Kumar performing for an audience of children in 2014
Kumar performed with Tom Neenan as a double act, Gentlemen of Leisure, having met while students at the Durham University and performed in the Durham Revue.[10][11]
Kumar has been performing as a solo stand-up performer in shows since 2013.[12] He also held a regular guest spot on Josh Widdicombe's Radio X show between 2013 and 2015, where he presented the feature "Nishipedia".
Kumar has also taken part in a number of topical news programmes:
In February 2015, he was announced as the host for the twelfth series of the BBC Radio 4 Extra series Newsjack.[13]
He has been a regular co-host of The Bugle podcast since October 2016.[14]
His series Spotlight Tonight with Nish Kumar first aired on BBC Radio 4 in March 2017.[15]
2014: "Ruminations on the Nature of Subjectivity".[19]
2015: "Long word... Long word... Blah Blah Blah... I'm so clever"[20] at The Pleasance Theatre, which continued as a UK tour running from October to December 2015.[21] The show was nominated for an Edinburgh Comedy Award.
2016: "Actions Speak Louder Than Words, Unless You Shout the Words Real Loud", which received a number of favourable reviews.[22][23][24] A joke from the show was featured in The Daily Telegraph's list of the 37 funniest jokes from the Edinburgh Fringe.[25] This show continued as a national tour.
Nish Kumar at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland.
As a live performer, Kumar has appeared at a number of festivals and events, including the Melbourne International Comedy Festival,[26] New Zealand Comedy Festival, Leicester Comedy Festival and the comedy tent at Latitude Music Festival. In 2017, he competed in series 5 of Taskmaster with Bob Mortimer, Sally Phillips, Aisling Bea and Mark Watson.[27] The same year, Kumar completed a six-part travel series for Netflix with fellow comedian Joel Dommett, titled Joel & Nish vs The World.[28] In 2018 he appeared on Netflix's Comedians of the World.[29]
In February 2019, it was announced he would be appearing in a new Sky One sport show, Comedians Watching Football With Friends.[30]
In December 2019, Kumar was booed off stage at a Christmas charity lunch event for the Lord's Taverners. The performance, for which Kumar was not paid, included political jokes on Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Theresa May and the ongoing Brexit process.[31][32] Following the event, the Lord's Taverners released a statement emphasising the apolitical nature of the organisation and expressing that they did not support the behaviour of some members of the crowd,[33] which included booing, heckling and the throwing of a bread roll.[34] In response to the event, Kumar told The Guardian: "I'm sort of amazed by how fascinated people are by the whole thing. It's not the first time I've been booed off stage [...] I consider it the life of being a comedian – they have a right to boo me."[35]
Kumar hosted the Quibi topical comedy series Hello America, which ran from August 2020 until the channel's closure in December that year.[36][37][38][39][40]
Kumar hosted the topical BBC comedy show The Mash Report from its launch in 2017 to its cancellation in 2021.[41] It was speculated that the series was dropped due to its perceived left-leaning political position, although the BBC made no official statement on this.[42] Kumar expressed frustration over the lack of clarity, saying "They need to make a definitive statement that it was not a political decision. Because what precedent does that set otherwise?"[42] Rights to the show were picked up by the television channel Dave, who began broadcasting new episodes as Late Night Mash, with Kumar and the main cast returning, in September 2021. In October 2021, Kumar revealed that he was stepping down from Mash after five seasons, four on the BBC and one on Dave, to "spend more time with [his] emotional problems."[43]
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