Nihal Arthanayake: The BBC is not fit for purpose, I'm quitting to do stand-up

Times

23-07-2025

Over the past decade Nihal Arthanayake has established himself as one of our best interviewers, his attentive, well-researched encounters with stars such as Billy Connolly, Elton John and Liam Gallagher making his BBC 5 Live shows and podcasts appointment listening. As a radio presenter he stayed cool in the hot seat during the 7/7 attacks and on the day the Queen died, and he has won two Sony awards, once the most prestigious in radio.
Yet Arthanayake, 54, has just resigned from the BBC after 23 years and on Saturday he makes his debut as a stand-up comedian. As career changes go, that's some left turn. He says it's less the product of a midlife crisis, as he joked on social media, than boredom with the job and dissatisfaction with the BBC. 'I couldn't be happy there any more,' he says, having repeatedly criticised the corporation for its lack of diversity. 'I do feel that the BBC is in an existential crisis, especially BBC News.' More on that later.
A bigger factor, Arthanayake says, speaking at his home in Stockport, Greater Manchester, is that 'I've spent most of my life in a radio studio in front of a microphone on my own. I no longer feel any challenge in broadcasting'. The thought of doing stand-up is 'terrifying', he admits, and 'saying goodbye to £145,000 a year' isn't far behind, 'but I've got this bizarre optimism that it will all be OK'.
That's partly because all of his other career switches have turned out pretty well. Born and raised in Harlow, Essex, by Sri Lankan parents, he started out in the late Eighties as a rapper called MC Krayzee A, going on to work with the likes of Fun-Da-Mental and Panjabi MC. After that he was a publicist for musicians including his future interviewee Elton John and Mos Def, then a music journalist for The Face and Mixmag, and a television presenter on BBC2, Channel 4 and MTV. On BBC Radio he has moved from Radio 1 to the Asian Network to 5 Live. In 2022 he published a book, Let's Talk, a guide to having better conversations. 'It's a kind of creative ADHD,' he says. 'What's next, what's next, what's next?'
Although his stand-up experience is limited to a few minutes on one of his radio shows, he says he is expected to be funny when he hosts events. At one he roasted Sadiq Khan, the London mayor. 'I said, 'There goes Sadiq Khan, the son of a bus driver — although you'd never know it because he never mentions it.'' Arthanayake's comedy heroes include David Letterman, Dave Chappelle and Romesh Ranganathan, whom he admires 'not just because he's a friend and Sri Lankan. To make his journey to the epicentre of mainstream consciousness is not to be underestimated'.
Ranganathan has also proved that there are transferable skills between radio and stand-up. 'Radio does teach you to be very quick, especially the phone-ins,' Arthanayake says, so he hopes he can handle hecklers. Confidence is all. When he takes to the stage at the Battersea Arts Centre at the weekend he will do what he does when hosting corporate events: try to be like Jimmy Fallon and the other big American talk show hosts. 'Those guys come on stage and they're just like, 'Everybody loves me,'' he says.
And if they don't love him, well, he's had far worse. 'I covered for Chris Moyles on Radio 1 Breakfast once over Christmas and the hatred on the text machine …' he recalls. More recently he has been 'at the centre of media storms. People have said they wanted to kill me, accused me of being anti-white and a race-baiter'. Having weathered that kind of abuse, he says: 'I can't think of many things that would make me crumble. Maybe I'm fooling myself and [comedy] will be hideous, but I almost want to know what that's like to die on stage, because I'll only get better.'
Those media storms often stemmed from Arthanayake's criticism of the lack of diversity at BBC North in Manchester, where he moved to from London nine years ago with his Sri Lankan-American wife, Eesha, and their son and daughter, who are teenagers. 'I didn't see anyone who looked like me and it's as much about class as it is about colour — and faith,' he says. 'I've been told by a number of people of colour who work in production, even presenters, how marginalised they felt at BBC North.' He 'utterly concurs' with Gary Lineker's comment that the corporation 'tries to appease the people that hate the BBC … rather than worry about the people that love the BBC'.
Arthanayake pauses. 'I'm going to get myself in trouble here,' he says. 'I don't think it can be solved with the current leadership — I don't think they're fit for purpose. BBC News is ultimately at the heart of the BBC's trust — no one's looking at impartiality with Traitors or Strictly. Its trust derives from its ability to communicate truth and hold power to account, and it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt when it comes to the BBC's coverage of Israel and Gaza it has failed to do that,' he believes.
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He has never had a meeting with anyone at the top, he says. 'The impression given to me by people within 5 Live was almost as if colonial missives were sent from London.' If he could speak to Tim Davie, the director-general, he says he would ask him what programmes he's ever made.
'It would be remiss of me to shut up [about diversity] but it comes with a cost,' Arthanayake says. 'In some sections of the BBC I'm persona non grata and I'm comfortable with that because they're not my friends.' He won't have a leaving do, he says. 'What's the point?' Having made his feelings clear about the BBC management, 'I wouldn't want to have a drink with any of them'.
There is plenty else on his plate, notably writing a book on integration, an important subject, he says, because 'I'm a minority and I fear that one day the majority will turn on me'. He is also interviewing musicians on a podcast for a record label.
First, though, is that stand-up debut. It's part of the Sri Lankan Culture Collective Festival, so he will tailor his material to a diaspora audience. When he hosts the Asian Business awards he gets everyone to point at the richest person on their table, which always gets a 'massive laugh'. Has he invited Ranganathan? 'Hell no! He would be so supportive but I would spend the entire time on stage watching him taking selfies with people.'
When he announced his career change on social media, the comedian Doc Brown wrote simply: 'Welcome to hell.' Yet Arthanayake's chutzpah is undented and he hopes this show is the first of many. 'At the risk of sounding like someone who sits on a football terrace and says, 'I could do better than that,' there are some stand-ups I've interviewed, or seen, who I don't think are very good. I think I'm funnier.' Judging by his last few careers, he may well be right.
Nihal Arthanayake appears at the Sri Lankan Culture Collective Festival, Battersea Arts Centre, London, on July 26 (bac.org.uk)