A Quote by Isa Guha

You never know how you're going to go down as an English commentator in Australia. — © Isa Guha
You never know how you're going to go down as an English commentator in Australia.
I changed my major to English literature, which was on the advice of my father. I finally said, "You know, Dad, to heck with it: I'm just going to be an actor. But I'm going to go to school." And he said, "Well, if you're going to go to school, then major in English literature. Those are the tools you are going to be working with as a man who's going to be acting in English, one would assume."
When you're releasing an album, you never know how it's going to go. You never know how a critic is going to receive it or how much it's going to sell.
Sometimes it's great when, you know, you're sitting down to watch a straightforward story, and you know how it's going to go, and you know how it's going to end. That's a fairy tale.
My parents were the only people to go to South Africa from Australia in a single engine plane... the two of them, no radio... you had to fly down low to see the street signs to know which city you were in... most people couldn't speak English.
Well, English is no problem for me because I am actually English. My whole family are English; I was brought up listening to various forms of the English accent. Obviously there are more specific ones that get a little bit tricky. Same with American stuff. But because in Australia we're so inundated with American culture, television, this that and the other, everyone in Australia can do an American accent. It's just second nature.
But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.
I never know what I'm going to wear until five minutes before I go somewhere... I guess I know what I'm comfortable in. I don't know how to describe that, I mean you either put it on and go 'no way' or 'OK, let's go.'
And I liked pluralist Australia. I got a taste for pluralist Australia. I like, I like Australians and I can't believe that they're going to go to hell because they tell a good dirty joke, you know.
You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.
Malcolm Bradbury made the point, and I don't know whether it's a valid one or not, that the real English at the moment is not the English spoken in England or in America or even in Canada or Australia or New Zealand. The real English is the English which is a second language, so that it's rather like Latin in the days of the Roman Empire when people had their own languages, but had Latin in order to communicate.
To be a commentator, you must have a life outside cricket, too. If cricket is all that you know, then you would not be a great commentator.
I was born in North London, migrated to Australia when I was four. So when I first came to Australia people saw me as a little English boy. Over the years that feeling of being a little English boy diminished and I felt much more Australian.
Just being a commentator is not as easy as people think with going out there and talking for three hours. So, I don't call myself a commentator: I call myself an analyst.
I'm not sure what's going on in Britain. I don't know what's going on in London. Because London is no longer an English city, and that's how they got the Olympics. I mean, they said, "We're the most cosmopolitan city on Earth," but it doesn't feel English.
I love coming out to Australia, if it weren't so far away I would go all the time. I've worked with a lot of people down there so I love Australia, I have a lot of great relationships down there... it's such a great vibe.
When I was 25, if you'd have said I was going to be a commentator, that would seem like, 'Oh, my God. That's a huge step down.'
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