James Walton

I worry Romesh Ranganathan might not have enough work

Plus: a classy new drama on Sky, in which Robert Downey Jr chews cigar and scenery with equal vigour

Romesh Ranganathan and Alex try banana gin with a local Ugandan man in The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan. Credit: BBC/Rumpus Media Ltd 
issue 01 June 2024

Let’s say, for the purposes of this joke, that I was recently staying in a hotel and kept hearing through the wall a voice shouting, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ At first I assumed it was someone having sex – but I later found out that the next-door room was occupied by Romesh Ranganathan’s agent.

This year’s Comic Relief featured a W1A sketch where one of the gags was about how Ranganathan now presents everything on television. But the truth is, apart from that sketch, his only TV gigs so far this year have been presenting The Weakest Link, presenting the Baftas, co-presenting Rob & Romesh Vs…, co-writing and starring in the sitcom Avoidance as well as guest appearances on QI and Would I Lie to You?. (Then again, he has been preparing for his stand-up arena tour, which started last week.)

Most of the time, Ranganathan was only a Panana hat away from being a bog-standard travel presenter

It was therefore high time for the return of his travel-series-with-a-difference, The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan, in which he goes to countries not generally thought of as tourist paradises to see if the scepticism about them – including his own – is justified.

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