It’s the burden of great actors to be overtaken by their characters.
Try looking at Courtney Cox without seeing Monica, or separating David Tennant from The Doctor, and it’s easy to see why so many actors try to distance themselves from their major roles.
But not Sanjeev Kohli – or as he’s better known, ‘Navid from Still Game’ – who will bring his solo show, An Evening With Sanjeev Kohli, to Tayside and Fife later this month.
Structured like a live podcast, the shows will see Kohli chat with a presenter about all things Still Game, and then audience members will have the chance to ask their own burning questions.
“Obviously we’re all incredibly lucky to have been in a show which has been so incredibly popular that people are interested to get the inside track on it,” Kohli says of his Still Game castmates.
“We’ve been friends and colleagues since the millennium, so there’s plenty to talk about.”
Kohli played Craiglang’s lovable shopkeeper for so long (2002-2019) that his public persona has become irrevocably fused with Navid’s beardy banter.
And far from feeling pigeon-holed, he says he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It doesn’t matter what I do in my career, I’ll probably always be Navid from Still Game,” admits the Glaswegian actor, who currently plays AJ Jandhu in River City.
“And I’m absolutely happy about that. I love the guy!
“He’s been really good to me. So it would be incredibly mealy-mouthed of me to start saying: ‘That’s just one show that I do’ or ‘That’s just one part that I play’.
“He’s a big part of my life.”
‘Navid reminds me of my dad’
For Kohli, 51, Navid’s character feels comfortably close to home, as his own parents ran a corner shop in Glasgow throughout his childhood, just like Navid and his wife Meena.
“I’ve got a particular affection for Navid because he kind of reminds me of my dad,” he reveals.
And though he emphasises that Still Game creators Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill wrote “every word of this beautifully written character”, he admits he did bring much of himself to the role – including a fondness for the tiny pens in bookmakers’ shops.
“I love that whole scene where Navid goes to the bookies, when he has a midlife crisis,” laughs Kohli.
“I had a very sheltered upbringing, my mum and dad weren’t interested in betting. So in that scene, it wasn’t just Navid walking into a bookies for the first time, it was me walking into the bookies for the first time.
“And they’ve got the wee pens, you know? And I genuinely said to myself: ‘Why is that pen so wee? Is it ’cause jockeys are wee, wee pens for wee people?’
“So when Navid goes: ‘Oh, look at the toaty wee pens!’, that’s me thinking that as well.”
Toddlers discovering Jack and Victor
And being “Navid from Still Game” has given Kohli a lifelong connection with fans which spans generations.
Since the show arrived on major streaming platform Netflix in 2015, it has reached a whole new audience – with many of them finding it by accident as they searched for Korean drama Squid Game.
A big hello to the millions of you have found Still Game on Netflix thinking it was Squid Game. If you’re wondering when the culling starts, it’s at the end of season nine so stick with it
— Sanjeev Kohli (@govindajeggy) October 20, 2021
Regardless, the legacy of Still Game continues to grow, and Kohli takes pride in the staying power of what he and his castmates have created.
“Now that Still Game’s on Netflix, it really doesn’t seem to be going anywhere,” he observes.
“There’s whole new generations now discovering it who weren’t even born when we finished. There were Jack and Victors at Halloween who were three years old!”
Indeed, a massive mural of Navid painted in Dundee earlier this year by city graffiti artist Syke showed Kohli just how ‘big-headed’ he ought to be about his impact on Scotland’s culture.
“It’s amazing!” he says of the mural, which has now been covered over as it was painted on a legal graffiti wall. “Somebody said: ‘That’s you as big as Billy Connolly now’ – not quite!
“I do get sent a lot of fan art, and it’s really humbling. It feels like you’ve reached a certain level in the… I won’t say ‘zeitgeist’ because I’m not a d***, but you know? You’ve reached a certain level in the culture, that people are willing to spend that kind of time.
“It’s not very Scottish to blow your own trumpet, so I’ll let other people blow it from afar,” he grins.
“That’s the irony – he [the mural Navid] has got an enormous head, but I personally am not allowed to have an enormous head, because I’m Scottish. And long may that continue!”
Still Game is Scotland’s comfort watch
For Kohli, part of the magic of Still Game is its comforting feel – and he’s honoured to be in the background for Scotland’s hangovers and housework.
“It’s the same in our house with Frasier,” he reveals, referring to the home he shares in Glasgow with his wife Fiona, their three children and their adorable Cavapoo Benji, who he is walking as we speak.
“You think to yourself, ‘I’ve seen this episode 10 times’ and then you watch it anyway,” he continues. “It ends up being a comfort thing. You feel like you know these people because you spend so long in their company.
“I know people who will just be doing the housework, or they’re hungover, and they just stick it on. And I totally get that, so it’s a lovely position to be in, that we’re the people they turn to for comfort.”
And though his fame hasn’t reached the dizzy heights of major celebrity – “it’s hardly Beatlemania, I can still buy my bread” – Kohli isn’t under any illusions about how much he and the show mean to people.
“I was in a restaurant, and there was this joiner there,” he recalls. “He must have been mid-20s, and he was fixing tables. And he kept looking over.
“I could tell that he wanted to speak to me but he was just a bit shy. So I went over and introduced myself, and he was actually shaking!
“I said, ‘Are you alright?’ He says: ‘You don’t understand, I grew up in care and Still Game got me through my childhood’.
“There was another kid,” he continues, “who said that his dad had Parkinson’s and the thing they used to watch Still Game together, it was the one thing they kind of bonded over.
“Now I’ve never been through anything like that,” he adds, “but I know what comedy can get you through. It can be a companion, it can punch above its weight in a weird way.
“So you can’t really take stuff like that lightly.”
‘I was meant to be a doctor’
Funnily enough, although he grew up obsessively taping and rewatching shows like Monty Python and The Two Ronnies with his brother, and worshipping the stand up of Sir Billy Connolly, Kohli got into comedy largely by accident.
“I was a really shy kid,” he reveals. “Not a performer in the slightest. I was meant to be a doctor!
“I started a medical degree, and then I chucked it and did a maths degree instead, because I’m just that sexy,” he laughs. “But I had no real game plan – I got my degree and then didn’t know what to do with it.
“And then a pal from uni phoned up, she was producing a new radio show and she was looking for new presenting talent. I got the gig, and it wasn’t a comedy show, but I’d put little jokes in just to keep myself amused.
“That got noticed, and that’s what led me to comedy writing, and to acting. Which can be very frustrating when people ask how to get into the industry. I can’t very well tell them: Start a medical degree, chuck it after four months, do a maths degree and then wait for the phone to ring.
“It’s not a great business model!”
The funnyman, who now has his own BBC Scotland talk show, Sanjeev Kohli’s Big Talk, has made a success of his comedy career, despite having to carve out his own path.
“I didn’t even see being creative as an option. I was very bright and academic at school, and I convinced myself that I wanted to be a doctor,” he says candidly.
“And I find that a lot of people who get into medicine are actually creative, but there’s no real defined career path for creativity.
“If you want to be an actuary or an accountant, there are exams you sit, certificates you can get. If you want to be an actor, it’s your luck a lot of the time. It’s not like you can sit an exam and get to the next level.
“So a lot of creative people don’t see it as a viable option and then they go off and do something else. And if you’re lucky, or you really hate your life, you find what you enjoy in the end.”
But he reckons times have changed from when he was growing up, with creativity and arts-based careers becoming more of an option for today’s young people.
“As a career structure, the arts are never going to compete with the professions,” he acknowledges. “Especially if you’re a parent, and your child wants to go into the arts, you’ll think: ‘But what about money?’
“But I get the impression that it is more of an option now. I guess for the Instagram and TikTok generation, if you go on there, you are performing,” he observes, citing Glasgow-born viral comedian Paul Black as a prime example of someone who has used online platforms to launch a real-life stand-up career.
@paulbiack el frito #fyp #scottish #onthisday
“And you can actually monetise it quite early doors. And let’s be honest, it’s a whole generation for whom celebrity is the main objective. So I think times are changing.”
As the son of first-generation immigrants from India, Kohli has endured his fair share of racism, but has often said he believes Navid as a character has done a lot for race relations in Scotland.
“In the old days, it used to be that I’d be in Morrisons or something, and an eight-year-old boy would point at me, and his parents would be like: ‘Stop staring, that’s racist!’” he chuckles.
“But the wee boy had clearly just watched Still Game over and over, I could see.
“I don’t believe in God, right?” he continues.
“But if it turns out there is a God, and all the pearly gates and all that, I think I’ll say to St Peter: ‘Look, I know I said I don’t believe in God, but I believe in other people. And I think God exists in other people. So gonnae just let us in?’”
An Evening with Sanjeev Kohli will be at Dunfermline, Perth, St Andrews, Dundee and Arbroath on various dates from August 19-26. For more details and to book tickets, visit Breakneck Comedy’s website.
