[ATTENDED: January 20, 2026] Paul Chowdhry
I have made a list of all of comedians from Taskmaster who I would like to see live. It’s not everyone of course (some of them don’t do stand up and some I don’t think I would enjoy). I never really imagined that I would see everyone on the list as many British comedians do not tour the U.S. But imagine my surprise when Paul Chowdhry announced a show in Philly.
Paul was a weird guy on TM and I wasn’t entirely sure I’d like his standup (I wasn’t entirely sure what his standup would be like), but heck, he was coming right here, so why not.
And then they announced that they would be filming an episode of Taskmaster in THE SAME BUILDING on the night before his show. Well, I needed to go that show, but it sold out in a second. I was quite bummed.
Then the day of this show, they told everyone that Paul Chowdhry had been a guest on Taskmaster Live. And, coincidentally so was Chris Gethard who we had just seen last week.
I don’t know if anything will come from the Taskmaster U.S. shows, but I do hope to see one again. And I also thought that maybe Alex and Greg would stick around Philly and come see Paul’s show. But they did not. And it’s all the more shame because the venue (the smallest venue in the Kimmel complex) was half full at best. They even passed out tickets closer to the stage so they could fill up the front (we refused because we knew Paul was an audience participation kinda guy and we didn’t want any of that.
Paul immediately came out and acknowledged the small crowd talking about how he had been on the Miller Stage last night and had played the 02 arena in London and here…he would have had more people if he did standup on the Rocky stairs (true, except it was really cold).
So he did a lot of jokes with the audience–looking for Indian folks and British folks and messing with them. It’s unclear to me how much actual material he has because most of it was crowd work.
He’s obviously got a bunch of like stock jokes depending on where people are from and regions of the country, but it felt at times like he was just making things up as he went along.
I will say that he relied on his American accent (which was a deep scary “What you mean muthafucka” type thing. He explained that he learned English from N.W.A. albums. Someone said he sounded like Samuel L Jackson which he said was the most racist thing anyone had ever said to him (ha). He then modified his voice and sounded exactly like Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction. He ran through a lot of accents throughout the show.
Upon hearing that a person in the crowd’s father had been arrested for selling cocaine (unexpected) and had just gotten out of prison, he did a really impressive Scarface accent. And of course he has lots of British (there was someone from Birmingham there so he did that accent as well as the London posh and non posh ones, and of course, Indian).
We agreed that our favorite joke was about being on a flight and the attendant asking if he would be dining with them and he asked if he had a choice–could he doordash? And then he joked that Indian delivery people would totally try to get you on a flight–they’d be pedalling in the sky at 40,000 feet–what’s your number, bruv?
He joked a lot with some married couples up front, he made a lot of fun of a group of young Indian men and women saying that they looked like they were a terrorist organization and hoping ICE wasn’t there. So yea, there was some political stuff–mostly about how he couldn’t say anything derogatory on stage or he’d lose his visa.
The venue has a couple of balconies so he got to make a Muppet Show joke–one of the people sitting there was wearing a tank top and overalls and Paul called him Luigi. The other side had some older ladies whom he referred to as the Golden Girls.
He made a joke about Edison NJ being full of Indians (true, but how did he know? There had been a VIP meet and greet before the show and I’m guessing he scored some local jokes about that). In fact, when a white audience member said she was from New Jersey, he said something about why would a white person live there. So, not quite right, but amusing nonetheless.
He had a funny bit about how a British accountant would not let you deduct anything off your taxes but if you get an Indian accountant–look for Patel in Edison–everything is a business writeoff.
He had a few risque jokes (Ghee Diddy) and a whole bit about Bonnie Blue. So Bonnie Blue is a British women who slept with 1,000 men in a day and she is legendary in England but basically unheard of here. But she seems to be a major cultural touchstone there. The bit about the line for the boys to sleep with Bonnie Blue being as long as the line for the queen’s funeral was pretty funny.
He told two jokes that he says got him banned from Ireland (why would a man confused about his sexuality go to a Catholic priest for help) and some venue in England (a joke about a kidnapped child that has two levels and was really funny–but maybe not si much if the incident was fresh in your mind?). And then a joke about an Indian woman who was catfished by her niece which made it onto a Netflix special. All 3 of these were pretty funny and even though he said “now you see how hard it is to write jokes” landed pretty well.
Overall the crowd seemed to really like him. And, if he was being honest (who knows with Paul) he went way over his allotted time because he was enjoying himself.
I wouldn’t see him again, but I know a lot of people would. I hope he does get to play Madison Square Gardens someday.
I was scheduled to have total hip replacement surgery on the day after this show. I didn’t think I’d be able to go and then two things changed my mind. The first is that I saw that the show was fairly short–Chokecherry was playing for about an hour. The second was that my surgery wasn’t scheduled until the afternoon. I had assumed it would be early in the morning, but a later appointment meant I could sleep in. As it turned out my wife had a minor emergency after I got home that kept us up until 3AM, so it was all moot, but whatever, I’m thrilled that I got to go to this show.
I Just Read About That... 