Shazia Mirza: ‘I’ll talk about anything I feel like’
BIRMINGHAM stand-up Shazia Mirza pulls no punches in her dealings with the political correctness brigade. “I’m a comedian; I’ll talk about anything I feel like talking about.”
The former science teacher’s latest show, The Kardashians Made Me Do It, rails against political correctness. It’s also about IS, jihadi brides and how quickly people take offence at things. The Kardashians, however, don’t get a mention.
“A lot of times I do have Kardashian fans come to see the show and they get the shock of their lives about 10 minutes in when they realise that it’s not about the Kardashians,” says Mirza.
The daughter of Pakistani parents, devout Muslims who emigrated to the UK in the 1960s, Mirza was fascinated by the story of three teenage girls from Bethnal Green Academy in London who made headlines last year when they ran away to Syria to join IS. In the media feeding frenzy that followed, one of the girl’s relatives is reported to have said “I can’t understand why she’s gone; she used to watch The Kardashians.”
Comedy gold, to a performer as sharp-witted and free with her words as Mirza, whose show revolves around the hypothesis that jihadi brides are in it for the sex; “ISIS fighters are hot,” she says, and: “These girls aren’t religious, they’re horny.”
Describing IS fighters as “hot” may cause a little controversy but that’s nothing new to Mirza; early in her stand-up career and shortly after 9/11, she used to begin her routine by saying “My name is Shazia Mirza. At least, that’s what it says on my pilot’s licence.”
“Other comedians have done jokes about burqas and suicide bombings but because they aren’t Asian women they don’t draw the attention that I do,” Mirza says.
“Comedians have done jokes about the Holocaust, the IRA, Princess Diana. I just think that the press wade into me because I am doing jokes that are personal to me.”
Wary of being pigeon-holed, for years Mirza tried to avoid subjects of gender, religion and ethnicity in her work as she sought recognition as a comedian first and foremost, rather than as an Asian female comedian.
“People said, ‘Why aren’t you talking about where you come from?’ and I would say that I didn’t want to play that card, I didn’t want people to think that that’s all I am. I just wanted to be funny, and I wanted to be funny about everything.”
TV documentaries on body hair and B&Bs, as well as appearances on Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff, followed. “But it began to occur to me that I’d lost my edge because I wasn’t being truthful enough,” Mirza says. “Now, 12 years since my first show I’m really delving back into my own personal background and it’s my funniest show and it’s selling out all over the country.
“I‘m not angry enough. I don’t lose my temper. Things that make me angry are things like injustice or when I feel that the way something is being portrayed in the media is not truthful, or prejudiced. I won’t scream and shout, but I will go and write about it,” she says.
Mirza’s shows at the Cat Laughs in Kilkenny and the Dalkey Book Festival are her first appearances in Ireland, but she says she’s always noticed parallels between her own conservative religious upbringing in Islam and the experiences of her Irish friends with strict Catholic backgrounds.
“My Irish friends would talk about going to mass and I’d be talking about going to mosque.
“We had the same kind of mothers, who wanted you to get married and have loads of children. Discipline, respect for your parents, god and guilt: there’s a deep connection in so many areas for us.”
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