Guz Khan reveals why he ended Man Like Mobeen - and how he portrays multi-faith marriages in new Christmas caper

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

Guz Khan has come a long way in ten years. While teaching at a secondary school back then, Khan had been posting online skits as Brummie Muslim “Mobeen”. After a couple went viral, Joe Lycett invited him to be his opening act at a stand-up gig and, before long, Grace Academy was looking for a new humanities teacher.

In 2017, Khan turned Mobeen into a layered character for BBC Three comedy-drama series Man like Mobeen, about a drug dealer who, despite being reformed by faith and family, is never quite able to leave his old life behind. Four more series and three Bafta nominations followed, as did supporting gigs in productions by Judd Apatow and Mindy Kaling. Now, projects with Riz Ahmed and Rebel Wilson are in the works, while Khan’s new comedy drama, Stuffed, will be on BBC One over Christmas.

In another sense however, the 39-year-old comedian insists he hasn’t gone far at all.

“My friendship circle has been the same for decades. Me and my wife have known each other 21 years. I go to work, have a good time, then come home to my gang and no one really talks about it. Everyone’s like, ‘You’re the same prick you’ve always been.’ I don’t think I’m more talented than anybody else, I just never worried if something didn’t work out – it was one more for the memory bank.”

Have public attitudes towards him changed with his success? “Not a day goes by where someone doesn’t ask how I’m doing or if they can have a photo. My interactions in person are so varied, but overwhelmingly positive. In my online life, if you look at my X, you’ll see I’m an idiot and respond to things, partly because it’s entertaining and partly because you want to teach those people sitting in their mum’s basement, typing ‘Go home, you ___ b*****d’, that in real life you just wouldn’t say that. I tell my kids to be careful with all this, because online is realer than real life for a lot of people.”

Family is everything for Khan. He laments how easily distracted he gets while running errands (“My missus is always like, ‘Why did I marry you?’, but I always come home with one of the four things on the list, because it keeps the marriage together”) and references their five kids throughout our conversation, whether it’s “cussing each other out” while checking out random facts on YouTube, or his admiration for their earnest interest while watching Louis Theroux’s documentary The Settlers.

He splutters with laughter at his own earliest TV memory, recalling his sister playing him a VHS of Eddie Murphy doing stand-up when he was just five. “It rewired my brain; and my sister is now one of the leading child safeguarding officers in the West Midlands. How about that?”

Khan was brought up by his mother and two sisters in the Coventry suburb of Hillfields. “My earliest memories are that, to get in on a conversation between my mum, sisters, three aunties and one uncle, I had to say something that maybe I shouldn’t: if my aunties wanted to beat me up afterwards, my mum and uncle would laugh. I think that’s what honed my comedy: saying something that I knew was funny, but would probably p*** a few people off.”

Khan, who still lives in Coventry, hasn’t lost that childhood instinct to entertain without fear of the repercussions. In his new Christmas caper, Khan plays a Muslim grinch whose wife (Morgana Robinson) suggests a family trip to Lapland, where chaos reigns. It’s daft and energetic, and, like all his work, smuggles the thought-provoking alongside the silly.

For example, why are multifaith marriages (particularly happy ones) still so rare on British TV? “They’re pretty commonplace out there!” he chuckles. “It’s not overt in Stuffed – we go through familiar family s**t, we’re not sitting around talking theology – but I know I’ll get messages saying, ‘I’m so glad you and Morgana were a couple on screen, because we don’t see it.’ Not enough people get to tell their stories, still. One of the reasons I ended Man like Mobeen is because I’m not the kid who had those experiences 20 years ago any more.”

I finish with a festive poser: is it better to give or receive? He laughs, shocked: “My G, what type of people are going to read this?!” Then he takes it in the intended spirit. “It’s always nicer, in life, to give. Take from that what you will.”

What I take from it is that Guz Khan has plenty left to give.

The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.

Stuffed will air at 9pm on Tuesday 23rd December on BBC One.

Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.