Paul Sinha: A BBC Radio 4 Collection

Five fantastic shows from The Chase‘s ‘Sinnerman’, award-winning comic and broadcaster Paul Sinha

Paul Sinha loves a quiz. Not only is he the sixth-ranked quizzer in the UK, he’s also a regular on Radio 4’s long-running Round Britain Quiz and a resident Chaser on ITV’s The Chase. In these collected BBC shows, Paul offers us his unique perspective as a quizmaster, stand-up star, ex-GP and second-generation migrant, as he takes a comedic look at British culture, history, nationalism and sport.

Paul Sinha’s Quiz Culture sees him travelling to the European Quizzing Championships in Derby, to meet the Continent’s superstars, pit his skills against them, and find out why trivia has become such a serious business. In Paul Sinha’s Citizenship Test, he examines the test that newcomers to Britain must pass to become citizens, and finds the questions deeply disappointing. Deciding he can do better, he rewrites it to reflect his own ideas of Britishness, focussing on the history syllabus, the arts, health and social cohesion.

The Sinha Carta finds Paul scrutinising England’s most important legal document, Magna Carta, explaining what’s in it, why it’s brilliant, and how it came to be. He also suggests some new, up-to-date additions, for a Magna Carta fit for a modern Britain. In The Sinha Test, Paul draws on his experience as a proudly English son of Indian immigrants to conduct a comic analysis of cricket, national identity and divided loyalties. Finally, in The Sinha Games, he weighs up the pros and cons of hosting the Olympics. Using archive material, interviews, jokes and heavy sarcasm, he examines the past, present and future of the Games, as well as talking to the gold medallist who most influenced him as a young man—his former teacher, Olympic pentathlete Andy Archibald.