11 Facts About Parv Bancil

Parv Bancil was a British-Asian playwright and actor.

Parveen Singh Bancil was born in Moshi, Tanzania, in 1967 into an Indian Sikh family, the son of Sohan Singh Bancil and Amrit Kaur Bancil.

Parv Bancil was the grandson of Sardar Jogindar Singh Bancil of JS Bancil Building Contractors of Moshi, Tanzania.

Parv Bancil grew up in Hounslow, leaving school at the age of 15.

Parv Bancil gained a reputation as a dynamic, uncompromising and controversial writer.

Parv Bancil acted in many plays, was the founder member of One Nation Under A Groove Innit, was one half of a comic double act called The Khrai Twins, based on two bumbling drunken Southall gangsters, and a member of a comedy trio called the Sycophantic Sponge Bunch.

Parv Bancil was part of a spoof rock band called The Dead Jalebies.

In 1993, Parv Bancil wrote Ungrateful Dead, a play about a young Sikh man's descent into a world of gangs, violence and drugs.

In 1995 Parv Bancil wrote Papa Was A Bus Conductor, a comedy satire about a dysfunctional family that was an early flowering of the British Asian comedy boom that spawned Goodness Gracious Me.

The next few years saw Papa and Made In England re-staged and Parv Bancil began to become known as a cultural commentator, writing articles for magazines and newspapers, and often contributing to radio and television debate.

Parv Bancil began to write and present TV documentaries and ventured into film and screen writing.