HE plays the nation’s cheekiest shopkeeper, Navid, in Still Game, but Sanjeev Kohli has admitted he would be on a stairlift to heaven if he could land a heavy metal role.

Fresh from a starring role in Still Game 2, the recent sell-out stage run of the BBC’s Craiglang sitcom at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro, Sanjeev revealed he is a secret metal-head and would love to play Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, or Deep Purple’s Jon Lord.

Sanjeev said: “I think I could probably do Jimmy Page in a film. I know enough about him. It would be interesting to see how people react. I love Jimmy Page. It’s about believability and it’s is about finding the truth in something.

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“I had a heavy metal upbringing, more Deep Purple than Led Zeppelin actually. I would probably be better playing Jon Lord, the keyboard player from Deep Purple and I would love to play an Asian heavy metal star.”

The 46-year-old has also joined calls for Asians to be given better roles on TV, claiming many are asked to play terrorists.

Echoing Goodness Gracious Me actress, Meera Syal’s comments last week when she criticising the lack of Asian people on TV, Sanjeev,He said: “Occasionally, 

I will audition for a part when it comes in on the script the character [is] specifically Asian.

“I auditioned for a part in a show I really like, The Catastrophe, and I didn’t get the part of a recruitment consultant. 

“There was nothing Asian about the character, who was called Craig. Those are the parts I want to get.“Equally, I’ll watch Downton Abbey and know I’m not going to get a part in that because there weren’t Asians in that echelon of society.”

Recently, the broadcaster Sky cancelled a comedy in which Joseph Fiennes played Michael Jackson after the singer’s daughter, Paris Jackson, complained that she “wanted to vomit”.

“I haven’t seen Joseph Fiennes playing Michael Jackson, so I don’t know how that panned out,” Sanjeev said. “I did see Tom Hiddleston singing Man In The Mirror on a chat show and he nailed it.

“The actor Riz Ahmed says he still gets offered the terrorist parts. Surely someone like him should have moved on by now because he is incredibly talented.

“Other incredibly talented Asians should have moved on, but sometimes you think things haven’t moved on.

“I’d like to think the mainstream was ready for that now especially when we are at the point where we are talking about gender and sexuality fluidity.

“Could Abraham Lincoln be played by a Chinese actor? The problem is playing established historical figures. We know Abraham Lincoln wasn’t Chinese.

“As Asian as I am should be irrelevant and we should just be human beings trying to portray other human beings. It is an ideal we should aspire to, put it that way, but whether the mainstream audience is ready for that I don’t know.”

Sanjeev, who also plays local lad done good, Amandeep ‘AJ’ Jandhu in the BBC’s Shieldinch soap River City, admits he was amazed by the public’s response to the second Still Game adaptation for the stage, including the romantic storyline in which Navid contemplates an affair with busybody, Isa, played by Jane McCarry.

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He said: “It was very generous of Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill to give us the big romantic storyline and then to have the big payoff at the end.
“There is all this stuff in Appletree Yard with people saying how dare a middle-aged woman have a sex scene on television?

“The flip of that is the whole of the Hydro were waiting for this 61-year old Asian shopkeeper to kiss this pensioner. People were shouting, ‘Get her p**ped’, so loudly in one case that I had to deal with it. I said, ‘Give me a minute, you dirty b*****d’. It was great fun. 

“Of course, the moral aspect is compromised by the fact that Navid is married.”