Television After graduating from university, Kohli joined the
BBC Scotland graduate production trainee scheme. He later worked in BBC
Television Centre, London, directing
children's TV, before moving to Youth and Entertainment Features in Manchester to become a series director on
Janet Street-Porter's series
Reportage. He was a director of ''
It'll Never Work'', which was the first children's TV show to win an award from the
Royal Television Society and
BAFTA in its first season. Kohli left the corporation in 1996 to work independently. He directed commercials and worked in TV development and broadcast occasionally on BBC Radio 5 Live. He wrote, directed and starred in
Channel 4's
Meet the Magoons in 2004. The critical response was lukewarm and it failed to find an audience. The more positive reviewers listed here include
Nancy Banks-Smith who wrote it was "modern to the point of surreal", while
A. A. Gill put forward a hope that it might "evolve into something classic" In September 2006, Kohli took part in the first series of
BBC One's
Celebrity MasterChef programme, reaching the final along with
Roger Black and finishing second to the ultimate winner,
Matt Dawson. In January 2007, he had a three-part series on Channel 4, ''£50 Says You'll Watch This
. The series was the first documentary exploring all forms of gambling. The show included Kohli taking part in a celebrity card game and visiting casinos in Las Vegas. In October 2006, February 2007 and January 2009, he appeared on the BBC political panel programme Question Time, and was an occasional presenter on Newsnight Review, Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 and Loose Ends''. In 2008, Kohli presented
New British Kitchen, a cookery series for
UKTV with
John Torode. This was followed by Kohli's solo show "Chefs and the City" for the same channel. He also appeared on
Gordon Ramsay: Cook Along Live and participated in a celebrity edition of
The Apprentice to raise money for charity.
Sport Relief Does The Apprentice was part of the BBC's annual charity initiative
Sport Relief and aired on 12 and 14 March 2008. He was the first Celebrity Apprentice to be "fired". He appeared in the Scottish segment of the BBC's 2008
Children in Need appeal, anchored by
Jackie Bird and
Des Clarke. Also in 2008, Kohli filmed a documentary about
Scientology, mainly the so-called
Free Zone, titled ''The Beginner's Guide to L. Ron Hubbard
. He presented a documentary, In Search of the Tartan Turban'', which explored cultural identity as a Briton and a Scot belonging to an ethnic minority. The show won a Schools BAFTA, leading to Channel 4 commissioning a five part series called "Hardeep Does..." that covered topical issues, including sex, religion and pets. Kohli was the presenter of the second series of
CBBC game show
Get 100. In June 2009, he was one of five volunteers who took part in a BBC series of three programmes
Famous, Rich and Homeless about living penniless on the streets of London. Kohli has appeared as a panelist on
The Wright Stuff on
Channel Five. He occasionally hosted the programme when
Matthew Wright (the host presenter) was on holiday or ill. Kohli was a reporter for
The One Show, but was suspended in 2009 for six months amidst informal allegations of "inappropriate behaviour" towards a researcher. On 16 August 2018, Kohli entered the British television show,
Celebrity Big Brother as a celebrity housemate. He was nominated four times for eviction while in the
Big Brother house, before he was finally eliminated on 7 September 2018, becoming the fifth housemate to be evicted.
Radio Kohli wrote and presented
BBC Radio 4's "Hippy Trail". Writing in the
Telegraph, Gillian Reynolds felt "he patently had no real interest in the European and American hippies who trekked overland to India in the 1960s. At times, he seemed positively contemptuous, as if he were wondering why he was bothering". Kohli also presented BBC Radio 4 commissions, "Where Scotland Meets England" and "Where England Meets Wales". In 2010,
Radio 2 broadcast "Great British Faith", a city based series looking at the spiritual life and history of six British cities. This was described as "terrific" by Elisabeth Mahoney in
The Guardian who wrote that she was "impressed by the depth and scope of their portraits. Kohli brought to the programmes a real sense of the spiritual textures of these urban landscapes." Under producer Adam Fowler, he presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary 'The Loneliness of the Goalkeeper' which won a prize in Illinois in 2010 as Third Coast Directors' Choice Award for Ladbroke Productions. In 2011, Kohli presented a series about words and language, "15 by 15", which took a Silver at the New York Radio Festival. In 2012, Kohli recorded his first series of
Hardeep’s Sunday Lunch, a programme that explored people's lives while Kohli cooked lunch. The sixth series was broadcast in the autumn of 2017 and early 2018. In August 2013, Kohli presented his third edition of
The Food Programme on
Radio 4, "Ode to a Bacon Roll", about his fondness for
bacon.
Journalism From 2007 to 2009, Kohli wrote
Hardeep is your Love, a column for
Scotland on Sunday. He was twice put forward but was unplaced as Columnist of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards. Kohli occasionally writes for
The Guardian,
The Observer,
GQ magazine,
Metro,
The Spectator and
The Independent. As a feature writer for
High Life Magazine for
British Airways, he was nominated but unplaced in 2014 for the AITO Travel Writer of the Year. From mid-2014 until the end of 2015, Kohli was the food writer at the
Daily Record and wrote a short column for the
Sunday Herald.
Comedy , Isle of Wight. At the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2009, Kohli performed his debut one-man show,
The Nearly Naked Chef, billed as 'the first live
curry cooking comedy show ever'. In 2013, he did a short run of new material which became "Hardeep is Your Love" in 2014. The following year his show was titled "Bigmouth Strikes Again". In 2016, his love of music was the inspiration for "Mixtape: My Life Through Music". "The show needed more joke content, structure and general fleshing out to be complete. Perhaps if he could get through more than just three songs, that might help," said
BroadwayBaby.
Presenter Hardeep hosted the
Brit Asia TV Music Awards on its debut in 2010 and in 2011 and 2012.
Literature Kohli wrote a book about food and travel in India,
Indian Takeaway (2008), described by
The Guardian as 'likeable but clumsy'. Also in 2008, Kohli was a judge for the
Man Booker Prize.
Other Hardeep was a board member of the
National Theatre of Scotland. In 2017 Kohli became a Fellow of
Royal Society of Arts, and Creative Director at the Innovation Academy. In 2023, he was controversially voted onto the executive committee of the
British-American Project. ==Personal life==