Stand-up comedian Sorabh Pant is quite well known for his TV appearances. But few are aware that he got married recently, has written a book filled with insanity, is fighting to get desi voices give directions on Global Positioning Systems and thinks that silence is the worst response a comedian can get.

Sorabh, who was recently in the city to perform the infamous Pant on Fire, explains why he became a comedian. “I wish I could say that I pretty much popped out of my mother, picked up the umbilical cord as a mike and said ‘what’s up doc.’ But the truth is that I was an awful student at school and I found working out of a cubicle excruciatingly painful. Becoming a comedian was the closest I could get and my parents seemed fine with it as long as the cheques kept coming in and the joke wasn’t on them,” he quips.

Sorabh, who got married this year, confesses that although women might want their ideal men to have a sense of humour, he is not much of a chic magnet. “If a woman has to choose between Brad Pitt and Adam Sandler or say Raju Srivastava and Johnny Lever, who do you think she would choose?”

So, why is Pant on Fire? “I wish, there was a deep story behind it but it’s just a bad pun,” laughs Sorabh. “We have tried to put together a gig around men, women, relationships and the usual stuff that happens in life” he adds. A member of the Weird Ass group led by Vir Das, Sorabh, who has done shows like Bollywood OMG, Star World’s RIPping the Decade and Pogo’s Dr. Kholkar, feels that cinema is the ultimate thing. “If you do a movie, you will get a full house for every show you do as a stand-up comedian,” he confesses.

“Hyderabad is very hospitable. It seems odd that the comedy scene in the city is not as happening as it should be, but I am hopeful that it will get better.”