The Nearly Naked Chef UK Tour 2010 > Reviews (2)

I first noticed Hardeep Singh Kohli back in 2004, when the brilliantly funny Meet The Magoons was shown on Channel 4. Since then, his most well-known jobs have probably been as a presenter of various sections of The One Show and reaching the final of Celebrity Masterchef in 2006.

He is a writer, an actor, a TV presenter, a comedian and a great cook. He is 41, a Scottish Sikh known for his brightly coloured turbans and I think he’s brilliant! So when I discovered he was coming to Bristol in his 2010 Nearly Naked Chef tour, I had to go and see him. Tickets cost £14 and he appeared at the Tobacco Factory last night.

The Tobacco Factory is an intimate theatre and we had great seats on the second row. The place was full and the ages of the audience ranged from around twenty to some in their seventies, I should think, so it was a good mix.

The set was intriguing as it was done out as a kitchen with shelves of ingredients, a fridge, a large table, various pots and pans and kitchen utensils. There was also a camera feed onto a back screen, so the audience could see what was happening in the pans. As the tour title suggests, there is food involved! Hardeep masterfully combines a great night of comedy with a wonderful cooking demonstration, which is both informative and lots of fun.

It would be incredibly hard not to like Hardeep. He looked rather eccentric in his lilac turban, navy kilt, socks, trainers and a ‘Chic McSikh’ T-shirt – but I thought it was great! He is charming, endearing, warm, a wonderful speaker and hits just the right note in his humour. He tells some stories about his encounters with racism in Britain and although these are moving and revealing, he doesn’t tell them in a bitter way or a preachy way, but in an incredibly funny way. However, the audience also learns from these stories.

I could certainly relate too. He says how he often gets asked where he is from and replies “Glasgow” when they really mean “Where are your parents from?” or in other words, “Why are you that colour?” When I was married to my first husband, he was mixed race and we often had to deal with the “Where are you from?” question, when his answer was “Surrey”!

He was beautifully eloquent about his time in the Celebrity Masterchef final and his views on why he didn’t win. This involved a very detailed mime of him putting his dessert into the Masterchef freezer. At one point, he realised he had left his invisible knife in the invisible freezer and had to mime taking it out again. (It was much funnier than how that sounds!)

We heard about his playing poker with Dexter Fletcher and Jamie Oliver, his first job in television and many anecdotes about his wonderful family and how he became interested in cooking. I can’t promise you will hear all of these stories if you go to one of his shows though, as a lot of it seemed unscripted and when prompted by something from the audience, he would go into another interesting aside or funny tale.

He interacted beautifully with the audience too, as he would ask people questions.

I had talked to him on Twitter quite a lot, so he asked if I was in the audience and told me he wanted to meet me afterwards!

It is incredibly refreshing to find someone who can entertain the way Hardeep does. He is full of great stories, yet they are never malicious or nasty. I think that by the end of the show, we all felt like he had nipped round to our house for a chat and a meal, he was so friendly and involving. His popularity was also evident by the amount of people who stayed behind afterwards to buy his book and meet him.

As for the cooking, he made a chicken curry with rice, which some of the audience got to sample (I didn’t, being vegetarian) and all agreed was delicious. He also made a chutney out of random ingredients picked by audience members. He cooks different dishes over the tour and uses local produce too. If you contact him via his website, he will try to include ingredients you suggest.

I enjoy cooking myself and found I also learned quite a bit from his demonstration, including the perfect way to make rice, so it doesn’t stick. (I’ll be trying this later.) There were lots of helpful hints and tips throughout and the audience could also ask questions, which he happily answered. You can tell he is passionate about his food and genuinely loves cooking, but he is not the kind of pompous cook who believes in ‘nouveau cuisine’ and elitism; this is good, tasty, down-to-earth food and the smell of the spices cooking was divine!

I expected to enjoy the evening, as I think he’s great anyway. My husband though, just went along to make me happy. He has enjoyed some of the work Hardeep has done over the years, but I don’t think he would have called himself a fan, the way I do. Last night changed all that. Hubby loved it as much as I did! He was laughing out loud a lot and we both had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. We both said we will definitely try to see him again, once he’s back near us.

After the show, we stayed to meet him and get his book signed. I also had a photo taken with him and got two kisses. What a lovely man. I sent him a message on Twitter afterwards to say how much we had enjoyed his show and he replied, saying it had been lovely to meet me.

The 2010 Nearly Naked Chef tour continues throughout the year. Check his website to see if he is coming to a venue near you and if he is, go and see him. You’ll have a great evening out!

http://www.hardeeplive.com/