Anil Gupta

Goodness Gracious Me stars reunite for Slapstick Festival

Goodness Gracious Me stars Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal and Anil Gupta are joining the line-up of Bristol's next Slapstick Festival for a 30th anniversary look back at impact of their radio/TV creation.

Christmas Carole review

Of the many, many, many versions of Charles Dickens's classic tale produced each year, Sky's retelling adds an intriguing twist or two - but can't help but feel like a plodding adaptation.

Christmas Carole review

Suranne Jones is pitch perfect in this instant festive classic.

Christmas Carole review

Modern-day Scrooge is as flimsy as a party-hat cracker.

In this week's episode of The Reunion - the first in a new series - monstrous egos were nowhere to be found and tone was, for much of the time, joyful. Presenter Sue MacGregor, best known for calmly making mincemeat of politicians on The Today Programme for nearly 20 years, reunited the brains behind the BBC comedy Goodness Gracious Me, which first aired on Radio 4 in 1996 and later transferred to television. There were no histrionics here, just pride in a series that helped break the largely white, xenophobic mould of mainstream comedy.

Goodness Gracious Me - named in "tribute" to the Peter Sellers-Sophia Lore song inspired by their 1960 film The Millionairess - was the first series in the history of the BBC that was conceived, written and performed entirely by British-Asians. In examining the tensions between traditional Asian ways and modern British life, it yielded a host of celebrated sketches including "Going for an English", in which the cast get tanked up on lassis and order 12 bread rolls and a pint of ketchup, and "The Six Million Rupee Man", a daft re-working of The Six Million Dollar Man.

Here the show's major players, including Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal and producer Anil Gupta, discussed their early days as the toast of British comedy like people who couldn't believe their luck. "There was a general feeling amongst British Asians that they were finding their identity, and we were part of that," noted Bhaskar, who had, until the show's early success, been working in marketing.

But there was a discernible sadness too, in the fact that the door they had opened for the next generation of Asian performers seemed to slam shut after them. After three series, Good Gracious Me was cancelled and, soon after, the BBC and its rivals seem to forget the non-white audience. "We used to play the spot the-Asian-on-the-telly game when I was a kid and I find that I'm doing that again," sighed Syal.

If the irony of making this point on Radio 4 - the station that first championed them and yet remains dominated by white, middle-class presenters - had occurred to Syal, she was too polite to mention it.