Romesh Ranganathan is not "proud" of his past racist jokes.
The ‘Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan’ star has admitted he made a number of anti-Irish jokes when he was starting out in his stand up comedy career.
He said: "Do you know what, so much of that material was from this joke book I had at the time and in that joke book was loads of racist jokes. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was so bad. But it didn’t occur to me at the time."
And the 42-year-old comedian – who grew up in Sussex with his Sri Lankan parents – used to also poke fun at his dad’s accent, and pondered whether he felt racism was "more acceptable coming from an immigrant" at the time.
Speaking on the Out for Lunch podcast with Jay Rayner, he added: "I think the truth is, I thought my dad’s accent was funny. I just basically did it in my dad’s accent. Which I gave no reason for. I don’t know if I felt that racism would be more acceptable coming from an immigrant? It is … the first time I have reflected on that and I have got to say I am not proud of it."
Meanwhile, Romesh previously opened up about his mental health struggles.
He said: "It’s something I’ve struggled with throughout my adult life really. As life has gone on, I’ve been more comfortable with getting help when I’ve needed it. That’s something I’ve very much kept to myself until recently, to be honest.
"I think that we can take our mental health for granted, and anything you can do to counteract that is beneficial. Talking about it in a relaxed way is a good thing to do. You want to get to a point where someone can tell you that they’re a bit under the weather or whatever. That would be the ideal, so you’re not harbouring this secret that you don’t feel like sharing."