"He was just so weird and creepy.”
Sanjeev Bhaskar revealed he and his wife, Dame Meera Syal, banned Jimmy Savile from appearing on The Kumars at No. 42 long before he was exposed as a prolific sex offender.
Revealing how Savile came across, Sanjeev said:
“We turned Jimmy Savile down as a guest on The Kumars without knowing what was going on, to be quite honest. He was just so weird and creepy.”
The Kumars at No. 42 ran for 53 episodes until 2006 and featured guests including Phil Collins, Take That’s Mark Owen and Gary Lineker.
Cilla Black and former The Weakest Link presenter Anne Robinson also appeared on the Emmy-winning series.
The spoof chat show centred on Sanjeev interviewing famous guests while his fictional British-Indian family regularly interrupted and ridiculed him.
Sanjeev revealed the comedy show had a very famous fan, although he never had the opportunity to interview her.
He said: “The Kumars was the late Queen’s favourite comedy TV programme. I always knew that she watched it.
“But, apparently, a journalist was standing next to her once at a function and, trying to kill time, he asked her ‘got a favourite TV programme?” and she said ‘The Kumars at No. 42’ and then she proceeded to talk about it.”
Sanjeev Bhaskar eventually met the late Queen at Buckingham Palace after being appointed an OBE.
Recalling the unexpected success of The Kumars’ Comic Relief single, ‘Spirit in the Sky’, he said:
“Of course, we had a number one single with ‘Spirit in the Sky’ as The Kumars for Comic Relief.
“Did she [the Queen] buy our single? I don’t think she did, but a lot of people did and we went straight to number one.
“It was one of the most bizarre moments of my life. I remember being on Top of the Pops. The people in the audience were about 12 and I was 45!”
Sanjeev Bhaskar will return to TV screens in The Split Up, a legal drama centred on a powerful British-South Asian family.
The series follows the Kishan Law family, who operate on Manchester’s high-net-worth divorce circuit.
Sanjeev plays Dhruv Kishan, whose daughter Aria (Ritu Arya) is preparing to take over the family firm.
The cast also includes Coronation Street actor Danny Ashok, BAFTA-winning Juice star Mawaan Rizwan and Shameless actress Aysha Kala.
Bhaskar has increasingly moved between comedy and drama, including his decade-long role as Detective Inspector Sunil Khan in ITV crime drama Unforgotten.
However, he believes older comedy should not automatically be removed because attitudes have changed.
Discussing Peter Sellers’ portrayal of an Indian actor in the 1968 film The Party, Bhaskar said: “Everybody gets stereotyped. Back in the day, the ‘go-to’ Indian was Peter Sellers. It is of its time and you can’t blame anyone.”
He recalled growing up in Ealing, West London, without seeing many people like himself represented on television.
“It was either Peter Sellers or Spike Milligan doing the accent. We did not view it as grossly insulting. What we could comment on was its accuracy.”
Bhaskar said he opposed banning older material, while acknowledging that some content can be offensive by modern standards.
He said: “I am a big believer in not banning things. By all means put up your flash warnings, but don’t ban it.
“Don’t ban, as you will never know how we got here. History is benign, awful, evil, terrible and wondrous.
“It is important we don’t whitewash any of those [shows] as we won’t have a full picture.”
The actor acknowledged that audiences can now recognise problems in some older programmes that may previously have been overlooked:
“What is shocking now is that if you go on YouTube and find an old episode of Stars in Their Eyes and you find someone saying ‘tonight, I am going to be Stevie Wonder’. Then people did know better.”
Sanjeev also recalled an instance when his own comedy caused offence among some Hindu viewers.
He said two sketches from Goodness Gracious Me were edited out, including one involving Amanda Holden attending an Indian wedding.
He explained: “There were two [sketches] actually that got edited out. One involved Amanda Holden back when she was acting.
“We did a sketch where she was my girlfriend and I had taken her to an Indian wedding. Everything she asked me to explain I got wrong.”
The sketch featured a fictional priest explaining a ceremonial pot containing various ingredients.
“The complaint from Hindus was ‘why did you say meat?'”
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