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Promotional art for All My Heroes Are Dead, In Jail, Or Touched Up Your Nan
Cover image credit: Promotional image via Comedy Dynamics

All My Heroes Are Dead, In Jail, Or Touched Up Your Nan

Raul Kohli

Comedy Dynamics · Album · 2021 · 60 min

A Geordie stand-up wrestling with tarnished idols and modern morality.

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Released , on Comedy Dynamics.

Raul Kohli opens with a list of tarnished idols that includes Louis C.K., R. Kelly, Winston Churchill, and Mahatma Gandhi. What keeps the hour from stalling out into a repetitive lecture on cancel culture is that Kohli quickly implicates himself. Growing up in Newcastle, he bought into the aggressive lad culture of the 2000s, and he spends a substantial portion of the set confronting the gap between who he was then and what he finds tolerable in his late twenties.

He grounds the broad social arguments with personal family history. He moves between a post-Brexit street confrontation in Glasgow and his aunt surviving the Partition of India, treating both with an earnestness that clubs rarely accommodate.

At times, the pacing drags when he pushes philosophical queries without punchlines, touching on everything from ISIS brides to Kodak Black comments in quick succession. He fares better when he leans into specifics, such as comparing the public obsession with royal weddings to football fandom.

The material developed over several years on the UK festival circuit, earning a nomination for Best Show at the 2019 Leicester Comedy Festival. Reviewing its run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Chortle noted that parts of the set leaned too heavily on academic argument rather than jokes, though Kohli remained engaging when detailing his own mistakes. Comedy Dynamics released the hour as an audio album in May 2021.

Notable bits & set list

6 bits

  1. Examining whether historical and cultural figures like Winston Churchill, Gandhi, and Aziz Ansari should be wholly cancelled

    Argues for shades of grey over simplistic binaries, questioning if societal moral standards are advancing faster than human nature can adapt

  2. Confessing to buying into laddish Newcastle culture prior to the #MeToo movement

    Personal confessional reflection acknowledging abhorrent past behaviors, delivered with a comedic twist

  3. A post-Brexit racist incident on the streets of Glasgow

    Dramatic storytelling highlighting contemporary racial tensions

  4. His aunt's harrowing escape during the partition of India

    Serious dramatic family narrative told to hold the audience rapt

  5. Comparing women's passion for royal weddings to men's devotion to football

    Observational club-style routine

  6. Contrasting cigarette smoking with masturbation

    Standalone observational routine

How it plays

Tone
Nuanced, intelligent, provocative, and political with hard-hitting bad-taste jokes
On stage
Compelling orator marked by passion, eager likability, confidence, and open-minded intelligence
Pace
Passionate and oratorical, at times structured like a sociology lecture interspersed with dramatic personal stories and punchy routines
About
Cancel culture and public shaming, Nuanced historical morality and flawed heroes, Nationalism, racism, and post-Brexit climate, Laddish culture and the #MeToo movement

What the critics said

Praised by The Scotsman as a powerful, passionate, and intelligent piece of political comedy. Steve Bennett of Chortle viewed it as an ambitious, nuanced polemic with moments of brilliant storytelling, though occasionally resembling a sociology lecture with inconsistent joke density.

In the room: Rapt and engaged during dramatic personal and historical routines, receptive to boundary-pushing jokes

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: raulkohli.com, comedydynamics.com, comedy.co.uk, edinburghfestival.datathistle.com, chortle.co.uk.

Backstory

Exploration of cancel culture, social media outrage, historical morality, and post-Brexit racism, tied to personal upbringing in Newcastle's lad culture and his Indian heritage

Details

Released
Runtime
60 min
Where
Comedy Dynamics (album)
Honors
Best Show Nominee – Leicester Comedy Festival 2019
Topics

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