Paul Chowdhry

Tajpaul Singh Chowdhry (born 21 August 1974), better known as Paul Chowdhry, is an English comedian and actor. He is of Indian Punjabi Sikh descent. He began his stand up career in 1998 and hosted the Channel 4 comedy series Stand Up for the Week as of the fifth series, having been a regular act for the third and fourth series. Chowdhry was the first British act to perform at the Caribbean Comedy Festival in Trinidad in 2003. He has been a guest panelist on 8 out of 10 Cats, Comedy World Cup, and Sorry, I Didn't Know. He has appeared on Live at the Apollo twice, in 2012 and 2015. In 2016, he was one of the contestants on series three of the comedy show Taskmaster. In 2017, he was a guest stand-up performer in The Russell Howard Hour and also sold out the 10,000-seater Wembley Arena, becoming the first British Asian stand-up comic to do so. In 2020, Chowdhry appeared in the television drama series Devils. Since 2021, he has been hosting the podcast The Paul Chowdhry PudCast, in which he interviews comedians. He uses the signature phrase "what's happening white people?" at the start of his stand-up routines.

Influences
He lists his influences as: "Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, George Carlin and Sam Kinison. Then Morecambe and Wise, Little and Large and Bruce Forsyth from the UK definitely inspired me to get into comedy."

Personal life
Chowdhry makes an effort to keep fit during touring, telling Coach Magazine: "I don't eat chapatis, even though I’m Indian" – and replacing them with higher-protein substitutes like bulgur wheat and quinoa. "If I only had ten minutes to work out, I’d do high-intensity abs training.” He has also spoken about his battles with mental health in the New Statesman: "Mental health problems aren’t really discussed in the Asian community." Talking to the South China Morning Post, "People see you as an Asian comedian, whereas the other two guys coming to Hong Kong [Sean Meo and Michael McIntyre] aren't Asian comedians – they're just British. But they're not referred to as 'English white comedians'. I'm British. I was born in England. The fact that I'm Asian has very little to do with my stand-up, although it would have an influence for an obvious reason because of the way I'm perceived by certain people. So I play on the stereotypes and try to change them."

Stand Up
Chowdhry started his stand up career performing in pubs and clubs around London, often risking racial attacks.

November 2001 saw him at Jongleurs Battersea and Brixton Comedy Club and, in April 2003, he was still performing in Brixton.

2003 also saw him in Trinidad, where he was the first British act to perform at the Caribbean Comedy Festival.

Stage
In early 2003 Chowdhry appeared on stage as "shady, Archers-obsessed Raheem" in the play Finding Bin Laden.