not doing this gig fuck you i'm not doing this fuck you i'm not doing this gig anymore he packs everything up we go to the car now gordon's driven me to this gig in kingslyn and it takes fucking hours to get there yeah that's far and his car is parked directly opposite this car of this two couples and the woman goes up to gordon and says how dare you call a woman of my age the c word i'm old enough to be your mother and gordon says well you you were being one that's why i said it and her husband said you're unto him you're un-english because you're voting to stay in the european union and you're driving a p-word home and gordon at this point is ready to punch i'm surprised and i said to gordon please get in the car because if the police come they're going to talk to me first yeah we got in the car gordon drove out four hours anyway

34:04Olly Fawcett:how were you in that car ride i'm saying how were you in the car ride i was

34:10Eshaan Akbar:i was my reflection on that was i i could not believe it was so over right and you know my dad when he came to this country he had to face up you know my dad's been stabbed by the national front three times he's been stabbed yeah three times yeah flipping hell and so I was a bit like Okay I guess we're going back to that now Is that what's going on? So I was just kind of really trying to wrap my head around Okay this kind of stuff still happens Around outside of London You're going to hear this kind of shit But Gordon was So enraged he didn't say a word to me For those four hours He was just so I don't think he knew what to say Yeah but going back to what you asked me that didn't put me off if anything it galvanized me because i thought to myself right if i can make those people laugh i am a good comic yeah right because at that point i realized that when i go on stage and there might be other comics who watch this that might get angry with what I'm about to say, but I'm going to say it with chest.

35:27Eshaan Akbar:When a brown man, particularly in England right now with reform and immigration, all these debates, or a woman or someone from the audience, when we go on stage to do comedy, it is an act of defiance. And so when I walk on towards the microphone, immediately for an audience, particularly when they're outside of London or in these rural parts that I go to, they're having i'm having to overcome a lot of their prejudices very quickly and i'm having to win them over in a way that a lot of other comics just don't have to and for me to find a balance as a comic to know the kind of material i do so that i don't sell myself short or sell my community short to do the kind of comedy that makes those that audience understand that they can relate to me.

36:19Eshaan Akbar:I'm one of them. And by proxy, when all that's said and done, that hopefully through my comedy, an audience can sit there and go, perhaps what I thought about these people isn't right. Because if I'm bad, all Asian comics are bad.

36:37Olly Fawcett:Right.

36:38Eshaan Akbar:If a woman is bad, all women are bad. But if I'm good, I hope they apply the same rules, which is maybe Asian comics are good. I think what they do is they go, oh, he's good. Not the other ones. I mean, have I had audience members come up to me and be like, you're all right. It's the other one I've got a problem with. Of course I have. What? Yeah, of course I have. It just, I just don't, it's crazy.

37:04Olly Fawcett:I just, I just can't believe you have to put up with that. No, it just doesn't make sense to me. Like I just don't. Yeah. I just.

37:12Eshaan Akbar:I'm like you. I didn't think it was so overt, but the truth is, you know, over the last 10-15 years but just standing up 10 people standing up and walking out and saying

37:22Olly Fawcett:that to you yeah for elderly people who've seen so much in their lives even wanting that confrontation i just don't get it like just how much of the you how much of that sort of situation have you really had to deal with in the last 10 years um it's not that frequent really yeah um i

37:40Eshaan Akbar:can probably i might count maybe five or six occasions where that's happened over the last 10 years yeah i remember i did a gig in uh kent somewhere i can't remember and my girlfriend at the time she came to watch the gig yeah and we got back in the car and she was so upset uh she said when you were announced on stage the two rows at the back stopped clapping as soon as they saw you they just stopped clapping and by the end they were cheering you on and she was angry about it my ex was is a is a middle-class liberal white lady right and she was upset whereas i was like sick

38:23Olly Fawcett:do you know me come on that means i'm good at my job that means i might make it yeah you know what i mean wow and for you you've explained obviously your your ex and forgive me i forgot the name of the other comic that was with you like people's reaction to that It feels like for you, you don't want to get immersed in their reaction in some ways. It's important for you to not let their natural state, well not natural state, their natural reactions influence how you're feeling in that moment.

38:51Eshaan Akbar:Yeah, not at all. And I think a large part of that comes from my dad. You know, really? My dad, like I said, a bit of a prey on his journey, coming here from Pakistan, doing the jobs he's done, working in the NHS for 35 years. my dad has been at the coalface of this country's relationship with people from South Asian backgrounds and he has kind of instilled in me this thing of well if you're good they can't say anything if you're good they just yeah they can't touch you you're untouchable

39:26Olly Fawcett:yeah and if you are better than them even better yeah and so i'm not saying that i'm better than most i'm not by any stretch but i know that what i've had to endure and the skills i've had to

39:44Eshaan Akbar:develop are subtly a lot different from a lot of other comics yeah and i feel very great weirdly grateful that i have that those gear shifts in me that's interesting you know like i can do gigs in belfast i can do gigs in liverpool i can do gigs in london i hate gigging in islington because they're all too bloody posh do my head in right i would much rather be in a white working class gig and have the time of my life yeah and the country will tell you me and them have nothing in common but that's wrong that's wrong yeah we do what's your favorite place to gig those places liverpool glasgow i feel like a lot of comics talk about liverpool and crowds in

40:31Olly Fawcett:liverpool like is that is there a different vibe there like yeah just for a start a lot of scousers

40:37Eshaan Akbar:don't see themselves as english right very clear definition right and scousers are like scousers irish people scots they're funny people yeah you know in the audience they're just a funny bunch so if you are funny they will shower you with love and adoration or maybe not oh they fucking let you know oh they let you know they've let me know yeah they've let some other comics know you know who you are they've let them know developing material in those early years yeah tell

41:12Olly Fawcett:me through that process like how did you hone that skill because i know you were writing beforehand with hsbc and you had other sort of exposures to developing out you know stories and narrative and and the speaking and the stage presence from the from the dancing times yes but for you like how how do you develop your material and how did you go from 2014 to where you are now can you can give

41:33Eshaan Akbar:me an insight on that yeah and i think a lot of comics will have different approaches to this yeah i have never written down a joke from a to c it's never happened as in like scripted it yeah i've never written it down right my process develops on stage right and it goes off the feeling with the audience so i will have say an observation and i'll know that the start of the observation is this and the end of the observation is this the funny bits before i get there is the b a to c fill out b yeah now what we talked about earlier in terms of reading an audience having an emotional intelligence and an appreciation for for an audience that is where i think my skill lies right is over time i've got better and better and better at uh reading an audience's reaction and trusting my brain and my comedy skill to keep honing that particular bit when i used to write stand up for a bit when i first started because i thought that was the way to do it i sounded like i was doing a ted talk because the way we write and the way we speak is different yeah and this is why i have so much i take so much umbrage when like people get quote unquote uncancelled when they get cancelled and the newspaper writes down the joke the comedian said no joke we ever say is funny written down it loses all context yeah it loses because of pacing yeah

43:11Olly Fawcett:delivery pace tone in the room yeah yeah it loses all context do you have to shift that pacing that tone that adjustment adjustment sorry every time you do the same set yeah that's you're literally you're you're like kind of fine tuning on the fly yeah yeah absolutely so very recent example of this

43:31Eshaan Akbar:I did I did a gig In Norton Keens

43:38Olly Fawcett:Right

43:39Eshaan Akbar:And Norton Keens is kind of midway point I'd say Between working class And upper class

43:45Olly Fawcett:Fairly middle class I mean a lot of development over there So there's money in there

43:50Eshaan Akbar:And they were slightly on the rowdier side Loved it That was Sunday On the Monday my next gig was uh soho house um uh muse in mayfair not mayfair house the muse house which is so exclusive that not all so house members are members you've got to be a member of so house for 15 years

44:15Olly Fawcett:right to be a member of muse house yeah right so very different very different vibe so you can

44:21Eshaan Akbar:imagine the kind of people that are there most people are in their 50s 60s incredibly wealthy while i was in the gig this woman was speaking to the host and the host was trying to guess where she lived all the host said was tooting he may as well have said that he killed her daughter she was so angry she was like how bloody dare you tooting tooting's quite posh tooting's lovely she's like bloody tooting so that that was the kind of gig right yeah i got it i chose slightly different material i chose material that in my head would make me sound a bit more intelligent at the top so that i could earn their trust so i could say the more depraved

45:09Olly Fawcett:i wanted to say to them ah that's you see you reel them in a little bit yeah right whereas

45:14Eshaan Akbar:at Milton Keynes it was just rowdy crowd work this that like you know and so I spoke a lot slower

45:21Olly Fawcett:in Muse House I pronounced more of my t's and when I was in Milton Keynes didn't really have

45:30Eshaan Akbar:that many t's do you know what I mean so we do do that there's this kind of um uh you've got to play

45:37Olly Fawcett:to your audience right yeah you gotta play to them a little bit in that way ever so slightly

45:43Eshaan Akbar:you've got to i think this part of the reason i do corporates and i do like tv is because i'm good at kind of going right there's no point in me being stubborn about my art i've also got to serve an audience yeah and recognize what it is that they will respond to yeah you mentioned

45:58Olly Fawcett:crowd work because i feel like crowd works become because of tiktok because of america like andrew shorts and matt rife crowd works become like the thing as a comedy approach you know it's a little less one-liners jimmy car style it's now like crowd work crowd work crowd even to the point where you're seeing comics like him really dive into that is crowd work lazy writing from a comic side okay great question uh crowd work okay crowd work is a skill yeah to be able to do it properly

46:32Eshaan Akbar:it's actually really hard and to be able to do it funny is is hard but i would say 80 to 90 percent of good comedians can do crowd work in their sleep right because there's no writing involved yeah it's just reaction and how you react is different for each comic uh some people are a bit more extemporaneous some people are a bit more rude some people are a bit more playful you just go to your personality what it shows is the truth of who your what your personality is yeah right so you might have i mean you pick two that andrew shorts and matt rife yeah both very different in their approaches to crowd work yes right andrew's quite insulting yeah matt's kind of charming yeah yeah a bit more considered and makes it and i think matt has extended that skill because he can see that there's a real appeal to it yeah so he does

47:28Olly Fawcett:really long crowd work yeah he goes on they're like 20 minutes long yeah yeah yeah because

47:32Eshaan Akbar:That's his cachet now, right? But most comics hate the fact that crowd work seems to be what translates online. And this is what I think is interesting as a comic. This is one of those jobs. There's two things I say about comedy, particularly now. One, it's the only art form in the world that rewards age and wisdom.

48:00Olly Fawcett:Age and wisdom.

48:01Eshaan Akbar:Age and wisdom. the older you get the funnier you get and the better you get interesting right doesn't happen with dance no doesn't happen with music no definitely happens with comedy which is why the best comedians in the world are in their 50s and 60s yeah bill bear louis ck dave chappelle you

48:18Olly Fawcett:know sarah silverman their experience they've done it before they've got insight they've got knowledge they've met everyone under the sun yeah got it so that's one second now because of the

48:27Eshaan Akbar:internet the nature of the offer has changed there are comics like me who have been in the business what now 12 13 years um who've gone up and down the country and around the world honing the skill who will not sell as many tickets as somebody who's gone for three years and has put some great clips out yeah and as a comic now we have to make a decision individually as to which approach

49:01Olly Fawcett:we go for do you think it's a decision or do you think you have to go with what's working

49:07Eshaan Akbar:i think it's a decision i think that there are some comics say like um a daniel kitson who will not be online, but has built up enough of a cult fan base where if he announces he's doing a show, people will clamor for his tickets.

49:24Olly Fawcett:Right.

49:25Eshaan Akbar:I think there's also going to be, and my brother's 10 years younger than me, I talk to him about this a lot, there'll be a section of the audience that will rally against wanting to watch comedy online. They'll want live performance. Yeah.

49:40Olly Fawcett:Yeah. and they'll value a longer form of comedy yeah so i think we're in a real transition period i know

49:47Eshaan Akbar:i certainly am i am very lucky with like the the list of stuff i've done on telly yeah and broadcasting it's all brilliant i'm greedy so i'm trying to build something online whilst keeping all my tv stuff going yeah but i'm at that crossroads so as i was saying to you before we started recording this whole year i've been studying youtube and youtube algorithms and i'm learning how how to use um fucking what's it called premiere pro yeah you know when i started comedy in 2014 if you told me i'd be subscribing to premiere pro i'd be like what the fuck just let me make people laugh you know yeah yeah but that's where we're at now so it changes do you think that the

50:36Olly Fawcett:the comics that are doing well on social i'm sure you know like let's say in the uk market just that there's there do you think that they are as good live as they are that you see on social some of them are so is it a bit like a boxing highlight reel it can be a bit yeah it can be a

50:53Eshaan Akbar:bit and i think sometimes what happens is audiences if they've if their first face time with a comic is just from say an online crowd work clip yeah and this is what the risk is they'll go and see that comic and when that comic does thought out stand up yeah they go that's not what we came for

51:10Olly Fawcett:that's kind of yeah i think is happening a lot right so they go i don't understand what this is

51:15Eshaan Akbar:and then unfortunately what happens is it puts them off seeing other comics who they might engage with online again they might see a clip of you doing crowd work go and see you and your shit life yeah right then they'll see a clip of me doing crowd work and they'll go well we tried that once so comedy as an industry is a really interesting place in terms of how audiences respond i mean i know some audience members who've gone to see comics that remain lameless that do huge shows yeah who they've seen online with crowd work clips and they've left halfway

51:50Olly Fawcett:i know a few of those as well yeah i've never i've actually never left anything halfway through because I just can't be asked to actually leave. But like, I've seen a lot of, I've seen quite a lot of comedy to be honest. I've also seen a lot of live performance because I love that whole immersion and that kind of thing. But it does make me think about this crossroads you're talking about because one of the comics that I used to love when I was a lot younger was Ed Byrne, who was on, he's coming back on, is the Mott the Week coming back? Yeah, he's coming back, yeah. And that's, my mum was a huge fan of his and we went to see him.

52:20Olly Fawcett:I went to the Apollo and saw how to process. And I generally thought he'd retired because I just hadn't seen him in the world that I live in which is social social yeah and then I see that coming back and those key shows those kind of comedy panel shows like you know celebrity juice is gone now not that every comment was going on but there's some key panel shows that have gone like Ed Tankettes is obviously still kicking but that the formats the way the audience are discovering comics I think is a very bizarre place at the moment because of the ones that are doing social very well at scale and a lot of content and those elements they're kind of finding success but actually and this is my question to you do you think all comedy can translate to non-live formats uh no i i don't think it can because here's the energy of a room yeah that stuff right i

53:07Eshaan Akbar:i love comedy yeah it is my favorite job i've ever had yeah i love the intricacies of it yeah

53:13Olly Fawcett:i i love the fact that this is my job i've not watched a comedy special from end to end you've never watched one no no because i would yeah it just doesn't translate

53:23Eshaan Akbar:you know no matter how well shot it is yeah me in my living room with you know popcorn and my balls in my hand watching who are you watching but you're watching what's the point i'm now over this bit it's just my comfort position you know how like women put their hand on their breasts yeah yeah i mean i could do that too presumably but that anyway too much information this is meant to be an innovative i want to know you're watching sorry i want to know who you're watching there's so many comics i've watched with my balls in my hand just so you know um but that's as funny as their writing is going to be yeah you need the audience yeah you need to feel the end you need a beer in your hand you know whatever it is so it's a very tricky thing and look i've got a comedy special coming out on youtube and I want you to watch it from end to end.

54:14Eshaan Akbar:Yeah.

54:15Olly Fawcett:Whoa, whoa, whoa. You said we don't watch them in front of end.

54:18Eshaan Akbar:You're not asking something of us. Well, hold on a minute. Of course I do. But the thing is, I'm doing that because I know this. I mean, that's a case in point, right? I'm doing that knowing full well that that's something I kind of feel like I have to do.

54:31Olly Fawcett:I'm not over the moon about it.

54:33Eshaan Akbar:Right. Because I'm like, well, people might see this and think I'm not good. Because it hasn't translated to them online in the same way. but i know i'm good you need to come and see me live yeah but then how do you get people to see you live they've got to connect with something you do online but then this is why you've got so many comedy podcasters building parasocial relationships right with the audience yeah who will then come and see them yeah but then the challenge there becomes for example when i was open i opened for mickey flanagan the first time in uh 2018 on a small boat in the embankment on a boat on a small boat on the moored boat and he was just doing a work in progress to I think there was 150 people right

55:21Olly Fawcett:sorry what's a work in progress is that the development yeah so when you're

55:24Eshaan Akbar:testing out the material blah blah and often when you're a bigger comic you need to do it you can't just turn up some people do but you can't just turn up to a club night because you're too famous do you know what I mean like he couldn't just rock up and do an open slot thing that you did

55:39Olly Fawcett:and that kind of thing right got you

55:40Eshaan Akbar:so it's to his fans and this was a real learning moment for me this is mickey fan again right and at the time he'd already had the record for the most number of shows sold at the o2 arena of any performer not just comedian of any performer of any performer wow right i didn't know that yeah that's nuts right he did his set before the set this guy was like in his notes stressing the fuck out.

56:09Olly Fawcett:What Mickey was?

56:10Eshaan Akbar:Yeah. Really? Stressing out. Just like you. I was sat there going, this is, is this what, okay, interesting. You were there crawling your balls again, weren't you? He was like, can you take your hands out? Take them out. So then, he finished the set. I mean, he smashed it. Destroyed it. Of course he did. He comes back, he sits down and goes, I fucking hate him that. And I said, why? And he goes, i don't know if they're laughing because they love me or because it's funny right i want the

56:43Olly Fawcett:material to be funny so in his mind if another comic went out and did it and delivered it word for word tone for tone etc but was a mickey fan again would they find it funny yes and that's

56:54Eshaan Akbar:when i had such a huge learning moment yeah where i went this guy cares about the jokes the art matters the fame is actually proving a bit of a hindrance where as a comic your currency is am i funny yeah no matter how successful you are as a comic the most exciting moment for a comic is we've got a brand new joke and you take it out onto the stage and you go i've got this idea do you think it's funny if you're famous a lot of the time the audience are gonna be like yeah yeah it's funny whatever you do is funny really we love you see i would have thought audiences

57:29Olly Fawcett:are a bit more judgy than that. No, not when they're your own fans. When they're like uber fans. Because, I mean, comics have super fans, right? Yeah. They have like pretty... Dad and brother.

57:45Olly Fawcett:Didn't even put Mickey on that list. So tell me about getting the opportunity to open up for Mickey Flanagan. Because you did that a few times. You went on tour with him, right? Yeah, I went on tour with him. So when I signed with my agent,

57:55Eshaan Akbar:we've got the same agent. right and that was just a very easy thing my agent to do to say he's doing a small show on a boat come and do it and it was mickey that said to me and i was only yeah it was 20 yeah 2016 2017 so you're three years in or something yeah wow and mickey said to me now how long you've been doing this i still about two three years and he goes well you should carry on because you're good at this did that mean something to you of course it did i'm like number one this guy's famous and I know that he's good at this yeah and he's told me to carry on yeah so okay I'm going to carry on and then when he went on tour in 2023 um and this is when he did his big return tour they did nine dates at the O2 arena for the Newcastle arena you know three in Manchester two in Leeds he asked me to open for him and it felt like such an amazing full circle moment yeah

58:52Olly Fawcett:when i stepped out at the o2 that's 18 000 people what does that actually feel like like try and give me like the sense of like what are you thinking about when you walk out because you're fine with the the number of people did that affect you no no but the scale of it was at first

59:12Eshaan Akbar:overwhelming really right and you mentioned we talked about pacing a bit earlier you've got you've got to change it in a room that big really like because as an opener yeah for an arena comic yeah i am the filler i'm the background noise right right i am the muzak in a lift because these guys they're getting their drinks they're finding their seats yeah yeah they're trying to sneak in a bit of coke wherever they can whatever it is that they

59:41Olly Fawcett:get up to yeah yeah sorry this is meant to be an elevated podcast no no not today not today not today you've lowered the standards yep i've accepted that seven minutes in okay i

59:54Eshaan Akbar:appreciate that um but in any case my job is to provide a bit background noise i would you know when you first step out you're thinking most of this audience don't give a flying monkeys about me right they're here to see mickey yeah um so there's a lot of noise yeah the scale of it the only way i can describe it is because it's a for a comedy show it's lit differently so it's like it's dark you can't really see that much of the audience right but you feel like you're standing almost in a cave and the cave is vast and you feel like you can hear yourself there's an echo you feel like you can hear yourself breathing weirdly yeah it's just so big and sometimes there are moments where when you're saying to a microphone you kind of don't know whether it's reached the back of the room back of the arena and then you get the bounce back have you got

1:00:56Olly Fawcett:in ears and stuff no you don't have in it no no so you're literally just hearing whatever else Yeah.

1:01:01Eshaan Akbar:Wow. And then the first laugh I got, I physically felt it. When there's 18 ,000 people laughing at the same time, something, and physicists who watch this will be able to explain this, there is a physical pushback of 18 ,000 people laughing at the same time. That was the first time. because I remember taking a step back going oh wait what was that the biggest crowd you've done today yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a big yeah it's the biggest crowd and my one of the things that I will hold dear to my heart and I hope that when I get old and decrepit and you know perhaps lose my faculties the one thing I'd never want to forget is every single one of those O2 Arena shows when I said I was wrapping up, the audience cheered for me to stay on.

1:01:58Eshaan Akbar:Really? Yeah. And there are so many subplots to that story.

1:02:04Olly Fawcett:Yeah.

1:02:04Eshaan Akbar:There is the subplot that I explained earlier about an Asian guy in front of a Mickey Flanagan audience, 99 % white. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. There's that. I'm an opener. No one cares. For me to be able to get their attention to the point where they go, don't leave. to me is something that I will always hold dear to me yeah the buzz coming off must have been

1:02:28Olly Fawcett:ridiculous yeah it was crazy like the did you blur out on night one like did you coming off

1:02:35Eshaan Akbar:like did it overwhelming I tell you what was I have such a clear memory of night one because I wasn't able to go onto the stage before the show it just didn't work out in terms of like like just get it just to get a sense yeah so he he announced i get announced on and i come from the back on the corner of the stage and the mic is here the walk i was like this is taking fucking ages and i was kind of like trying to pace it in a way where i looked like i belong yeah but i want to get there a reasonable time and not be out of breath at the same time no little you know that weird shuffle that people do at zebra crossings it doesn't make them quicker no if anything slows them down right so i'm basically kind of doing that and then i look up and all the lights are there and everything's dark and i'm just like i feel like i'm in a pipe dream just going i don't really i'm just gonna have to do my set here and just go through what i i'm gonna do yeah by the third show and also so sorry i finished that gig and this is what was weird it was exhilarating of course it is yeah i walked back to north gregnant station got on the jubilee line and went home and i remember so trippy i remember tapping my oyster card and thinking to myself i've just performed in front of 18 000 people Yeah.

1:04:10Eshaan Akbar:And I sat there and someone sat there from work and, you know, she's, she's opened up her emails or whatever. She's going through her bag. And I'm looking at her thinking, no one knows what the fuck I've just done.

1:04:20Olly Fawcett:Yeah.

1:04:21Eshaan Akbar:Like the, the crash and the confusion of it really threw me, you know. But in a way it's quite nice that.

1:04:28Olly Fawcett:Yes. It's quite, there's something quite kind of grounding about it in a way that also goes, do you know what? Like I can do it again tomorrow and I'm not letting it elevate me too much in a way. Yeah. You know what I mean? because not i'm not running away with this no because it must i mean that experience sounds incredible and it would be easy in a way i think for some people for that to ruin who they then become you know what i mean yeah you do that a few nights in a row the ego is probably like amazing but then actually when you go to do four people in stone albans you probably if you hadn't had that grounding moment as an element of being like i don't really know where i'm at anymore yeah

1:05:02Eshaan Akbar:you know and i think this is i'm not a particularly religious person right but the fact that those things like the St. Albans thing happened after Apollo the Jubilee line happened after my first night at the O2 it's like god knows that I have a propensity to maybe think too much of myself so he was very quick when he's about this guy this guy I can see it happening you know so it yeah I always remember that first show yeah but then after that you know big energy and really feeling up my element yeah and then just yeah you just adjust to it and you get used to it Did you do the Apollo before Mickey's openers?

1:05:39Eshaan Akbar:Yes. So I'd opened for, I'd done the live of the Apollo already, but I'd also opened for Mickey at the Apollo like six times or something like that.

1:05:47Olly Fawcett:Right. And did that, because that was obviously a third of the crowd is the Apollo. It's like five, 4 ,000 people. Yeah. So like roughly a quarter. Do you think that was really key in like gradually building yourself up audience wise? Yeah, of course. Is that important?

1:06:00Eshaan Akbar:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's important to like not be overawed by the scale of a room.

1:06:04Olly Fawcett:Yeah.

1:06:04Eshaan Akbar:but also learn pacing and learn how to just perform big because stand up in an arena is a tough watch have you ever watched stand up yeah yeah what do you mean it's a tough watch for an audience because it's a bloke and a microphone on a stage this big and i would say about 80 percent of them are watching on the big screens that are next to it right yeah so to fill the space with your performance and how funny you are takes a tremendous amount of skill and energy.

1:06:39Olly Fawcett:Yeah.

1:06:40Eshaan Akbar:Like Mickey's thing would be to walk. Yeah. He'd walk. God knows how many steps he did over an hour.

1:06:46Olly Fawcett:Yeah.

1:06:46Eshaan Akbar:Whereas I'm a lot more still. I do a bit of walking, but I'm also fat. So I don't want to expend too much energy. Yeah. By 15 of the set, all they hear is

1:07:06Olly Fawcett:amazing with with i mean you you sound like you must have met so many interesting comics great comics probably some bad comics along the way yeah what do you think is the factor that makes them stick around for a long period of time some comics disappear some comics you know only get so far in that sort of element even your exposure with mickey and i'm sure other comics as well why do you think they've been so successful is it natural talent is it never giving up like what

1:07:31Eshaan Akbar:are the elements i think that generation of comics the generation of comics uh who did live at the

1:07:38Olly Fawcett:apollo at a time where tv was really influential like 2010s right yeah yeah i think so there's a

1:07:47Eshaan Akbar:couple of things one right place right time i think for those comics right you know um tv mattered big time live of the apollo was a kingmaker if you smashed on live of the apollo a kingmaker yeah really if you that's where sarah millican and john bishop and mike jack whitehall like yeah that they did live of the apollo it was like bam they they can tore off the back of live of the

1:08:10Olly Fawcett:apollo i mean now you said that the amount of comics that i watched and only knew from that it's quite a lot yeah like i said jack whitehall because i remember that nando set that went yes semi-viral yes and that was it everyone knew who was yes you know yeah yeah interesting so now

1:08:25Eshaan Akbar:that doesn't have the impact anymore no right and you would hope that the clip that you get from life of the apollo goes viral enough for you to have a similar kind of uh result yeah but it is now a clip that is saturated amongst hundreds and thousands of other stand-up clips the only difference being you have the legitimacy of a live the apollo background to an audience that might be familiar with it that's one thing right the second is stickability this is a business where you've got to stay on the treadmill through the peaks and the troughs yeah right and because i said already you know comedy is uh rewards asian wisdom if you can stick it out eventually things come good i truly believe that right um but also now i think comedians have to be willing to adjust right you've got to pivot which is what i'm trying to do this year i've had a by by almost by most measures an incredibly successful tv career yeah yeah but that tv career doesn't translate to sales in alesbury i did 32 people in 160 seater well on my last tour really yeah and before i did this set i said to them listen i could do the hour or we could go to weatherspoons i could tell you the jokes around the table

1:09:57Olly Fawcett:it's amazing that you just don't give a fuck about it though like i just think that's so important of course that could really mess a lot of people up that that number and that statistic and walking out and seeing them etc you know what i mean yeah yeah what gives you that though why how do you have that mentality to it um that's a good question

1:10:17Eshaan Akbar:number one i'm quite a weird dude nothing really like affects me that much yeah um what i think and sorry to bring it back to that again losing my mom when i did like I think I've spoken about this somewhere else when we did my mum's funeral my brother and I and our uncles we carried the coffin to the grave and then the imam said to me and my brother right you two have to go into the grave now

1:10:53Olly Fawcett:into the grave

1:10:54Eshaan Akbar:yeah and we were like what? and he goes oh as the sons you lower her body into the base of the grave and it's wrapped in a shroud right and i climbed in with my brother sorry you're in the ground in inside the grave and you didn't know you were going to do no idea and there's about 600 people at this funeral wow just circled yeah right and me and my brother are standing there arms aloft and uh they lower my mom's body into our arms right in a shroud and we laid her to rest literally laid her to rest right and when you're looking at it from the outside and you're hearing this you're thinking god that's brutal but there's kind of nothing more beautiful that me and my brother are the only people alive including my dad who know what my mom's final resting place feels like right when you do something like that people not laughing at your jokes don't mean a thing yeah

1:12:06Olly Fawcett:so what yeah i can i get it yeah do you know i mean i can i can do this again yeah my ego is not

1:12:12Eshaan Akbar:hurt what and this is the thing about comedy as well as an art form it's really weird you've got to be egotistical yes to go i'm going to get micro and tail jokes but you've also got to have enough grace and lack of ego to go if they don't laugh it's fine it doesn't it's not a reflection on who i am yeah this is a job and i'm trying to get better at it and do you think that's an element

1:12:32Olly Fawcett:that maybe the comments that comics sorry that struggle get wrong yes it becomes personal it becomes i'm not good enough it becomes i'm never going to get you this right i'm going to come back as much as you say as the audience i'm never going back to that place yeah you know i'm never going to that size of venue or whatever it might be or that setup yeah or they get you know a load of success and then they go i should be getting more stuff yeah i can imagine yeah yeah you go well i've

1:12:56Eshaan Akbar:done all this yeah why am i not and look i've had that too we've had all comics have these conversations where you go i've worked so fucking hard i've got to this point why is that person doing this why is that person doing that but over time and very early on in my comedy career but also with that seismic moment with my mum, I learned that it is such a huge waste of time worrying about anybody else. It is such a huge waste of our time and energy because we live and die by our own choices and our own actions. You know, when me and my brother laid my mum to rest, she didn't take anything with her.

1:13:41Eshaan Akbar:It was just me and my brother. And I get to now determine and choose how I want to live the rest of my life. I could take this job so seriously that every fiber of my being is completely destroyed when a non-interested crowd at the Pleasanton and Islington aren't laughing at my jokes. I'm not going to see those motherfuckers again. i'll go do it again somewhere else it's not a problem do you think that's what it takes then just pure resilience yeah i think as a comic you've got to and i think luckily my peers and the comics i speak to they're all resilient and my closest friends my closest friends in comedy have either lost parents lost siblings or have very complicated relationship with very important people in their lives right and it's a common thread amongst all of them that those experiences made us so resilient that we end up becoming people might argue amongst the class of comics that are doing stuff you know yeah and so that's quite an interesting is it coincidence but yes quite an interesting thing to observe no it is where do you think the next generation of comics is going to come from do you think it's going to be a different game i think for the next five to ten years it'll be very interesting to see i think they probably are it's already happening where people who are building a following online are doing more live performance but i think the nature of what that live performance looks like is also changing there's more it feels like there's more pyrotechnics there's more like screens

1:15:36Olly Fawcett:do you think there's more acting oh yeah do you think there's i i feel that a lot in the kind of like what i've seen online like the newer the newer comics coming through there's almost like more sketchy yeah yeah yeah like kind of feeling a bit 90s 80s 90s-esque influence to stuff but it's almost like the security of a script the security of how much they can rehearse outside the crowd work stuff which i think is everywhere at the moment we spoke about but like some of the newer stuff like they the ability to be on the fly is different yeah that's probably true that

1:16:09Eshaan Akbar:mostly comedy yeah but also i do i do wonder whether this generation of comics that come up online whether they're going to redefine what a live performance looks like and i think that's going to be quite interesting to observe because to me every time i've when i've done when i've done a tour show more often than not the tech people were like we love having comics in because it's so easy yeah a couple of spotlights one mic bob's your uncle they're asleep in the corner yeah yeah but now comics are like well no i need i've got musical cues i've got a screen i've got this and i'm gonna do a green screen thing you know so it might change live performance but i still believe and this is the purest in me that stand up yeah stand up yeah the audiences that want that will continue to get it and it will thrive in a very different way there'll be an almost cult-like appreciation for that art form that art form and it would almost define itself about yeah as kind of a story now i'm very specific when i say to people i'm a stand-up comedian i used to say i'm a comedian oh right okay but so is munya chihuahua he's a comedian he's not a stand-up comedian i want to say he does some stand-up now yeah but he hasn't honed his craft in stand-up uh there's a stand-up comedian there is an online comedian there's a sketch comedian there is the storytelling comedian yeah they're all different stand-up is a crowd work comedian yeah there is right yeah yeah so now i think comedy has become

1:17:48Olly Fawcett:splintered in terms of definitions and that's gonna be quite interesting i think see where it goes so what have you got planned you mentioned a little bit for this year what is what is on the horizon for you where are you wanting to go well well do you know what ollie i've i've never set

1:18:06Eshaan Akbar:targets in this business yeah right it's all i've always gone with the flow and whatever's come my way i've tried my best to be as good at those things and touchable on the whole i've been good at those things but um my most recent appearance on love the apollo came out just last week yes That's on BBC iPlayer for whenever this comes out. I've got my own one-hour special coming out on YouTube. I'm filming QI again in a couple of weeks, which will be my, I think, eighth appearance. Amazing. Or eighth appearance, which is a bit of fun. I'm developing some shows to do online. I'm writing a musical.

1:18:40Eshaan Akbar:So those are the kind of things that keep me busy over the next year. And I hope that people see my stuff online. But the main thing I want is people to come and see me live.

1:18:49Olly Fawcett:yeah but and so you're you're currently you're not effectively touring at the moment you're just

1:18:54Eshaan Akbar:doing some shows yeah i was doing some shows out and about whenever i think of an idea i might just jump on stage and try and work it out just for the i love that fun of it uh but i'll i probably won't tour again for another year or so right i think it's nice to keep a bit of a gap yeah and i think you know comedy thrives in living i think a lot of comics they just do comedy and they forget that living is what makes you observe shit bad shit happens you can't just be on the road all the time yeah yeah yeah um so over the next year i hope to have some bad dates and bad sex make some bad decisions and talk about that a year later highly ambitious year ahead of you i like it comedy show in that yeah thank you it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show

1:19:36Olly Fawcett:you're our first comic you're at the rebirth but it's been amazing and congrats on everything because I have a lot of respect for the 10 years of really just never giving up on it. And I think your attitude towards life and also what you do is deeply inspirational. Thank you. And I appreciate how you get on with it. And yeah, best of luck for everything. I'm going to come see you live as well. Please do. And yeah, hopefully see you soon. Thanks, man. Lovely to chat to you. Pleasure.