Sanjeev Kohli
Sanjeev Kohli is an actor, born 1971.
For a large part of the British public, Sanjeev Kohli is one character. He is a Scottish actor, comedian and writer, born in Brentford in 1971, and the role that made him is Navid Harrid, the shopkeeper in Still Game who spends the sitcom's run insulting his customers with rather more affection than they have earned. It is a supporting part played over many years, which is its own kind of achievement.
The writing and radio career runs alongside it. He plays Ramesh Majhu in the radio sitcom Fags, Mags and Bags, on air since 2007, and he played AJ Jandhu in the BBC Scotland soap River City from 2015 to 2022. Since 2019 he has hosted his own talk show on the BBC Scotland channel.
The drama credits show a second gear the comedy work does not need. He is Sunil in Filth, Vikram in Limbo, a doctor on the offshore rig thriller The Rig, and Sajid Khan across both Magpie Murders and its sequel Moonflower Murders, where the nested story structure gives him two parts to play at once. There is also the Glasgow Empire manager in Stan & Ollie, a small role in a good film about the end of a career, plus recent work in Dept. Q and Coldwater. The range is wider than the shop counter suggests.
Movies (7)
TV (9)
Where to start with Sanjeev Kohli
Still Game is the front door and there is no arguing with it. Navid behind the counter is a comic creation built almost entirely out of timing and disdain, and the sitcom around him is one of the best things Scottish television has made.
For a different register, take Limbo: a quiet, funny, genuinely sad film about asylum seekers waiting out a decision on a Scottish island, and Kohli's Vikram belongs to its very dry comic texture. Filth is the opposite end, loud and nasty, and worth it if you can take the tone.
Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders are the comfortable option, well-made literary mysteries whose nested structure hands him two roles. Stan & Ollie is the best film on the page. Dept. Q and The Rig are the recent drama, and Look Around You is the deep cut for anyone who remembers Synthesizer Patel.