Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan… taking on the art world
Sky
Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan reveal the secrets of their Sky 1 hit, Rob and Romesh Vs
Laughing all the way to the ballet
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omedy is hard graft. But comedians Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan made light work of an RTS session that turned the spotlight on the pair’s hilarious Sky 1 factual entertainment series, Rob and Romesh Vs. The third season starts this month. The show sees the likely lads gamely taking on unfamiliar worlds and situations. It could be basketball or, more unlikely still, ballet. They even underwent the indignities of colonic irrigation for the benefit of the cameras in series 2 – an experience Ranganathan told the RTS that he still regrets – while in LA getting the lowdown on NBA basketball. “To give you an idea of how bad we were at basketball, we weren’t allowed to play basketball in the show, but we were allowed to have a colonic,” recalled Ranganathan. Having TV stars do ridiculous things is a telly trope that goes back at least to
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the BBC’s In at the Deep End, featuring Chris Serle and Paul Heiney. In the new series of Rob and Romesh Vs, the duo grapple with the worlds of tennis, drag performance and art. In one episode of the last series they joined the Birmingham Royal Ballet, an experience that led to them performing Swan Lake live on stage. Yes, really. Watching them struggle into their ballet tights was not for the faint-hearted. And, once they got down to learning to dance, it became clear that Ranga nathan wasn’t a natural. “Everything we do, we’re hoping we find some undiscovered ability – but it hasn’t happened for me yet,” he explained, tongue planted firmly in cheek. “The ballet revealed a really annoying trait of Rob, where he’s happy to say we’re doing this as a team until he spots any kind of distance between us in ability. “Once he knows he’s better than you, he’ll cut you loose in a heartbeat.” Beckett conceded: “If I’m half good
at something, I’m like a rat up a drainpipe.” The ever-enthusiastic Beckett provides the perfect foil to his comic partner’s deadpan style. The settings that they enter in the series have something in common – at least one of the pair is completely ignorant of these worlds. This is where the comedy comes in. And it helps that the pair’s friendship is genuine, something that was abundantly clear during this good-natured chat, where, despite the limitations of Zoom, their rapport and affection for one another shone through. Like the series itself, the RTS session was a perfect pandemic pickme-up. “In this show, when we go and do mad things, when we’re so out of our comfort zone, especially something like ballet…. I don’t think I could do those things without Romesh,” said Beckett. Ranganathan added: “Often, when we’re about to do something really terrifying, one of us will look at the other one and go, ‘This is going to be
