Mawaan Rizwan talks YouTube Pride, Sex Education and whether he'd ever do Eurovision

"It's been so long since we’ve been to a house party, we’re just all desperately trying to make it like a house party and make up for the last year of not doing anything like that," Rizwan tells RadioTimes.com over Zoom. "It's a really cool space, it’s a pub with different floors and there's a bar at the bottom... but then we've also got these breakout rooms. [It's] like at a house party when you just randomly walk into a room and you’re like, ‘oh sorry, wrong room!’ But it’s actually maybe a bit interesting what's happening in there. I think it's gonna be really fun and I think it's gonna be a bit manic."

While there are naysayers who question whether Pride is still necessary following the huge strides towards equality for LGBTQ+ people in the UK, Rizwan makes a compelling case for why the annual event remains so crucial. The multi-talented comic admits that he was "quite late" to the party but instantly felt at home on his first year in attendance, moved by the widespread display of acceptance and positivity after a challenging time in his personal life.

"That was really nice to see that it happens all over the country and loads of people are celebrating that thing that was so hard for me growing up – a lot of people are celebrating how glorious it is," says Rizwan. "So I think it's really important; people feel seen, people feel like they’re not alone. Also, it’s fun, right? Everyone wants a fun association with that part of their identity, because it can be so tricky for so many years."

He continues: "Having said that, I also love going to Black Pride run by Lady Phyll and I love that there is more focus on reminding ourselves that Pride started off as a political thing. It's really easy to get wrapped up in the fun, but forget that this level of freedom and acceptance had to be fought for and we need to continually update our knowledge and education around that stuff – because there's still so much work to be done."

On that note, Rizwan praises the work of his co-host, whose powerful performance in Channel 4's It's A Sin brought attention to a chapter in LGBTQ+ history that some people may not have fully understood prior to watching. Alexander played university student-turned-budding actor Ritchie Tozer in the heartbreaking miniseries from Russell T Davies, which delivered record-breaking viewership for streaming service All 4 and caused a major surge in HIV testing.

"I'm so glad it got all the exposure and coverage because I think – especially the younger generation of queer people – you forget day-to-day that people have fought to be here," Rizwan says. "Imagine COVID, but on a political level [and] on a national level, people were like, ‘Oh, we’ll just let it happen because it's only affecting the part of society that actually politically we don't agree with anyway’. That's a really terrible, dark situation to be in and it's good to be reminded of that, I think. You know, it makes me grateful."

Rizwan is a natural fit for YouTube's Pride event given that his career started on the platform back in 2008, long before making videos online was considered a plausible way to make money. With no contacts in the entertainment industry to draw on, uploading to his channel was "the only thing that felt accessible" to a 16-year-old Rizwan, who set about filming sketches with a camera borrowed from school.

"They were terrible videos," he recalls. "I made so many terrible videos, but that's how I started learning my craft... And then obviously, when the landscape started changing and a lot of the TV world was like, ‘What's this internet thing? And who are these crazy young aliens who get loads of views? And how can we get in on this?', then it started opening doors."

Five years later and MalumTV (as it was then known) had developed a sizeable fanbase, reeled in by its comedy shorts featuring a mix of original characters and fellow YouTubers. But it was Rizwan's mother, Shahnaz, who proved to be the channel's first breakout star, with her appearances in his skits attracting the attention of Indian broadcaster StarPlus. In an extraordinary turn of events, she was headhunted for a role on family drama Yeh Hai Mohabbetein (This Is Love) and became a Bollywood celebrity overnight.

As Shahnaz jetted off to an entirely new life abroad, her son continued establishing his own career in entertainment, which saw his priorities gradually shift away from YouTube towards developing a stand-up act. Rizwan remembers having a "turning point moment" as he concluded that comedy was easier to achieve with editing tricks to fall back on, while the feedback he was receiving on his work left him feeling dissatisfied. ("You spend months editing a video and someone's like, ‘Oh, I really like your hair’. And it’s like, 'what about my joke structure?')

At age 19, Rizwan made his comedy club debut: "Basically, because of YouTube, I was like, ‘Oh, I'm the funniest person known to humankind. I'm born to be a star’. And then I did my first stand-up gig and it was like, ‘Oh no, I'm really s**t. Like, I'm really bad. People hate me’. There was no hiding. People are not afraid to tell you or to show you that you are not funny and that's the only way you can learn, really.

"There is no shortcut, you have to do those gruelling gigs, you have to go to the Edinburgh Fringe and flyer and do a whole hour-long show to an audience of five people – and have it be excruciating. I tried to dodge that, but there was no other way. It took me a decade to get vaguely good and that's it, but the rewards you reap from that... they're brilliant."

As is the case for any stand-up comedian, Rizwan has had his fair share of rowdy audiences, from battling abusive hecklers to dodging an assortment of items that have been thrown at him.

"When the human race drinks, they do some terrible things to people on stages that I still see therapists about," he says. "But one of the key lessons I learned about stand-up was – and I think a comedian said this to me after a year of doing it and having a horrible time – they said: ‘Don't go on stage and look for your parents’ validation in the audience. They could love you, they could hate you, but it shouldn't matter. If your sense of self and core stability is rocked by how much love they do or do not give you, you're going to drive yourself crazy. So go out there and do your thing."

As his stand-up persona began to take shape, big things were also happening in Rizwan's personal life as he came out to his parents in 2015. "They weren't too happy about it," he says in the opening of BBC Three documentary How Gay is Pakistan?, which was first broadcast later that same year. The project had been in the works for some time after Rizwan had caught the eye of the BBC's factual commissioners with a well-produced vlog that saw him spend a week in the Sahara Desert.

He explains: "They called me in and said, ‘have you got any ideas?’ And I said, 'there's one thing I want to do, where if I did that then I would die happy because it’s something I struggled with growing up, and I think it could do some good – and that is a documentary in my country of birth, Pakistan, exploring the queer community. My parents have not told me if it exists, how it all works, I've not seen that side to Pakistan'.

"I've always been told growing up, ‘bro, you can't be gay, you're Pakistani’. Those two things are not linked. That's like saying, 'You can't be vegan, you're left-handed'. There's an array of combinations of identities people can have but we get so bogged down in the rigidity of it all, and what being gay means in terms of the rest of your identity and who you are."

Homosexuality remains illegal in Pakistan to this day, but Rizwan was surprised to discover that this is the legacy of colonial law introduced during the days of the British Empire, as opposed to prejudicial beliefs native to the region. Additionally, he was inspired by the "beautiful" queer people he met while filming the documentary as well as the many allies going out of their way to support them – from family members to the NAZ Male Health Alliance, the first organisation dedicated to providing services for Pakistan's LGBTQ+ community.

"On a personal level, not on a national level, not on a government level, [but] on a personal level, there is a lot of acceptance and inclusion and there's some really brave people doing stuff every day to fight for rights," he explains. "The twist for me was I always grew up thinking of queerness as a concept that was created by the West – that the East is very unaccepting and the West has been really liberal around these things. Actually, when I learned about the history of colonial South Asia, going back to my queerness wasn't me going towards whiteness or Westernness, it was me reclaiming and going back to the queer history that I come from – which is the Indian subcontinent. We're not taught that enough."

More recently, Rizwan has continued to tell subversive stories as part of the writing team behind Netflix's smash-hit Sex Education. The series follows Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield), the awkward son of sex therapist Jean (Gillian Anderson), as he navigates his teenage years at a picturesque countryside secondary school. Far from your average teen drama, Sex Education stands out from the crowd with its diverse cast of highly compelling characters, emotionally charged story arcs and even – as the title would suggest – some genuinely helpful intimacy advice.

Rizwan penned an episode of season two and has returned to help plot the highly-anticipated third outing, which recently completed filming after a production cycle lengthened by pandemic-related delays. He is visibly thrilled about what awaits fans in the new episodes, to such an extent that he seems tempted to cave when pressed for story details. Unfortunately for us, he kept his composure, but the writer did offer the cryptic tease of a "pivotal" moment in the fifth chapter, which he wrote himself. That said, Rizwan insists that there's no sense of rivalry when scripts are being delegated, as bold ideas and powerful scenes are spread evenly across the season.

"They choose the writers really carefully and we work really well as a team, so you kind of forget what ideas you pitched and who said what and it all just becomes everyone's," he reveals. "There's no ego, there's no possessiveness over any one idea and so I'm always really open to like, ‘I’ll write whichever episode’. Because there's so many characters, there's several moments in each episode where I'm like: ‘Oh, that'd be great to write!’ So usually, whichever episode I get given, I'm just well chuffed."

Just as Sex Education was temporarily scuppered by coronavirus, stand-up gigs have also had to proceed in a reduced capacity – if at all – over the past year. It's a far cry from just months before the pandemic, when Rizwan was supporting Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness on an international tour and performing to packed 6,000 seat venues.

"And it's not just any old 6,000 seater," adds Rizwan. "It's 6,000 people who love Jonathan Van Ness, so you imagine the energy in that room. I had the time of my life. There was so much love in the room... He would walk out on stage and people would just be falling over the seats, screaming. And when I walked out, I thought they'd be like, ‘who's this guy? Why’s Jonathan not on stage?’ But they were giving me that same level of love and I was so grateful.

"I was like, ‘every comedy show should be like this’. It was a real comedown coming back to London and doing a new material night – being like, ‘Oh no, there’s the real stand-up audience’," he says playfully.

With any luck, live entertainment will be making a comeback over the next year or so, with the music component of Rizwan's stand-up act to be expanded in upcoming performances. The comedian had a breakout hit on his hands with Mango, a tune that pokes fun at the fragile masculinity displayed on men's shower gel bottles, but the track was the product of an extended creative process. Starting out as a poem, Mango gradually evolved into a full three-minute song "over the course of maybe 20 gigs", earning Rizwan a cult following at 2018's Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

"Ever since then, I've started making more songs," he says. "I've made songs all my life. When I was a teenager, I did a whole album and this terrible, really wordy political rap and no one's ever gonna hear it, but I'm using some of those old beats that I made as an 18-year-old. I didn't really know what I was doing at the time, but some of them are really creative and I used to sample all these weird things. So now I'm using some of those instrumentals, combining more of my comedy lyrics now and I'm putting an album together."

He's currently eyeing an October launch date for his independently produced release, comprised of songs that have been rigorously trialled by the audiences at his live gigs. Recently, fellow comedy musician Bill Bailey announced a bid to be the UK's representative at next year's Eurovision Song Contest, which would mark a bold change in strategy after the disappointing 'nul points' we suffered last month. Rizwan would be another strong choice if we were to take a more humorous approach in the future, with the elaborate dance routines and sparkly costumes of the Mango music video feeling like a natural fit for the routinely extravagant competition. He certainly seems open to the idea too.

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Rizwan said: "That'd be fun, I'd be up for that. I’d want to do it in my own way though. It'd be different. I actually don't watch Eurovision but I always watch the highlights, and I don't want to be one of those people who ends up being cast in Star Wars even though they never saw it – because there's a million people out there dying to get on Star Wars. I don’t want to insult the diehard fans of Eurovision by being like ‘I never even watched the thing’. But if I did do it, I'd make sure my song was different and would blow people's minds – you know, go hard or go home."

The Eurovision stage hardly seems out of reach for Rizwan given his impressive career to date. At just 28 years old, he already has stand-up comedian, actor, screenwriter, singer-songwriter, radio presenter, vlogger and documentary filmmaker listed on his CV. Although he realises that, to Taskmaster fans, he’ll always be known more simply as "the helium egg guy".

YouTube Pride 2021 will kick off on Years & Years’ channel at 8pm on Friday 25th June 2021. Visit YouTube Originals for where to view the rest of the night’s entertainment.