Adil Ray

Video: Adil Ray on Fox News 'Muslim Birmingham' comment

The Birmingham-born creator of BBC comedy Citizen Khan has criticised a terrorism commentator who said the city was a no-go area for non-Muslims.

Radio Times review

Christmas needn't be all doom and gloom, you know: try to see the funny side of it with this collection of amusing clips and comedians' anecdotes. The age-old staples of festive observational comedy are thoroughly dealt with, from office parties and last-minute shopping to cooking the turkey and feeling sick on Boxing Day.

Jane Horrocks narrates, with Christmas bonuses also heading into the bank accounts of Al Murray, Linda Robson, Adil Ray, Eamonn Holmes and, offering some hope of frosty freshness, Dame Edna Everage.

Radio Times review

Step onto the Citizen Khan shuttle and travel right back in time, stopping in the early 1970s when you could make a joke about "a dicky bow" on a TV sitcom and audiences would die laughing.

But Citizen Khan scoffs in the faces of chronology and fashion and yes, there it is, a joke about a dicky bow, as in "maybe I'll get my dicky bow out". "Steady on!" wails Mr Khan (Adil Ray) and we are back in the age of innocence. Do people even refer to "dicky bows" any more?

Never mind, Citizen Khan's world is a lost paradise of pratfalls and silly misunderstandings. Tonight he's involved in a daft scam involving cut-price nappies and he faces his formidable sister in law, Aunty Noor (Nina Wadia).

Citizen Khan wins big at 2014 RTS North West Awards

Citizen Khan has scooped two awards at the 2014 RTS North West Awards, winning "Best Comedy Programme" and "Best Performance In A Comedy" for Adil Ray.

Radio Times review

Citizen Khan is the perfect pre-watershed retro-comedy. Kids love the pompous community leader because he's as daft as a brush and those of us old enough to remember 1970s telly will sigh with happy recognition at the ancientness of the gags.

Khan (Adil Ray) gets in a tangle with that greatest of all comedy staples, trying to impress his daughter's prospective mother-in-law, coupled with probably the second of all comedy staples, trying not to mention another man's terrible toupee.

Naturally Khan can't help himself and falls headlong into numerous tonsorial traps. Watch out, too, for a piece of slapstick involving a remote-controlled swivel chair as the Khans invite doltish Amjad's parents for a pre-wedding dinner. Mind the best china!

Radio Times review

I know, Citizen Khan is puerile and silly, and possibly promotes unhelpful stereotypes. I'm in no position to comment on the latter (Khan is created and played by British Muslim Adil Ray), but in comedy terms, I love its old-school innocence.

Khan is every fumbling sitcom man-child since Terry Scott in Terry and June (which Citizen Khan resembles), a buffoon surrounded by sensible women. There is nothing sophisticated here, it's not Veep or Modern Family.

This is a very British comedy. Khan gets into scrapes because of his own stupidity, arrogance or overweening ego. He tries to get out of them, and digs himself deeper into the mud. It's a pantomime and its laughs are broad.

In the first of a new series, Khan tries to stop his wife's mother from going to live in a care home. But only because he thinks she's worth £25,000.

Adil Ray interview

'My show is a counter-narrative to Islamic State conflict'.

Citizen Khan, review: 'embarrassing'

If Mrs Brown's Boys has become a lightning rod for critical opprobrium thanks to the all-encompassing nature of its commercial success and creative bankruptcy, Adil Ray's Birmingham-set sitcom has had a marginally easier ride thanks to more palatable characters, but this is nevertheless a grimly retrograde comedy.

Radio Times review

This show's teams are so quick and on-the-comedy-ball, some guests barely get a look in. In this edition, it's Adil Ray - of Citizen Khan - who takes a back seat as the likes of Bob Mortimer and Lee Mack steer the WILTY charabanc to unlikely places.

Mortimer is on great form, making out that as a teenager he was banished from Castle Douglas for frightening the locals. As he piles on implausible details (a friend called Steve Bytheway, latex masks, and so on) with a straight face, you can't help feeling he's taken his flight of fancy too far. Or is it the old trick of elaborating an anecdote to make it sound ridiculous?

Also peddling tall tales are Kian Egan from Westlife, who may or may not have bid for his own waxwork, and Mel Giedroyc with, suitably enough, a cake-based story. It involves David Bowie.

Christmas is a time of giving and I'm giving you all a present by not making you have to watch the awful Citizen Khan Christmas Special. The central conceit of the show was that Adil Ray's titular community leader was against celebrating Christmas. However, he was the only one in his family who felt this way and soon his wife was pressuring him to get festive. To this end he had to spend an enormous amount of money on a tree and donate presents to the local church. Unfortunately one of these presents happened to be one of Mrs Khan's most treasured heirlooms. The supposed comedy then came from Khan posing as Santa in order to retrieve the item before anybody found out.

I've said it many times on this website but I find Citizen Khan incredibly offensive. From the Khan women believing that turkey was 'just a big chicken' and adding chillies to the stuffing to Mr Khan's various exploits playing Santa everything just felt incredibly clichéd. I have to say that I didn't laugh once throughout the entire thirty minutes of watching it and I knew exactly how the show would end. Now I've got nothing against old-fashioned comedy if it's done right, such as Not Going Out, but Citizen Khan just doesn't have anything going for it at all. The reason for giving Citizen Khan a third series is beyond me and I'm really hoping people stop watching the show so it doesn't return for a fourth.