Raj Adgopul grew up in a village in central India. He spent four years working in Mumbai, sharing a room with 23 other people, with a personal space of six feet by three. He arrived in England in 2002 with £5 in his pocket, trained and worked as a nurse, took a degree and a postgraduate qualification, and nineteen years later found himself on the stage at the O2 in London, giving a TEDx talk to an audience of a thousand.

He now lives in a village in Dorset, which is where most of his best material comes from.

Raj has spoken to more than twenty Women's Institutes across Dorset, Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire, to u3a groups in Exeter, Bridport, Dorchester, Charmouth, Lyme Regis and Ferndown, and twice to the Bristol Commonwealth Society, the second time by popular demand. Audiences tend to describe his talks as very funny and quietly thought provoking, usually in the same breath.

"We had tears of laughter as well as tears of sadness." Jen Whitworth, President, Taunton Deane Divas WI