I’m very anti-PC – I don’t buy into it, says comic Russell Peters ahead of Arena Birmingham gig

Russell will be performing at Arena Birmingham on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, as part of a limited three-night arena tour, bringing his own brand of humour to the UK once again.

This show will feature all new material including plenty of Russell’s own signature interactions with the audience. The Canadian stand-up and actor won a Gemini Award in 2008 and in 2013 became the first comedian to get a Netflix stand-up special.

He has been repeatedly outspoken in an age of political correctness – which has caused led to several run-ins with critics.

As well as his current Deported World Tour, he recently starred in the hit TV show The Indian Detective, which took five years to make. The writer and performer is a perfectionist about his work.

“I think perfectionist is an overstatement but somewhere along the lines of a perfectionist. I understand things should be wrong. If things are a little too perfect, there’s something wrong with it. I embrace the flaws.”

Peters flew to India and South Africa to make The Indian Detective. “Most of it was shot in Cape Town, but all the exterior stuff you need in India we shot there. You can’t fake India. The noise, the colour of the light, you know what I mean?

“Canada is more than ready for it. We’ve got members of Parliament that are Sikh. Our Prime Minister is young and hip. We’ve got Drake and The Weeknd, who are making Toronto the coolest place in Canada. We are primed for this. We’re looking for these things now. And I’m so glad I’m the guy who gets to do it before somebody else does. Because if I don’t do it, somebody else will. It was never a question of if, it was always a question of when. And when is now.”

Russell is grateful that his work gives him the chance to get back to India. He returns every couple of years and is thrilled to do so. “They love it over there. As a matter of fact, they’re probably some of the best audiences I perform to. They’re really smart and astute to what’s going on around the world. The funny thing is that when I do the Indian accent onstage over there, the people that come to the shows are the wealthier or more educated people there, and when I do the accent they laugh extra hard because for some reason they don’t think they have that accent and I’m like, ‘No, no, you do. You just don’t hear it anymore.’”

Russell speaks his mind and is diametrically opposed to the notion of political correctness. “I’m very anti-political correctness. I don’t buy into it.

“It’s hypersensitivity. People are afraid of words now. You gotta focus on intent. We’re judging books by their cover now. You gotta pay more attention. You gotta put down the sensitivities. I say things onstage sometimes and I haven’t said anything offensive but I hear the audience go, ‘Ooh’ and I think, ‘Ooh? I haven’t even said anything yet, give me a minute!’”

He found himself in hot water when he called Heritage Minister Melanie Joly hot, with critics branding him sexist.

“See, to me that was all harmless. The reason I said that is because it was the Junos and the first presenter was a politician. And I’m like, shouldn’t it be someone in the entertainment industry, maybe a musician? So that’s why I was like, “Why is that person here?” That’s why I said it and it completely got taken out of control and context and let’s be honest, she was a publicist before, she knows what she did. It wasn’t an accident it became what it became.”

Spending his time flitting between stand-up and acting is perfect for Russell, who loves the different skills that each require. He didn’t intend to move into acting, though found it perfectly natural to do so.

“I started doing standup 28 years ago, and one of the reasons that I got into it was because I wanted to get into acting. Somebody told me early on that I wasn’t good looking enough to be an actor and I was like, ‘Wow, well that sucks that you’d say that to me … but it’s a fair assessment.’

“I figured I would need to have something more to offer them. I don’t think I’m that dedicated to anything that I could show up and be a big, old thespian, so I got into standup and I loved it. I was hoping that acting gigs would come. My first acting gig was in 1994 in an independent film called Boozecan — it was out of Toronto, and the bug bit me then. I play a crackhead freebasing in a car and I burnt my crotch or something in it; it was a serious dramatic film about illegal boozecans (underground nightclubs) in Toronto, but I had no business being in anything at that time. I had no clue how to be on a set and I knew nothing about anything. Nobody in my family was involved in that world at all.”