Cyrus Broacha has managed the unique feat of being consistently funny over three decades. The MTV Bakra man, who has been the face of the satirical ‘news show’ The Week That Wasn’t for the last 15 years, chatted with the members of Ladies Study Group over a virtual session. Moderating the session called ‘Funny Side Up’ was Yezdi Karai. Excerpts.

Yezdi Karai: I first saw Cyrus on MTV Bakra. And my wife and I always used to wonder that how come this guy has never been beaten up!

Cyrus Broacha: Oh, I have! At least on four instances.

Cyrus, you are defined by the show The Week That Wasn’t. It’s the only show in India that takes a lighthearted view of the serious business of news....

Cyrus: On the Internet, there are a lot of people who are taking satire to a new level. But let’s say they are non-vegetarian and we are vegetarian. So they get arrested. At the moment, we are under the radar.

What is the backstory on how this show came into existence and what makes it so successful?

Cyrus: It’s not very successful... it’s just stuck around for 15 years. In 2006, Rajdeep Sardesai called me up and said he wanted to speak to me about a concept he had in mind... which was based on the Jon Stewart show (The Daily Show). It was largely his idea and I liked it.

At MTV, we would just stand for three minutes and put a link together on just about anything. I didn’t really have any interest in the music, so I would just talk about the flowers or something nearby. And everybody thought that was great... it was such an irreverent channel that didn’t matter. That’s what they are now doing even with ‘hard-hitting’ shows like Roadies and Splitsvilla, which have changed how people have conversations around the world, which is mostly in monosyllables.

So Rajdeep had this idea of this satirical show which would be edgy and satirical. He asked me who I wanted on my team. The only guy I could think of was Kunal (Vijaykar). I told Rajdeep, ‘There is this guy in my house who is a freeloader... he’s smelly, he’s unfit and he keeps coughing all the time, we can’t get rid of him’. Rajdeep asked us to do a pilot, he saw it and put it on air.

So it’s been on for 15 years....

Cyrus: Ya, once we turned 15, we asked them for a raise. But they told us to wait for another 15 years! Honestly, it was always the sidekick show. It’s only in the last five-six years that it became the main focus.

What happens behind the scenes to produce each episode?

Cyrus: Not much. We sit and look at the newspapers and see what’s going on. We try and copy from the Internet. The biggest problem is to figure which story will last till Saturday. Sometimes, when it’s elections, then all the stories make sense. Sometimes it doesn’t. That happens a lot. I wish we did it on a daily basis.

We are not very good at laughing at ourselves, are we?

Cyrus: Well, we once had a case slapped on us by the Tamil Nadu government because we had cracked a harmless joke on (then chief minister) J. Jayalalithaa. The lawyers of the channel bailed us out... the channel spent so much money it could have easily funded my son’s education in Canada!

Well, one mishap in 15 years is not bad....

Cyrus: Well, there have been others also. Kapil Dev once got angry with us. I am a big fan of cricket and of Kapil Dev, but he’s a very strange man. His English is, of course, odd, and his Hindi is also very Haryanvi-Punjabi. He had done an interview, which we rewrote and made fun of him basically. And he got very upset. So then, I spoke to him and I apologised. He was very nice, but he gave me a lecture on how he loves comedy and comedians, but there is a ‘limit to how much’ (imitates Kapil’s style of speaking) and all that. My dad also told me: ‘Why are you attacking Kapil Dev? Soft target....’ So there have been a few here and there.

But some have been quite sporting. (P) Chidambaram, for example. We were at an event and I was made to sit with a few mantris and I wanted to avoid that, but he spotted me and said: ‘I love your show and you must feature me again!’ Nitin Gadkari told Kunal in Marathi why he’s made to look so fat on the show when Kunal plays him! (Laughs)

We did a Hindi version for two years and that was a killer, because you can’t get away with too much. Initially, I thought it was my bad Hindi that was offending them, but that wasn’t it! (Laughs) It was too risky and we had to pull out eventually.

You have a podcast called Cyrus Says. A podcast is essentially a modern version of the talk radio format. Why should one listen to a podcast?

Cyrus: Even within the same family, there are separate audiences. When we grew up, Ramayan or a cricket match would be watched by the whole family together. That’s gone. Radio has now become Internet radio, and now one looks for what one likes. If you like bikes, you will listen to a guy who does a bike show.

Our show generally tries to talk to people who are not that famous but should be. So ultimately, everyone is going to try and find what they like. I love listening to religious podcasts... atheism fighting right-wing religious personalities. Without taking sides, it’s just great banter.