BBC's Romesh Ranganathan makes major career announcement
The comedian, 47, has confirmed he is taking a step back from his TV career to 'be at home a bit more'
Much-loved comedian Romesh Ranganathan has declared his intention to take a career break 'to be at home a bit more'. While insisting he's not leaving comedy for good, the 47-year-old stressed the need to slow down and 'just live life' for a while.
"I know that people sort of say I'm busy and I'm always like, trying to work and stuff," he told Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. "There is no strategy. There's no game plan. I have no endgame.
"There's no vision board or anything like that. (I'm) just doing whatever feels good." He then added: "I do feel like I'm sort of settling into winding things up, like not winding things up, but I'm taking a step back."
Romesh is famous for his Bafta-winning television series with comedian Rob Beckett, Rob and Romesh Vs. He has also appeared in several other television shows, including his own travel series, The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan, on the BBC.
The 47-year-old from Crawley continued: "I want to be at home a bit more. And by the way, this is not an announcement of retirement, but I do feel like, relatively recently, this is quite fortuitous that we're talking about this at the time that we are, because I have just hit this period of thinking I am probably going to just be a bit more measured in what I do going forward.
"I think I might take a bigger break between bits. I've told you, I've not hit the thing yet, maybe this next thing could be it, but it's not going to be it if I don't go off and just live life."
In the discussion, Romesh also reminisced about his time as a math teacher prior to his present career. He even admitted that it was more stressful than his work in comedy.
"There wasn't a single day of that job that I didn't feel completely fulfilled," he added. "I felt very stressed. It's the most stressed I've ever been in my life, actually.
"There's not been a single day of my comedy career that's even come close to the stress that I felt as a teacher. I cannot speak highly enough of teachers and teaching and how I loved that job."
Besides his stand-up routines, the comedian is the host of the game show The Weakest Link and appears in the BBC One sitcom Avoidance.
He also appeared in BBC Three's Asian Provocateur, which highlighted his family heritage. Last year, he took over Claudia Winkleman's Saturday morning slot on BBC Radio 2 and hosts Romesh Ranganathan: For The Love Of Hip Hop on the same station.
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