It's A Funny Beeseness
Stand up comedy and chat in front of a live audience, hosted by comedian Wayne Beese with a new guest for each episode.
It's A Funny Beeseness
Episode 1 | Paul Sinha | Quizzing, Comedy and Parkinson's
Paul Sinha – doctor, comedian, quiz champion, and the man known to millions as "The Sinnerman" – pulls back the curtain on the hit ITV show and so much more in this laugh-out-loud podcast episode.
With trademark wit and refreshing honesty, Paul shares the fascinating path that led him from medicine to comedy clubs to television stardom. "I'm the only chaser that's not named after a sex toy," he quips, setting the tone for a discussion that's as thought provoking as it is hilarious. From revealing why producers actually prefer when contestants win on The Chase to explaining his stance on contestants taking the lower offer, Paul offers genuine insight into quiz show dynamics that will change how you watch.
Paul also opens up about his Parkinson's diagnosis with remarkable resilience and humour. "I'm very determined to live my life with a degree of good cheer and optimism," he explains, "main reason being I don't have a choice in the matter, do I?" This philosophy permeates everything from his approach to comedy to navigating fame and celebrity encounters – including the unforgettable moment when a fan confronted him in a comedy club for beating his dad on the Chase!
Beyond the laughs, we discover the fascinating story of Paul's family – his parents who immigrated from India in the 1960s and their shared love of Countdown.
Whether you're a Chase superfan, comedy enthusiast, quiz lover, or simply appreciate genuine conversation with an extraordinary person, this episode delivers knowledge, laughter, and unexpected wisdom. Tune in for an hour that will leave you eager to hear more from one of Britain's most interesting minds.
A welcome to you all, a special welcome to those of you in full-time employment, because you won't have a clue who I am.
Wayne Beese:Hello and thanks for tuning in to our brand new comedy podcast. It's a funny business with me, your host, wayne B. So how does it work? Well, we film two shows over the course of one day at the amazing Fitz of Laughter Comedy Club in Stourbridge in the West Midlands, in front of two completely different studio audiences. We have a comedian on as a guest for each episode, and in the first section they perform an extended stand-up set. We have a break and then, in the second section, I join them on stage for a Q&A and a chat about their life. The audience get the chance to ask questions as well, and then we edit it all into a great little package that you are watching or listening to today. So thank you for your support and enjoy Cheers.
Paul Sinha:I'm a gay man and I'll say this now. It's not a bad life being the only openly gay British Asian qualified doctor and competitive quizzer with a Parkinson's disease on the United Kingdom. So allow me to introduce myself. Yep, my name is Paul Sinha. That's not how I'm better known. I'm better known as the Cinema. I'm better known as the Cinnaman Hooray. Enduringly popular ITV T-Time quiz show, the Chase. Thanks for cheering the nickname. It's a shit nickname. It means fuck all. I don't mind. I've kind of grown into the role now because I realise I should be grateful for not having any of the other Chase nicknames If I ever feel I've dodged a bullet. If you don't know the show, if you've never seen the show, there's some fairly smug know-it-alls sitting at the top of a ladder and their nicknames are based on pantomime villainy the Governess, the Vixen, the Menace, the Beast, the Dark Destroyer. I'm the only chaser that's not named after a sex toy.
Paul Sinha:For that reason I am the only chaser, that's not named after a sex toy.
Paul Sinha:I've had tabloid journalists deliberately come to my gigs to try and find something that I'm saying that they consider to be objectionable and turning it into a clickbait headline. I hosted one of the biggest incidents of my life last year. I hosted the Attitude Awards, attitude being Britain's biggest gay magazine and to give you an idea of how big the awards were, the first award was presented by Ed Sheeran to Elton John and I was the host of the awards and I had to do 10 minutes at the top and yeah, two days later the tabloids were running the headlines.
Paul Sinha:Paul Sinha takes aim at fellow chasers saying they're all named after sex toys and they've taken a gag that I'll be doing at every gig with no problems whatsoever, and trying to dramatise it as I took aim at the chasers. I'm not taking aim at the chasers, I'm just saying the governess, the vixen, the menace, the beast and the dark destroyer also names the sex toys. Yeah, exactly, we've been on an ITV daytime quiz show once a week. It does mean that the tabloids are always poking and prodding for an angle and I won't give them one. I won't cooperate with the tabloids, but especially the sun. I will not talk to the sun Again. No choice in the matter.
Paul Sinha:I'm a lifelong Liverpool football fan, but matter, I'm a lifelong Liverpool football fan, but furthermore I never want to see the headline Sarky Darky now has Parker.
Paul Sinha:I'm going to remove that line of mischief away from the scheming glass of tabloid journalists. Thank you very much.
Paul Sinha:I'll say this now even though I'm a lifelong Liverpool fan. Even if I wasn't, I wouldn't talk to the sun. Such is my belief that their relationship with the culture and society of this country is toxic in the extreme. For me, the only positive thing they ever listed was accidental, and that was my dad's other joke. Back in the 1990s I was having dinner with my folks. We were discussing the British press. 1990s I was having dinner with my folks who were discussing the British press, and I pompously announced at the dinner table that I would only have used the sun to wipe my arse with, to which my dad replied would you use the mirror to check? You'd done a thorough job.
Paul Sinha:It's nice to see you again. It's delightful to be back, and you've got Prosecco this time.
Wayne Beese:Prosecco, yeah, there was water this afternoon but it was a three o'clock show and I've stuck with the water and he's got fucking Prosecco. I wasn't offered any Prosecco.
Paul Sinha:Let me tell you about the Prosecco. So a few years ago I had a show where I talked about the Christmases at the family home. We always have Prosecco and the joke I had was I've been in love with Prosecco at Christmas ever since my sister first rang me up and said it's your job to order the champagne this Christmas. And I did that joke on stage here and ever since Trina, who runs this gig, has given me a bottle of Prosecco every time. So I'm trying to do justice to Trina's vision, absolutely.
Wayne Beese:Your honour. Thank you for doing the first one. You were my first choice, so I'm glad that you're doing it.
Paul Sinha:Of course I was choice, so I'm glad that you're doing it.
Wayne Beese:Of course I was, and I was thinking. I was thinking before. I was probably putting the questions together. I was thinking about the first time we met, which is going back um eight years now. We met in a lovely town some of you will have heard of, called Stairport, on seven Stairport's in shit. Um not Not heard of decimalisation or cards or anything still trading fairground tokens. What a lovely town. We were both gigging there. We didn't just randomly meet on the fair or anything like that. That would have been a really good story to start with, wouldn't it?
Paul Sinha:I've certainly had that dream.
Wayne Beese:We'll talk about that later. So, yeah, we were both doing a gig at the Stourport Civic Centre. I was emceeing it and Paul was headlining it. That was the first time I'd ever met you and, yeah, you're fantastic. You're lovely off stage, fantastic on it. But what struck me is, without any offence to anyone here, what struck me is it was the oldest audience I'd ever performed in, by some distance until tonight, sorry until tonight yeah, god bless you.
Wayne Beese:This is why you shouldn't get involved. No, but they were genuinely an older audience than I'd. I'd not obviously been doing comedy that long and I just thought it must have been an offshoot of people who'd seen you on the Chase and then thought I'd like to come and see him do stand-up. But we've heard you talk quite openly about your sexuality and you certainly do that a lot on stage now. I just wondered if you'd had any kind of negative reactions from that kind of generation that perhaps don't understand it as well as other people, and whether you'd had to kind of justify whether they were surprised, I guess, at what you were talking about.
Paul Sinha:Well, I think it's a bit of a myth, possibly, that old people don't understand sexuality.
Wayne Beese:Bit of a stereotype.
Paul Sinha:It is a bit of a stereotype because they've been at it for years. I mean, literally, that's Wayne Rooney's life. Honestly, you can't spend your life worrying. When I look at an audience, and especially if they come to see me do a solo show or something solo, I think I don't care how old you are. If you come voluntarily to come and see me. You're a hero in my eyes. I don't care, and I've realized over the years that that attitude has served me well, because you never quite tell.
Paul Sinha:The first time I went to Edinburgh to do a solo show in 2004, I did a show about how much I hated the film Love Actually. Now, it wasn't a particularly out there show or in terms of material, but I was still at that stage where I was terrified of old people thinking that I'd be what they liked. And this woman, who must have been in the 70s, came up to me after the show and just went. Thank you, I cannot tell you how much I fucking hate Love Actually and it just made me realise. You know, comedy has to look out and go. It's got to be for everyone. If comedy can't be for everyone, then what's it doing? It's got to be for everyone, absolutely. And it turns out.
Paul Sinha:The toughest thing about being a single gay man for count them 23 years was my friend weddings where every wedding that went to, it didn't matter who I was to the bride or the groom. When I look for my name on the seating plan, it was there on the table that I called miscellaneous. Every contemporary wedding now has a miscellaneous table containing 8-12 people sat around who have literally no idea who anybody else at that table might be. You have no option but to drink your way out of it as you realise that yet again they've sat you next to the other gay man at the wedding. We never have anything in common. There's always me who has to break the ice by praising him on conducting such a beautiful service. Who's the vicar? We can move on.
Wayne Beese:If we start on the quizzing side of your life because obviously that's what most people would have how they would have discovered you in the first instance? How old were you when you first started expressing an interest in answering questions and doing quizzes and things like that?
Paul Sinha:About seven or eight. My very middle-class family, very academically driven family, and I was a very academically driven kid and after a while my mum and family and I was a very academically driven kid and after a while my mum and dad and their friends realised there's no point to buy me fun stuff. I wasn't a fun kid. They would buy me books of facts and that's how they kept me quiet. I think every Christmas for about four years I'd get at least three Guinness books of records each year from people who thought they were the first to come up with the clever idea of giving me a Guinness book of records.
Paul Sinha:I was a nerdy kid and I remember being into facts from about seven or eight years old and I represented my junior school, my senior school, my medical school. But more than that I wasted years well, not years. I wasted days at medical school just missing lectures to go to pubs in South London, put a pound in the quiz machine, walk out with 10 pounds and turn to an increasingly irate landlord who hated me because all I did was buy a Diet Coke. So I was quizzing all the time and then I became a doctor in 1994 and after that it kind of came to an end because real life doesn't allow you time to be interested in quizzes.
Wayne Beese:I remember talking about that here. I remember the 1990s. I was kind of I suppose I was a teenager then and obviously who Wants to Be a Millionaire came out around that kind of time and was on every night of the week and I remember there being a real explosion and a real interest in quizzing in general. You know you could go to a pub quiz here every night of the week really if you wanted to. What's the best pub quiz name that you've ever heard?
Paul Sinha:Well, that's easy, because I heard a team's name once and they brought the house down and they got a standing ovation for the rest of the pub and the team name was Halalal. Is it meat you're looking for? I ought to point out at the moment that probably wasn't their work. I think I think bill bailey maybe the first had written that joke. Yeah, I think I've heard him say that. Yeah, um the best.
Wayne Beese:The best one I heard was we used to go to a. Some of you might remember we used to go to a quiz at bar Edge on the waterfront, which was every Sunday back then, and someone came up with a name there. I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
Paul Sinha:I think you'd say that's a very good philosophy for life.
Wayne Beese:Yeah yeah, absolutely.
Paul Sinha:I've been to Kidderminster.
Wayne Beese:I've been to Kidderminster talking about the eggheads that we mentioned briefly there again, I was reading in your book. It's really interesting your idolisation of Kevin as an unlikely idol really kind of growing up. I know you're a big fan.
Paul Sinha:for a start, do we all know who we're talking about when we say Kevin Fumekes? So Kevin Fumekes was the original superstar of quizzing. He still holds the record for the highest score in Mastermind of 41. He's won like five or six world championships, many, many more British championships. He's considered the traditional G-O-A-T of quizzing. Whether he is anymore or not is a moot point and something that can be discussed later. But the thing about Kevin is, you meet him and he's completely normal and modest. Not all of them are. No, no, not all of them are.
Wayne Beese:Who isn't?
Paul Sinha:And nowadays, to be honest.
Wayne Beese:My money's on Olaf. Oh, Olaf yeah.
Paul Sinha:But the thing about Kevin is he does it all from books and that's why he's not as good as he used to be, because the world has changed now and there's so much information online that you can that you can access through chat, gpt or Wikipedia or whatever. But Kevin doesn't do that. He reads newspapers and books and books and newspapers. That's all he does, and on the back of that he became the multiple world champion just from reading books and reading newspapers. And I know that he's not.
Paul Sinha:I know that he's unusually gifted because the World Quiz Championships takes place in the first weekend of June Since about 2016,. There's an annual quizzes holiday that takes place in the middle of May. I've been on that holiday with Kevin many times and he sits there and drinks by the pool and doesn't do any work whatsoever, and then three weeks later we'll turn up and just win the world championships. But I was revising by the pool, you weren't doing anything at all. He just knows what he knows and it just sticks in his head it was interesting, your first world cuisine championships where?
Wayne Beese:where was that?
Paul Sinha:it was in ludlow, of course, the glamorous location yeah yeah was there ever any opportunity to become an egghead before the chase yeah, I appeared on a show called are you an Egghead in a second series and I was up against a guy called Rob who worked at the Natural History Museum and wasn't a quizzer. So I've actually got a chance to win a quiz show here and you do rounds where you pick up eggheads and they can help you at the end. And I picked up all five eggheads. So I started with five eggheads and he started with nil in the final round and they didn't give me a single correct answer between them. I was quite serious.
Paul Sinha:And I think they were fixing it for me to win and just didn't really Imagine. You're a professional comedian, a Liverpool fan and a cricket aficionado and the TV round. You get two questions on TV comedy of the 1990s and the sports round. You get a question on Liverpool FC and test cricket of the 1950s. You start to think things are a bit suspicious and you start to go. I think they were trying to fix for me to win and I just managed to fuck it up anyway, I was just going to bring.
Wayne Beese:Obviously people will know you from the chase, but you did appear on Eggheads and a number of other TV quiz shows before that, with mixed results. Do you want to tell us about that? Well, not really mixed results.
Paul Sinha:They were all disastrous. Well, I was being kind, but yeah, the first quiz show I ever appeared in was in 1990, and that was all right. That was all right, as in we played. Ok. There was a show on British Sky Broadcasting called Intellect, which was like University Challenge, only 150 times more boring. In fact, round one was a written paper that you sat in the afternoon and then in front of an audience you'd discuss your answers to the written paper. Yeah, what amazing entertainment that was. We reached the semi-finals and that was good fun. Then I did the weakest link and I was just. I just didn't know the answer to any. I assumed I was going to win, because I love quizzes so much. I just got asked a load of questions I didn't know the answer to and I was voted fourth off. Mastermind in 2007. 2008, I came fourth out of four.
Wayne Beese:Just say you came fourth, I'd leave that. That'd be it.
Paul Sinha:But I did get 25, and nobody's ever got 25 and come fourth since. So I couldn't help thinking I was a bit unlucky with my fate in that University Challenge to Professionals was the one that changed my life. So I was in a team of comedians. We got battered by the Ministry of Justice, and the pain of that defeat is what persuaded me to take quizzing seriously. So it was after that that I decided I'd get involved in the world of quiz and try and get better, and being a comedian with time on my hands when I had time to learn stuff, I improved very, very quickly.
Audience Member:So if we take the question from that lady, it was just to see what your specialist subject was on Mastermind. It was just to see what your specialist subject was on Mastermind.
Paul Sinha:So my specialist subject on Mastermind was the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Now, there was a definite reason for this, which was he died at the age of 43 and very little had been written about his life. I did actually pick a good subject. I think it was possible to learn everything that I could have possibly been asked, but they managed to find three that I didn't know. But I have no regrets, and his life is a genuinely amazing story, the subject I know most about. If someone said to me right, you have to do mastermind now, what subject would you do? Would either be number one hits of the 1980s or British track and field athletics 1980 to 1996.
Wayne Beese:Those were the subjects I think I know the most about now. So two of my dad's mates in that kind of area were kind of they were going to pub quizzes kind of every night of the week and they were doing all the kind of work in terms of learning all the stuff and they were spending £100 a week, both of them each phoning up to try and get on to who Wants To Be A Millionaire. That was where they spent a lot of their time. Did you ever try? I know the two of the eggheads went on it, pat and Judith, and won a million pounds.
Paul Sinha:And the late Dave Rainford as well.
Wayne Beese:Yes, did you ever try to get on the programme?
Paul Sinha:I was so lazy that anything that involved actually writing out an application form I had no interest in doing whatsoever. I think life is so easy now. Everything's applied for online. But there used to be a time where to apply for a TV show, you had to write a whole thing, write a hundred words about yourself. Find an envelope, go to the shops, buy a stamp, put the stamp on the envelope, find a pillar box, put it in and then keep your fingers crossed and pray that one day a lucky postman might deliver it correctly. I never got anything done back then. I was so lazy I never actually physically applied for anything in particular. You regret that.
Paul Sinha:Yes, I definitely regret it with who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It used to drive my mum and dad mad Because they could see their kid, you know, being good at general knowledge and didn't understand why I was so lazy that I wouldn't fill out an application form to get on the show you might not have had to be here tonight if you'd have gone on there and done. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Who knows, really I'm?
Wayne Beese:glad you didn't and I'm glad you're here, obviously.
Paul Sinha:I wouldn't want to win a million if it means missing this gig Exactly. And this woman is staring at me with a frosted intensity I find quite unnerving and uncomfortable. And eventually, after 15 minutes, she breaks her silence with these words Excuse me, has anyone ever told you you look a little bit like that guy off the Chase. Suddenly I've got a moment to exercise my right to have some fun. Well, madam, it's funny, you should ask. But do you happen to mean the former doctor turned comedian, born on the 28th of May 1970 in Luton Industrial General Hospital in Luton in Bedfordshire, who is openly gay, has Parkinson's disease and is married to an asexual quizzer called Oliver, and she looks genuinely gobsmacked?
Wayne Beese:She said oh my God, I mean, with knowledge like that, that you can go on the show yourself and so tell us a bit about how the opportunity to become a chaser came about, because obviously you weren't one of the originals. You were recruited, I think, in series two or series three, series four, series four. So you came, came along later on. So just tell us a bit about how that. You weren't one of the originals. You were recruited, I think, in Series 2 or Series 3?, series 4., series 4. So you came along later on. So just tell us a bit about how that came about.
Paul Sinha:Well, the story of the chase is Series 1 was Mark and Sean. Series 2 and 3 was Mark, sean and Anne. In October 2010, I got out of bed and got on a train, went to Oxford University to take part in a very dull buzzer quiz tournament and in the morning we played against a team called I can't remember if it was the D Listers or the Z Listers, but it was an ironic name because it was Mark, sean and Anne from the Chase and CJ Damoui from Eggheads. So I'm against three great quizzers and CJ Damoui from Eggheads and, as massive luck would have it, I chose that game to have a really, really good match-winning performance in the buzzer quiz. And I remember Sean Sean, who's an incredible mountain of charisma, just shaking my hand afterwards and just saying oh, what a performance mate. And I was like ooh, and he was so nice.
Paul Sinha:And it turned out that three months later itv told them they needed a fourth chaser and they were disappointed with that sharing. We were always disappointed when someone joins because it's reducing the share of the money. That that's just. That's just the very nature of the show. But we know that the show needs to move on and more evolve and we're aware of that, and so when mark and sean and ann were told they had to have a fourth chaser, they said pick paul, there's a guy who's a stand-up comedian who seems to be really good at quizzing. And so they said uh, mark sent me a message on facebook saying I think you should know that we all just recommended you to be a chaser. I sent an email to the team. They sent me an email about saying I think you should know that we all just recommended you to be a chaser. I sent an email to the team. They sent me an email back saying we'll bring you in for an audition.
Paul Sinha:I went for the audition. We heard nothing for three weeks. Then, three weeks later, my agent got a message going he's clearly got very good general knowledge, but we're not sure he's funny enough for the show. And I can honestly say that is the most brutal heckle I've ever received To be told as a professional comedian that you're not funny enough for a show on telly that isn't actually a comedy show. But luckily my agent said you're wrong, come and see him do comedy in his home environment. And the big difference was the first audition. It was all fake. It was all production team pretending to be contestants, whereas in the second audition it was all previous contestants and that's where I was able to use my skills as a comedian to be more natural and make people laugh. And the second audition was like a million times better than the first audition and I started in 2011. That's how it happened, brilliant. Obviously, I times better than the first audition and then I started in 2011 that's how it happened, brilliant.
Wayne Beese:Obviously I don't expect you to go into details of what you get in terms of earnings and stuff for the chase, but something I've always wondered is um, do you get like a bonus if for winning the games, like if you win?
Paul Sinha:I hear that quite a lot, that question, and my answer is basically if I got a bonus every time I won, why would I be in Stourbridge on a Sunday?
Wayne Beese:night. You've already said it's the dream.
Paul Sinha:Not only do we not get any bonus, but at some level I don't think they want us to win. The thing about the chase is they've got a budget for the series they can't go over. Well, they can go over that budget because they're insured, so they can go over the budget and it's fine. But they can't go over. Well, they can go over that budget because they're insured, so they can go over the budget and it's fine. But they can't go massively over the budget. But within the budget, they want episodes with drama and moments that people talk about. They want the show to go viral and that's most likely going to happen if we lose. So, especially if we lose and they didn't see it coming they saw the team and went. This team's got no chance. We end up losing. We're crying our eyes out at the dressing room going what happened there. They're metaphorically toasting each other going. That episode is going to be brilliant.
Paul Sinha:They'd rather get a bonus when we win, they'd rather we lost. So it really amuses me when I see people online going oh, it's a fix, it's a fix, the chase is fixed for the chases. It's fixed for the chases. Trust me, it really, really isn't. If we lose, the team are absolutely delighted and it still.
Wayne Beese:It still hurts you when you lose a game. Oh it's it's agony.
Paul Sinha:Even the best thing to do is to lose to a team that are really good and you've played well, but unfortunately that life's not as simple as that. If you're not, if you're not quite there because you're tired, or you've had a stressful day the day before, or that a team has outperformed what they you thought they were going to do in the final chase, and suddenly you're really irritated by the situation you find yourself in. We're all human beings and the thing that when people say how did he get that wrong or how did he get that wrong, it's because we're human beings. None of us get every question right. We're thrown at us and we never get anything wrong deliberately. We always try, we always try, but try absolutely 110 percent our best, and so therefore, when we lose, we want to be against teams that we thought deserved to win. If we lose against a team that we didn't think deserved to win, it hurts.
Paul Sinha:It really hurts.
Wayne Beese:And is there any ones that stick out to you where you've given an answer and thought why the hell did I say that? What was I thinking? Any particular ones?
Paul Sinha:The one that I get asked about a lot. I don't know how people remember these things, but there was an episode when I was asked which of these does andy murray keep tied to his shoelace for luck during a game of tennis? I can't remember the wrong. One of the wrong answers was but the other two answers were wedding ring and piece of haggis. And I looked at the question. I went well, there's no way he's going to attach a wedding ring. That that's too valuable. Why would he risk losing that?
Paul Sinha:So I pressed piece of haggis, never stopping to think how do you attach a piece of haggis over a three or four-hour game on centre court at Wimbledon. And that answer actually lost me the whole thing because it enabled the guy to get back and he was their star player and as a result, they beat me, whereas if I'd got it right I'd just pressed wedding ring. So that's the one that I remember most of all. That's one of the things about the chase is you don't necessarily know until you watch it back. But the crucial answer that was wrong was made halfway during the episode there's always often the turning point of the game rather than in the actual final chase and is there any that stick out that the, a contestant that's been against you, has said where you, where you've thought what the hell are you thinking there?
Paul Sinha:a lot but, but, but the biggest one, because sadly the person the person that, uh, the the contestant answered passed away recently was somebody in the first. The cash builder was asked which former British prime minister had the middle name Hilda and answered John Prescott. And for me what was really lovely is that John Prescott at the time was watching it and he actually tweeted. I can't believe that anybody thought I was ever Prime Minister.
Wayne Beese:There are some games on the chase, and particularly on Beat. The Chase is the newer concept where you snatch money away from contestants, really with seconds to spare, where they may be thinking they've got it, and then you snatch a last gasp win does. Do you take delight in that? Do you get upset with that? No, no absolutely.
Paul Sinha:I can't speak for the other chases, I can only speak for myself. I don't want to get to the last second. I realize that sometimes, with the drama of the show, that's what has to happen, but that's not my ambition. And to give you an example that illustrates my emotions, about seven or eight years ago I was playing against a team and they were playing for about £60,000. And they got about 21, 22, so clearly they deserved to win.
Paul Sinha:With two seconds to go, I was asked a question that started. Joe Dury and I shouted out tennis and they had to have VAR. And that's the worst bit, because you're not allowed to talk to the team. They're stood there, you're sat there, we can't communicate with each other and it's horrible. And eventually the adjudicator came over Olivia and she said to me I'm really sorry, paul, but you lost. And I remember exactly what I said to her, which was was thank fuck for that, because, although I'd done everything to stop them winning the 60,000 pounds, when it came to VAR, I would much rather they just they, they just won it yeah but that didn't stop me from shouting tennis at the top of my voice to stop them from winning the 60,000 in the first place and is it different with the celebrity versions?
Wayne Beese:because, because obviously you're stopping charities getting money there.
Paul Sinha:Yeah, it's very different. We want to beat the celebrities. It's really simple. I'm not even exaggerating here when I say we do not care about the charities. Oh well, apart from the charity to help people who are so neurologically deprived that they drop glasses at the drop of a hat, we can't think about the charity, the charity episodes. We want to beat the celebrities because of the. We want to prove to the world. It's not fixed for a start. But also, they're not real people. They're real people. Their lives change based on the results of an episode of the chase.
Paul Sinha:Celebrities are trying to raise money for a charity and if they don't raise money for the charity, that time they might get on pointless or tipping point or catchphrase, or beat the chasers or another episode of the chase. They're going to have all sorts of opportunities in their life to raise money for that charity. So, honestly, I don't care when we stop celebrities from winning money for charity. I don't care, and the degree to which I don't care. I was on an episode with Giles Corrin, Rachel Johnson, Boris Johnson's sister, Chris Packham, who, as we know, is deeply autistic. The three of them got back and they scored 22 or 23 and I caught them with two seconds to go and I could not have been more delighted until I watched it back a year later and Rachel Johnson was trying to raise money for Parkinson's UK and I thought to myself at least I've proved that even when it's for a charity that helps me out, I'm still trying to stop them from winning money. Honestly, I don't care about the celebrities. It's real people I give a shit about.
Wayne Beese:So you don't get much time to bond with the contestants or to spend much time with them, I guess. But is there ever anyone that you've kind of really disliked and really wanted to be?
Paul Sinha:Oddly enough, in the early days, when it was a bit more panto, I joined in 2011. And from 2011 to about 2013, 14, there'd be regular episodes that would go viral for something that was said or something that was. And before ITV started getting rid of unsolicited videos, on on youtube there's a lot of very funny clips of uh, there was a anne hegarty telling a kid uh, you just weren't good enough.
Paul Sinha:And he turns to her and says well, you're not thin enough or something so there's a famous guy that called his teammate a maggot for taking the lower. To take the lower offer. A very miserable baker from scotland, uh, and there were lots of episodes like that. But after a while especially the way that the media turns everything viral they have to look out for the welfare of the contestants as well, and so we don't have big run-ins with the contestants anymore. We we used to. Uh, there's, there was a woman, um, who said to me when I came out I've seen you do comedy. You're not as funny as you think you are. And when I, when I beat her at the end I said you can tell your kids that you were beaten by the award-winning comedian paul seder. But uh, that that sort of being rude to each other panto gear it's not really encouraged. Now we try and be as nice because these people get battered on social media. We don't need to be encouraging that.
Audience Member:What do you think about people who take the low offer when they could so obviously go for the middle or the higher offer?
Audience Member:Well, well, well, well, here we go this is the big debate.
Paul Sinha:Um, I've got a lot of opinions on the matter. The first opinion is some absolutely sometimes the lower offer is the right offer. Absolutely. Sometimes the producers fix it so that the lower offer is generous to try and to try and persuade people to take the lower offer to get. Sometimes they get like 1 000 pounds, say, and the lower offer is 500 pounds rather than minus 500 pounds, because the producers sometimes deliberately give generous lower offers.
Paul Sinha:It's a team game and the team game is won by making the tactics that are best for the team. That said, the lower offer isn't always the right offer. I think if you're good, then you should back yourself. The lower offer is meant to be a mechanism by which the weaker players can try and get back to the team to help the team. But if you take a massive lower offer back and then you play the final chase and you get things, get in the way and get things wrong, then that's the mistake, not the lower offer.
Paul Sinha:It's how you. It's how you play in the final chase to match what you've taken back. So if you take the lower offer back, at the very least you should get no questions right but no questions wrong, so that the extra point you bring back to the final chase is a general positive and that extra point can often be the reason that team won the extra point that you get for just being there. So it's not really about the offer you take, it's about how you play in the final chase, as to whether that matches what you've done to get to the final chase. And I would say that if you really don't know anything, just shut up. Just shut up during that final chase and let the other people do the work and only buzz in if you're 100% certain that you know the answer. But even then sometimes a good player say the lower offer is not.
Wayne Beese:Sorry, someone's alarm's going off here. Ok, fair enough.
Paul Sinha:Sometimes, even with a good player, it might be the sensible one to take if it means you're definitely going to get back. But what we find now is that the game has changed. No-one's coming on the show to win a lot of money. People are going on to the chase to tell people they won an ep, they'd been on an episode of the chase or they'd won an episode of the chase, and so now we've got the problem that too many people are taking the lower offer and we, we're we're we're as as a production, we're working on what we do about the fact that the percentage of people that go on the show and take the lower offer it's only meant to be an option for one or maybe two people. We've had a number of episodes where three or even four people have taken the lower offer and it's boring. We know it's boring telly, it's dull, boring telly, and they know that and they know that. So the fact of the matter is, sometimes it's the right thing to do, sometimes it's the wrong thing to do, but if too many people do it, it's dull telly and that's what I think. People more, far more people.
Paul Sinha:It used to be that a lot of people went on the show to try and win 50 grand. Now people on the show want to play the final chase. They want to play the final chase and hopefully win some money, but what they really want to do is play the final chase. That's their motivation for being on the show. So things you know. It's a flaw in the system and, as a show, we're working on it.
Audience Member:I promise you that. Just a simple question Do you all get on on the chase, you all?
Paul Sinha:get on with each other? Yes is the answer to that, which is a surprising answer given that we're all very, very different people. I mean, I laughed my head off when I received an invitation from GB News to be interviewed by Nigel Farage, thinking that I'd honestly sooner die, Whereas Mark Labette was happily interviewed by Nigel Farage, thinking that I'd honestly sooner die, whereas Mark Labette was happily interviewed by Nigel Farage on exactly the same show. We are very different people, but how could we possibly not be very different people? We're six people chosen to be professional quizzers on ITV and we are very loyal people to each other.
Paul Sinha:We know that the only way to be is supportive of each other, whether it's various contract negotiations, this, that and the other. The only way to be is supportive of each other. With the various contract negotiations, this, that and the other, we all need to be seeing from the same hymn sheet. There's no doubt that jenny is the one I get on with the best, because jenny likes a drink and you know. To give you an idea about how tight the world is jenny joined in 2015.
Paul Sinha:To give you an idea of how tight the world is, jenny joined in 2015. Three years previous to that, in 2012, I turned up at Jenny's 30th birthday party and played the piano and sang hit records of 1982, our birthday probably three years previous and so we all kind of know each other from the quiz world. We get on with each other, we know how each other tick. If we didn't get on, beat the chasers couldn't possibly happen. It just couldn't happen.
Paul Sinha:And there was an incident in series two or series three of beat the chasers where jenny hits me because I buzzed in and got a question wrong on star wars. Uh, and she was absolutely right to hit me because I know, absolutely fuck all about Star Wars and I just, I, just I just had a complete loss of sanity and buzzed in on a Star Wars question, forgetting that we were playing as a team and I. I thought it was hilarious, not least because between us, we forgot that we hadn't got the question right and therefore the next question was meant to be for us and not for them. We forgot to listen to the next question, so we got that one wrong as well, and the media made a big thing of oh dissent in the ranks. We both thought it was hilarious.
Audience Member:We we get on really well um, do you find it hard to keep up with the general knowledge for the quizzing, given basically how shit the world is at the moment?
Paul Sinha:it's a very interesting question because that's it sounds like a a light question and yet that's very much at the core of my daily existence is what do I do when I get up? Because when I go onto twitter to look stuff up and see what's going on in the world, it's so relentlessly depressing and I must admit there's an element of me going oh, if there's a question about what jd vance is doing next, I don't mind getting it wrong, I don't mind not knowing what the answer to the question is. I'm still very hungry for new quiz information, new quiz facts, and I still work hard at keeping up with stuff. But my God, it's hard. You fall asleep for 24 hours and the next thing you know there's a meme about a rock star from Arizona that you've never even heard of, and the whole world is wagging on about them. We're living in a world now where we're being bombarded with multimedia coverage of so many different things.
Paul Sinha:In the 1980s, if you appeared on mastermind, there was kind of a syllabus that you there's kind of like a syllabus that you could complete, where you'd know everything they could possibly ask your master. Now they could ask you which member of BTS said a quote that went viral for 40 million retweets or whatever. They could ask you absolutely anything about the world, and because everything's just a click away, there's nothing wrong with this. There's no reason why you shouldn't necessarily know what's going on, and so it's really hard. And so quizzing in itself has changed, because with quizzing now, it's not about knowing everything and it's not even about knowing most things. It's about knowing just enough things to score more points than the next person along. I've just taken part of the World Quiz and Championships yesterday and I came 19th and I scored 177 out of 240. So the person who won scored 207. So the person who was officially the best quizzer in the world didn't know one in eight of the questions they were asked.
Paul Sinha:You can't, it's, it's, it's just impossible. There's too much out there. You just gotta enjoy. My advice to anyone who wants to get good at quizzes work out what you actually want to know and enjoy, and enjoy the ride. Don't feel that you have to know stuff because everyone else knows it, no stuff because you want to know it. For me, that means literature, history. For me, that means literature, history, music of the past, music the present spot.
Paul Sinha:One of the great things about being a quiz is having no excuse, having an excuse to listen to spotify all the time and find out about new bands and new, new artists, and that that's the fun part of quizzing. Go going. Oh yeah, I know who fontaine's dc. I actually prefer the second down with the third or whatever. Having that conversation is great. The internet is an incredible tool, whether it's chat, gpt or other ai's or spotify or youtube or wikipedia or social media things. The world is on your, the entire world is on your phone, and that's a really exciting part of the adventure, and I'd much rather find out about the positive things that are going on in the world than get into an argument about whether donald trump is going to invade greenland or not. I think there's so much of what's going on in the world is out of our control and out of our influence. I'd rather spend my time in, as I said earlier, enjoying yourself and having fun.
Wayne Beese:I've got one over there in the middle.
Audience Member:Hi Paul, it's Jane. I just wondered on the chase what type or subject of question you really hate coming up visual questions.
Paul Sinha:So I don't really do pub quizzes because I can't really. I'm so bad at picture quizzes. If someone showed me a photo of my mum I'd say, oh, that's that woman that looks a bit like my mum. Um, I'm really bad at picture quizzes and visualizing things. So when they say what color is the Sainsbury's logo or what color is the e of google, or what color, what are the three colors on a flag or this, I can't see them. I don't I. I just don't know the answer to the question. Yesterday, the world question chances, one of the questions was literally what color is pikachu? And I'm like I have absolutely no idea what colors?
Paul Sinha:yeah, yeah, all right and that was question four and the grade question to 30, is meant to be the fourth easiest question on the thing and I'm looking at it going. I just haven't got a clue. So anything visual Then. The fact that I had a really boring childhood means I didn't read kids' books and didn't play kids' games. So when they ask questions about operational buckaroo or hungry, hungry hippos, I was playing chess. So stuff about what normal kids know very, very easily is very much a weak subject. Things that are sort of practical and pragmatic, like wiring plugs, doing shoelaces, questions about what colour wires are in a plug or this, that and the other Practical sort of stuff I'm not very good at. I can't cook to save my life, so when they say what would you add to this to make a meringue, I'd go what's a meringue? So all sorts of we all have. We all have weaknesses, but my, my strengths are very much facts rather than real life quizzing, which is the one, the thing that I'm pretty poor at.
Paul Sinha:In May 2019, I was diagnosed with the progressive degenerative neurological condition parkinson's disease. Now, that's a tough diagnosis, especially when you know you'll never be quite famous enough for coldplay to invite you on stage. Nonetheless, I'm very determined to live my life with a degree of good cheer and optimism, main reason being don't have a fucking choice in the matter, do I? You've got to deal with the cards. You've been dealt, so this is how I deal with it. I look at having Parkinson's as being much like being a professional footballer playing your career out in Saudi Arabia. You know the shakes are about to take over your life. I'm sensing a degree of resistance in the room Today.
Audience Member:We really enjoyed you on Taskmaster when you went on that and when you were talking, or when you were doing your stand-up in the first half, talking through the timeline of your diagnosis, it occurred to me that sounds like a similar sort of time and I just wondered whether you knew you had the diagnosis before you went on Taskmaster and if that was, um, something that made you nervous perhaps, or if you didn't know whether you look back and think it might have, um, you know, impacted, you know the show it's a very interesting question you asked, not least because the answer is very, very complicated.
Paul Sinha:So I started having this right shoulder problem in a year before I did Taskmaster, but it was treated as an orthopedic problem, so we had no idea I had Parkinson's. When we had the interview with the producers to get me on the show, I said, by the way, you ought to know I've got this shoulder problem and they said it's fine, we'll deal with it, it's not a problem. But in the very first, do you remember the task where I was shouting looking for a baby monitor? That was. That was the very, that was very first task they gave me that day and that tuesday, that that evening, I played in a match in the quiz league of london and there were two answers. I got wrong. That I absolutely knew completely. And I got wrong and I sent one of my best mates a message on facebook going I got these two questions wrong and I'm worried about why I got them wrong that very day.
Paul Sinha:So I think there was some sort of you know, the cognitive part of the Parkinson's thing had started. The good news is that I would have been shit on Taskmaster, whatever happened. I've watched so many of the episodes back since and I've sat since the dialysis of Parkinson's and me getting better due to the medication that I've been on the increased level of dopamine, and I've watched so many episodes going nope, I still have no idea how I'd have approached that task. Task solving and problem solving and lateral thinking is absolutely not my thing, and I'm relieved that I don't try and use Taskmaster as an excuse for what happened. But what I will say is, on the ones with the outside tasks with Lou Sanders and Ian Sterling, I was on very heavy painkillers because I'd recently had a major operation on the right shoulder, uh, and I was on, and so the producers must look at that bit where I'm being dragged across concrete by lou and ian selling.
Paul Sinha:I don't think we can justify this from a legal health and safety point of view, but I'm not gonna make a complaint now, though. They've treated me really well. It was fun. I'm not saying it wasn't fun to be on taskmaster, but I'm sorry to say I'm a bit of an asterisk against my name, as in this guy was not very well at the time, um, but it's just one of those things. You, you move on. Not everything in life is a success and you just got to learn from it and move on. It'd been quite a run. I'd woken up 18 months ago with a painful, stiff right shoulder. I'd done nothing about it for a while, so I was too scared to go to the GP and be recognised by gossipy patients in the surgery.
Paul Sinha:Eventually I decided to go. I went in an elaborate disguise White jacket, white trousers and a hat that said Ask me anything, I'm the cinema. Various investigations took place the next 12 months January 2019, the same month I got engaged, had an operation on my right shoulder. Didn't work. The shoulder didn't get any better, started developing a limp. And then, in May 2019, I was at the New Zealand Comedy Festival for the whole month and early on, three in the morning. Monday night, tuesday morning, a fall face first. First onto Auckland pavement. It was three in the morning and I was pissed out of my skull, so I didn't have any conclusions.
Paul Sinha:The next day I went to the website that tells you if you fall it's likely to be alcohol or neurology. It's called TripAdvisor.
Audience Member:it's really really good it's really really good you're saying in the first half. The way that you were sort of that empathy to your health issues and to weave that into comedy, I think is really really powerful, very human in many ways. My question to you is how are you?
Paul Sinha:That's a very nice question. Thank you, it's been tough. I've had a lot of shit going on, some of which is not funny enough to ever make funny, but the weirdest thing which I alluded to at the end of the set was Parkinson's. Is just this background thing now that I have? Yes, it affects me every day of my life, but compared to the drama of having a double coronary artery bypass operation which I will tell more about on stage over the next few months as I try and work it out and work it into an Edinburgh show it was the most extraordinarily stressful week in every way of my life, in a way that Parkinson's made for pardon the pun, look like a walk in the park, and so my health has been very much about recovering from the bypass operation to December 2023, rather than the Parkinson's which has just been this constant thing that is always there.
Paul Sinha:I'm happy to say that my health is good. I mean, if you saw my diary, you would not believe how busy I am, indeed how busy I've been this week. Luckily, my husband, oliver, is unemployable, which means which means that, which means that he drives me everywhere and that's. That's a massive piece of good fortune for me. But I think I'm doing. I think, considering everything that's happened with the last few years, I think I'm doing well.
Paul Sinha:I think you know I meet a lot of people with Parkinson's through my life as a Parkinson's patient and not all of them have the good fortune that I've had so far of having a decent run at Parkinson's, not ruining my life. I don't know when it's going to start getting worse, but I don't. I don't spend my life worrying about it or caring about it. The way I look at things just keep going, keep going, keep going. And it's not like an active fight, it's more like keep going and normalize your life and don't allow the fact that you've got Parkinson's to occupy your mind all the time. I consider my health to be good. Thank you very much. Lovely to hear I consider my health to be good. Thank you very much Lovely to hear.
Paul Sinha:If you want a selfie, by the way, that's absolutely fine. If you want me to sign anything, fuck off.
Wayne Beese:I've got Parkinson's disease. The show has obviously given you a profile and made you recognisable to a lot of people and obviously we're friends on Facebook. So I see stuff that you post and it seems that kind of most people I would imagine they're lovely, but you do post sometimes about people kind of crossing the boundaries in terms of what's acceptable in terms of approaching you for yourself. I mean, how do you find, how do you cope with this now that obviously loads of people know who you are and want a piece of you and want to speak to you? Just bear it in mind that all of these do so.
Paul Sinha:It's tough because, in comparison to most in inverted commas celebrities, I'm very open and upfront. Corporate gigs I do. I always stay on at the end. For people who want selfies After gigs, I stay on at the end. For people who want selfies After gigs, I stay on at the end, no matter how late the gigs are and how much I need to get home, I stay on until the end.
Paul Sinha:And then people sometimes do cross the line and you just go. How did that happen? And I think it's because it's unusual for celebrities to be as open and as available. It never used to be the case, so people have forgotten how to behave.
Paul Sinha:There was a gig I did once. The gig was amazing, and then this woman ruined my entire night by saying um, can you get your parkinson's hand out of the way of the photo? Uh, and I was, and um, I just couldn't. I just couldn't believe that she'd. She'd said that it's less rude to ask me to take my glasses off. I want more people to recognize you, but I'm wearing glasses. I'm wearing them because I need the glass I need. Obviously, when people say, can you take your glasses off for the photo, I'm like no, I need these glasses to be able to see, to see stuff.
Paul Sinha:Uh, and people do cross the line all the time, or they all. They think they're being funny by saying making a joke about the Parkinson's or whatever it's like. No, I get to make the jokes about the Parkinson's. No one else gets to make jokes about the Parkinson's, not at least someone I've never met before. But it's invariably all right. I think it's part of the comedian psyche. There's a famous cartoon of how a comedian sees the audience and he looks out to the sea of faces and 60 of them are laughing and there's one person who's not, and the cartoon is of that comedian just honing in on that one person who's not laughing. That's how comedians always, that's how we tend to see life is. We concentrate on that one person that's not enjoying themselves and make them more important. The people are having a really, really good time.
Paul Sinha:So I've got to say that I love being a celebrity. I love what you know. I would hate to think that one day I would have forgotten who I was, and I think that you read all the time about people who go into spirals of depression or substance of abuse because they can't cope with not being a celebrity anymore. I'd hate that to happen to me. So you know, overall, the experience of being well known, I love the happiness that has brought my parents because, you know, at the end of the day I gave up the career they thought was my destiny to become a comedian and then a quizzer, and they were never quite there with it until the chase came along and they thought, oh my god, our son's on telly. The only way I'd ever made telly uh, I would tell you as a doctor, is if uh, I'd uh been accused of severe malpractice.
Paul Sinha:In 1966, in the city of calcutta, a charismatic junior doctor called dr Dipak Sinha first put up the courage to ask on a date a hot student nurse he'd recently met called Miss Olika Smith. That's right, my mum's maiden name is Smith. It is an unusual maiden name for somebody with full Bengali heritage, but there is an explanation, which is I'm lying. I made it up. That's not my maiden name. My mum's maiden name is actually Chakrabarti. Unfortunately, chakrabarti has 17 variant spellings in the English language and I have now been locked out of so many of my online accounts of my online accounts.
Paul Sinha:Many years ago, I made a pragmatic decision that my mum's middle name was, is always shall be, smith. Trust me. Trust me, it's a hell of a lot easier that way.
Wayne Beese:It was lovely to read in your book how much Countdown's been an important programme for you, bringing your family together right from a very early age, and I'd like to share the story with the audience of of your mom, what she said when she woke up after having a breast cancer operation yeah, in 2008, my mom had a big, uh, double, big, double mastectomy.
Paul Sinha:There's so many small double mastectomies. Um, in 2008, my mom had a double mastectomy for breast cancer and when she woke up, we were all there and her first words were have I missed Countdown? And it turns out that she was five minutes in time to watch Countdown, so we were all absolutely blown. It's been very much the glue that's held the family together for a long time. Mum and Dad they're still really good at Countdown. Oliver, who's here at the moment, is not a Countdown fan. He has to undergo the torture, when we visit in the afternoon, of sitting there watching Countdown with the rest of us, where we got increasingly competitive. What I love about Mum and Dad, of course, is because they've got an Indian education rather than an English education. They make up fantastic new words that don't actually exist, but they really come into their own in the maths. They're still my dad's 85, my mum's 79, and they're both still absolutely brilliant at the countdown maths.
Wayne Beese:Great, and so it must have been great for them when you did dictionary corner, when you had that spell on there, when you actually appeared on the programme.
Paul Sinha:Yeah, it was a huge moment of pride for me to do Countdown to Dictionary Corner because, well, for 20 years my mum and dad said why are you not on Dictionary Corner yet? So it was great to do Dictionary Corner. But what was even prouder was my mum and dad were sat at the front At the end end when they do the conundrum. If the two contestants don't get the conundrum, then it goes to the audience and the two contestants are saying don't get the conundrum, don't get the conundrum, don't get the conundrum. And they didn't get the conundrum and they went to the audience and said has anyone else got it? And my dad got it wrong and it was a genuinely glorious, magical moment.
Wayne Beese:Not for him, I guess. No, not for him.
Paul Sinha:No, no. They got married in a lavish ceremony in West Bengal, and the same year they stared at a map of the world for weeks on end, weighing up the pros and cons of emigrating to the United States of America or the United Kingdom. And they chose here with very good reason it was the 1960s. Let me remind you of the options Birmingham, alabama, birmingham, west Virginia. Forced to sit at the back of the bus, get to drive the bus.
Wayne Beese:So if we move on, we're faster and out of time. But if we move on to talk about, obviously, what brings you here to us today stand-up comedy. We talked a lot about quizzing in the chase and everything. Tell us about how old you were when you did your first gig and where it was and how it went. I was 25?
Paul Sinha:um. I had been a junior house officer for five months. I'd started in february. This is the first week of june um 20 and 1995 and I'd done it. I ran a comedy club called har bloody heart, um, and they ran a gig in West London, an open spot night on a Friday, and I thought I'd give it a go. No, I never wanted to be a comedian, that wasn't the thing, I just wanted to be a more interesting person at dinner parties. That was literally the motivation for doing that.
Paul Sinha:One gig and the first two minutes. I thought I didn't get a single laugh in two minutes and then I started getting some laughs in the last three minutes not many, but enough to go for people to go. That was your first gig. That was actually really good. It was a good gig for a first gig. It wasn't a good gig. It was a good gig for a first gig. But the second gig, which was compared by Simon Pegg and had Ed Byrne as the headliner, went absolutely brilliantly. I did five minutes early on and I just kind of stuck hang on in there for about four years just doing. I was a junior doctor in King's Lynn for two and a half years and whilst sometimes coming down to London to do open spot nights and there were a lot of deaths and there were a lot of triumphs and never three deaths in the row I always thought if I had three deaths in a row I'd go. Well, that was an experiment and it was quite good fun, but that's the end of that, uh.
Wayne Beese:And then in 19, it was like the medical side of the company side he's not answering that both I don't know you from the from Chase.
Audience Member:I know you mostly from radio and I've loved your radio shows for a long time.
Paul Sinha:It's very kind.
Wayne Beese:But you don't seem to be on much anymore. Is that a question, or are?
Paul Sinha:you. They had a big meeting last year. It was called what?
Audience Member:to Do with the Cinema. I miss you. I miss you in the radio.
Paul Sinha:I did the news quiz in January I don't have the physical stamina for just a minute and there's a new series of Paul Sinner's pub quiz that's going to be coming out in the autumn. We're recording six episodes this year and going to be coming out in the autumn. We're recording six episodes this year and it'll be coming out in the autumn.
Paul Sinha:Fighting Talk, which is the sports panel show that I used to, I just don't do it anymore because it's too time-consuming for not enough money.
Paul Sinha:It's fun to do but it's just too time-consuming to write nine really funny answers when you're only you're only going to get get the questions with about 12 hours before the show's actually it's just too time consuming and I don't I don't follow football enough for me to be really fluent and good on writing jokes about football on the fighting talk anymore. So I sort of fell out of love with fighting talk rather than the other way around it's. I think everything's changed since COVID. I think everyone's on telly and radio less than they used to be since COVID because we're all more tired and we concentrate on a smaller coterie of things that we're good at than before COVID, when we were all collectively doing far more. So there's no big reason why I'm on radio less. I still do the radio shows that I like doing, and Paul Sinha's pub quiz has been recommissioned for a new series in the autumn. But thank you for your concern.
Audience Member:I'm glad to see that a lad from Dunstable is a Liverpool fan. I wondered how that came about. But I've also heard it said that you are actually a Worcestershire County Cricket Club fan. Is this true, and is it because of your love of the cricketer Kapil Dev?
Paul Sinha:I think you might be familiar to me as someone that I met very recently. No, I'm an out-of-work. Greg Wallace look-alike.
Wayne Beese:That's the line of the day, that is. I don't even care saying that. That's definitely going in the fucking podcast.
Paul Sinha:So first of all, I'm not from Luton. I was born in Luton but due to my dad's jobs, we moved from Luton to Norwich. Norwich is South London. I consider myself a South Londoner. Luton is where I was born, but the connection with Liverpool is this when I was seven I was a glory hunting prick, so that's very much the connection with Liverpool FC.
Paul Sinha:As for Worcestershire, I know what you're referring to, which is I did a promotional video for Worcestershire County Cricket Club last few days. It's been a weird week for me in many ways in terms of meeting unexpectedly famous people, but I was hired to do a preview video for Worcestershire Catering Club on Thursday featuring the legend Ashley Giles, and I mentioned the fact that I used to support Worcestershire as a teenager and I did, but I don't think it was because of Kapil Dev. I think it was because Graham it was the Kapil Dev had left by 86 when Graham Hick emerged as this dashing batsman. It was very much that team of the late 80s that Worcestershire had. That was the team that I really sort of got behind, if that answers your question. Thank you very much Thank you.
Audience Member:Obviously, with your diagnosis, that would cause anybody to look back on their life and for most of us we would look back and say, oh, I've never achieved anything of any real value where clearly you have. But my question is um, when you do look back, are you content with all the things you've achieved and is there anything more? Do you aspire to any any any further achievements?
Paul Sinha:um? On the second question, not really. I don't feel that my bucket list such that it is, um is chock-a-block with stuff. When I was a teenager I used to write songs and I think I was quite good. Not lyrics, I'm terrible at lyrics oddly enough for a writer and comedian terrible at lyrics but I was great, great at writing melodies. Uh, and that's part of the reason I introduced music into the full-length shows I did after I was diagnosed with Parkinson's. It was that here was a chance to resurrect some stuff that I wrote when I was a teenager, and so one of my ambitions is to put lyrics to those and maybe turn them into songs.
Paul Sinha:But other than that, in terms of achievement, I'm very content with what I've achieved. I've got no element of bitterness other than never appearing on the last leg. I just and I really, really feel privileged to work really hard to become good at stand up comedy, because I'm not. I was not the kid that you'd have picked at school to be a stand-up comedian later on in life. I stuck at it, I worked hard. I'm not, like Lee Mack, a naturally gifted genius. I'm someone that worked really hard to get to where I am and I'm really proud of that, but I don't feel that my ambitions as a stand-up comedian I think I've got where I can really get with stand-up comedy Quizzing for sure because of the Parkinson's I can't really see.
Paul Sinha:The world of quizzing has changed now. There's much younger, more dynamic, younger, elastic-brained people taking over the quiz world and so I just want to enjoy, have fun. Nothing specific, just enjoy and have fun. This week I've met one of the major rock stars in in the history of the midlands area. I was drinking with trampolining, trampolining gold medalist Bryony Page on Saturday night because her family had come to see me do a gig in Cheshire. I was chatting to Ashley Giles Ash's Hero 2005 for the Worcestershire video on Thursday. I feel like I've had an amazing week, let alone an amazing life.
Wayne Beese:What about this gig, Paul?
Paul Sinha:That was covered by one of the major rock stars of the mid so as long as I keep enjoying myself, then I'm happy. Oliver has permission to leave any time he wants. He knows that. He also knows. If he does so, I will move on. If I move on, what I mean is I've downloaded that smartphone app that gives you the location of single middle-aged Asian men in your area. It's called Uber. It's really good.
Wayne Beese:I'd just like you to leave us on this, paul. It's a story that I know you've told it on stage before, but I always enjoy hearing about it. Tell the audience about the time where you at a comedy gig in Leeds, I believe where you came across the son of Not came across the son that's the wrong LAUGHTER when you met the son of someone that you'd beaten on the chase.
Paul Sinha:Beaten rather than beaten off. Yeah, yeah yeah, that's a different story altogether.
Paul Sinha:This is still the favourite thing that happened to me. On account of being on the show and it's early days, I made my debut in 2011. A year later, I'm in a comedy club in Leeds called the Hi-Fi Club Great club. If you're in Leeds, go Friday, saturday night in a comedy club in Leeds called the Hi-Fi Club great club. If you're in Leeds, go Friday, saturday night great comedy club. And I get there. It's an eight o'clock start. I get there about half seven and I'm looking around the room and this young lad spots me, uh, wanders over and says you beat my dad in a final chase.
Paul Sinha:That was was an amusing conversational starter. We discussed and it turns out I remembered his dad as someone who played very well and I'm still, oddly enough, facebook friends with his dad and I thought that would be the end of the conversation. And then I'm closing the show. About an hour and a half later, I get to the mic and I'm about to tell people I'm from the Chase and this lad stands up and says you cost me an Xbox, you cunt. He then stands there to get the applause of the whole audience and then sits down and his chair gives way underneath him, taking down a pint of Stella with him, and I'm standing there thinking this is all my doing and that's.
Wayne Beese:That's a great way to finish the podcast. Thank you, paul. Thank you to everybody for coming out and being such a great audience. Thank you, greg wallace, for that amazing line, but it's been a great privilege, um, both this afternoon and this evening, to spend some time with this wonderful man. I'm so pleased to hear that your health's doing great. You look great, um, and please keep in touch with everyone here in stowbridge. Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for the wonderful. Paul Sinner, thank you for joining us for the first episode of our podcast. It's a Funny Business. We really hope you enjoyed it. Please help us to spread the word and tell your friends about it. If you'd like to be in the studio audience for a future show, you can book tickets at wwwfunnybusinesscouk live pod. That's funny businesscouk live pod. Why should you be in the audience instead of watching it on here? I hear you say well, just have a listen to this uh, well, we can't make the podcast.
Paul Sinha:No, I mean, it really can't make the podcast.
Wayne Beese:Yeah, this can't make the podcast, but uh, we won't have anything to put into this and do you know what now?
Wayne Beese:that I've said that this doesn't make the podcast so, as you can imagine, there's loads that we say on that stage. It doesn't get anywhere near the podcast, so it is really worth your while coming along and seeing it live. So, for the last time, if you do want to book tickets to come and see us and come and join us on it's a funny business and experience it live as it's happening, get your tickets at funnybusinesscouk slash live pod. Thanks again for joining us and we hope to see you again soon. Cheers, see you later.