Review: Rahul Subramanian: Who Are You?

Rahul Subramanian is the kind of guy who, if he was in your class at school, would make you snort with laughter with a single look – and you’d be the one who’d get into trouble.

It’s hard to imagine someone so goofy being happy in the corporate world, but that’s where he found himself after graduating. He became an engineer, got involved with a start-up, then did an MBA before realising he could make a living as a comic, and, in this hour that flies by, he shares some of the absurdities of his life.

From the scatter-gun hiring policy of the company that employed him and his impression of a group of hapless students giving a joint presentation, to the self-described motivational speaker who inspired the name of the show, there’s much to love. There’s also an extraordinary story about his first paid gig, and a wonderfully silly recounting of his visit from a wealth manager trying to organise life cover for him.

He says he no longer does jokes about sensitive topics after receiving death threats from the unlikely sounding targets of some of his earlier jokes: DJs. It was so bad at one point that he needed bodyguards for four months. It would have been great to hear a bit more about how that all started, but it’s a good excuse to go through his back catalogue.

Subramanian is big in India and deserves to be huge here too.