When Kapil Sharma packed up his hit show Comedy Nights With Kapil from Colors, Sony channel was quick to grab the opportunity. The channel gave him a prime-time slot and he and his team made a blockbuster comeback with The Kapil Sharma Show. And to call Kapil a Pied Piper won’t be wrong. For wherever he goes, TRPs follow. Needless to say, Colors suffered a backlash, and Sony danced to the bank and TRP charts.

Now, according to a DNA report, it appears that Kapil Sharma is worth his weight in remuneration too. The paper said that Kapil demands a whopping Rs. 60-80 lakhs per episode. The captain of the ship is also the face of The Kapil Sharma Show. From scripting to production and anchoring, he is carrying the entire show on his shoulders, and with finesse too.

If you do the math, eight episodes of the show are telecast every month, bringing Kapil’s pay cheque close to Rs 5 crore every month. So, the actor is paid higher than most of the young brigade of Bollywood stars. Given that the actors do a maximum of two or three films every year puts a different spin to the salary comparison.

Former Gutthi, now Doctor Mashoor Gulati, Sunil Grover gets around Rs. 10-12 lakhs per episode. Kiku Sharda, still remembered for his character of Palak on Colors, pockets Rs. 5-7 lakhs a day. Ali Asgar also receives the same amount. We can vouch that nobody could’ve played drag on the show – Dadi initially and now Pushpa Naani — like Ali did. Others on the show including Chandan Prabhakar, who plays Chandu (Rs. 4 lakh) and the two ladies including Sumona Chakravarti (Rs. 6-7 lakh) and Rochelle Rao (Rs. 3-4 lakh) also charge a decent amount. The major source of giggles on the show, Navjot Singh Sidhu, is paid Rs. 8-10 lakh every episode to add his signature “guru” laughter.

Recently, we heard that in order to save its plummeting weekend ratings, Colors had to re-telecast the old episodes of Comedy Nights With Kapil. Whether or not that worked for Colors is something only time will tell. But it just goes to prove what a phenomenon the show has been and how it has been instrumental in establishing the careers of all of the artists on the show.

Kapil Sharma’s comedy show not just gave him the tag of the country’s biggest comedian, it also made him a household name. Wherever he goes, he helped the respective channel to mint money, which continues even today despite the production cost sky-rocketing. But it was not only Kapil and the channel which reaped the benefits. The supporting cast of Kapil’s show got a new lease in their careers. Actors like Sunil Grover, Ali Asgar, Kiku Sharda and Upasana Singh have been a part of the industry for years, but they got major recognition with this show. And today these actors are a happy lot. Why not? After all, they are not only loved by the entire nation, they are even calling the shots in terms of their remuneration.

We saw how an ugly fallout between Kapil’s team and Colors lead to the comedian moving out of the channel early this year. While Comedy Nights With Kapil got replaced by Comedy Night Live, the latter’s new hosts Krushna Abhishek and Bharti Singh failed to recreate the magic of the original at the same time slot. In the war of words and TRPs, one channel’s loss was other channel’s gain. And we are sure, with the current ratings and profits, Sony isn’t having any issues with giving these comedians the given set of money. After all, making the audience laugh requires a lot of sweat and tears behind the scenes. And these guys are doing a pretty good job!