“I did not want my English to be good. I did not even want to speak it...my father sounds like the love child of Downtown Abbey and a Bangalore call centre.’

With these jokes about the way he speaks English, stand-up comic Anuvab Pal began his routine dissing the British Empire – in front of a British audience, in Britain.

Pal performed recently for the BBC’s new year comedy show, his first time in Britain. And while he made fun of the legacy of colonialism, he also made his audience laugh at corruption in India.