Amit Tandon gives himself an 8 on our liberal-conservative scale

Next on our series is Amit Tandon, aka, The Married Guy. He’s a Delhi-based comedian and wants to bring comedy to the corporate world with this company “Grandmasters of Comedy”.

• How political is stand-up comedy in India?

After Bollywood, politics is our second-most popular time pass (I also consider cricket as politics). So, there is always some amount of politics in comedy. Almost everyone will have a Rahul Gandhi joke. However, very few comedians have read enough to have a clear point of view on politics and, therefore, political comedy is limited to the use of stereotypes about politics as punchlines.

So, I don’t see as much maturity about politics in comedy as we see in hasya kavis. I still believe hasya kavis are able to make their points more clearly than stand-up comedians.

• How important is it for comedy to be political?

 It’s not important at all. Although comedy is an outlet for all the frustration and anger felt by the comedian, the only measure of good comedy is that it should make people laugh. I haven’t seen people changing their thought process because of a stand-up comedy show. They might agree with you, but they will go home and forget about it. At the most, they will say you were good. But if you are not funny, then they will hate you and even heckle you to leave the stage.

• We know there is a large number of liberal comics (writers and performers) in India. But are there any conservative comics in the country? If yes, please name a few.

 Anyone doing comedy on TV is a conservative comic. When you are doing corporate shows, you HAVE to be conservative. It is only in ticketed public shows among cosmopolitan crowds where you can afford to be completely liberal. I am also conservative up to a certain extent.

• Where would you place yourself on our liberal–conservative scale?

I would be an eight.