Identity is complicated. That's why I Bic razored my forehead to look like Robbie Williams
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Version 0 of 1. Racism. What is it? Where is it? And how does it survive? A few of the many questions that shan’t be answered in this column by me over the next 831 words. Sorry. I know it’s a hot topic, along with the topic of terror. God, I never get tired of seeing that word in print. If I close my eyes, I can see it burned into the backs of my eyelids. Or on to the fronts of my retinas. Or whatever, I was never really that into biology at school. I was more into making my hairline resemble Robbie Williams’s from Take That. His forehead was large and roomy and an almost perfect rectangle. Mine, on the other hand, was low and made a hairy “m” shape about half an inch above my eyebrows. I looked like the kid off The Munsters. Or a wolverine. Which meant that having a middle parting and a curtains hairdo like Robbie, and being popular with girls, was out of the question. So I got creative and did what any London-born, Iranian, teenage, low-hairlined kid might do to emulate their Stoke-on-Trent-born, high-hairlined, Caucasian idol: I lathered up my forehead and Bic razored my hairline into the desired shape. Miraculous. Suddenly I had the forehead of my dreams. Large, roomy, Caucasian-looking. Excitedly, I combed my hair into a middle parting a la Robbie; my curtains fell perfectly down on to my new higher, roomier forehead, ending effortlessly on my eyebrows. I was elated. I felt a million bucks. I was a new man (boy). I also had a bad case of five o’clock shadow on my forehead. I looked like an upside-down Desperate Dan. I was 15. This identity crisis quick fix was one of a thousand more to come during the next 20 years of my life … and music score swells aaand CUT! OK, enough of this confiding-in-Guardian-readers bullshit. Let’s get down to it: I want my own column in this paper. I’ve been jealous of the opportunities other comedians have been given to write thought-provoking, insightful, intelligent and hilarious articles in various newspapers. It’s time I was given a shot at the title. And this is it. Right, focus: identity – that’s the topic that got me this gig. Once my hairline had grown back, I was nearly 16. The Robbie from Take That in me was dead. But from his cold, white, northern ashes had sprouted a new guiding light, giving me strength, self-belief, identity; his name was Liam. Liam made me walk like an ape, wear Clarks shoes and stand in my bedroom, hands behind my back, snarling into an imaginary microphone for hours and hours. I was a rock’n’roll star. But I wasn’t. I was a hairy, brown, big-nosed virgin. When I do an impression of someone, or when I am pretending to be someone else, something freaky happens: I feel the person I am mimicking behind my eyeballs. Their head is sitting perfectly inside mine, helping me project a false self out on to the world. And it’s not always a choice. I have been “absorbing” people – their voices, their mannerisms – all my life, to the point where I am a sort of Frankenstein of different people. My own speaking voice is in fact a mixture of how my two best mates speak, because they are cool and I am not. I think I decided, about the time I picked up my mum’s Bic razor, that I was not prepared to have my identity dictated to me. That simply “being myself” was never going to satisfy me or get the job done. That the odds were stacked against me somehow, that the world was not about to adapt to me, but that I needed to adapt to the world. I had to fool the world into accepting me. I didn’t seem to fit the mould of my idols. My idols were all white or black, for a start, and working class, and northern, or American, drug addicts, rock stars, the same as anyone’s. But definitely not brown. I wanted to belong. But I never did, shaven forehead or not. I was lost. Thank God for my imagination. For my abilities to mimic. I have fooled so many people over the years. I’ve been doing it all my life. But is it right that that I had to? Is it because there aren’t enough famous brown role models in this country for young brown people to look up to and be inspired by? Zayn from One Direction. That’s the only famous brown person in this country I can think of. Zayn and that very funny Indian actor on EastEnders who looks like a shortsighted, gay, Asian blow-up doll. (And the Pakistani man on Dragons’ Den who played Marlon Brando’s son in The Godfather.) There is a gap, and it’s getting bigger. I’ve done all I can. It’s your turn now. Hurry. Before they Bic their own foreheads. Kayvan Novak’s new show Asylum starts on Monday 9 February at 9pm on BBC4. |