His son thinks he’s funny and so do we! The energetic, laugh riot who is Sorabh Pant is unlike any other stand-up comedian of our generation. He’s ‘mad’ly passionate about his job and takes up topics which are considered taboo by many.
News on The Loose with Vir Das
Well, just like anyone else, he too had a humble start, when he became a writer for television. Things turned around for him in 2008 when he met Vir Das and they did a show together called News on The Loose for CNBC-TV18. It went so well, that Sorabh Pant became the opening act for Vir Das’s show, Walking on Broken Das. He remained the opening act for the next three and a half years.
Pant on Fire
People loved his acts so much (we do not blame them!), he also did his very first solo show in 2009 called Pant on Fire and he was certainly on Fire when he spoke on topics like the Royal Wedding and the ‘racist’ GPS system.
Pant with a Pen
While he continued his solo acts, he went on to a few more opening acts for Wayne Brady and then Rob Schneider when they toured India. If that was not enough, Pant also released his debut novel The Wednesday Soul in December 2011, followed by Under Delhi in 2014 and Pawan: The Flying Accountant in 2017
THE EAST INDIA COMEDY
The next turning point for this ‘manic’ comic came in 2012, when he founded The East India Comedy. Each member of this ‘band’ of comedians have made a name for themselves and are as crazy as the founder! Kunal Rao, Sapan Verma, Sahil Shah, Atul Khatri, Azeem Banatwalla and Angad Singh Ranyal – each one of them are unique and all of them have done solo shows; the number of shows are just too many, but as The East India Comedy, these guys churned out a record 130 shows across the country in 2013.
Coming back to Sorabh Pant, he has gone on to do a couple of specials on Amazon Prime, the most recent one being Make India Great Again, where he takes a dig at Indian politics. His style of comedy is ‘over-the-top’ but truthful and that is what attracts his audience. His take on the various communities combined with a lot of talk about ‘sex’ keeps the crowd hooked on to his performance.
MY DAD THINKS HE’S FUNNY
Humour Sapiens enjoyed the special on Amazon Prime on ‘My Dad thinks he’s Funny’ – the way he explains his state when his wife was in labour to the kind of advice that he got from elders to keeping a name for his son – it is a journey that we all go through, but it takes a ‘mentally unstable’ guy like Sorabh to team it up with topics like sperm count test and the likes and still get rib tickling laughter out of it.