Thank you very much for coming back to be interviewed for Redbrick again. I’m very much looking forward to coming to see your show! You last performed Coconut here in Birmingham about a year ago at The Old Rep. Has the show changed at all since then?

It has. I’ve added some extra bits, and also it’s more developed now because, when I did it a year ago, we’d just come out of the pandemic, and it was the first time I’d really been doing stand-up for about 2 ½ years. So to learn an hour of new material, you know, I was trying to get back into the rhythm of it and stuff. I’ve done loads more gigs and shows now, so it’s a bit different.

Being from Birmingham originally, does coming back here to do gigs and shows feel special? Is there a different feeling you get from when you’re performing elsewhere?

Well, I do, because a lot of people probably know me from growing up in Birmingham. Maybe it’s my parents’ neighbours; maybe it’s my friends from school. So I always think: ‘Oh my God, I hope they don’t think I’m shit. Oh my God, please, I must do my best, otherwise they’ll think “my God, this is terrible”, and they won’t be able to tell me because they’re my friends.’

You’ve often been described as a ‘brave’ comedian, in terms of some of the material and topics that you cover. What do you make of that description as you as a performer?

I’ve always found it really funny to call comedians ‘brave’, because we’re not risking our lives. I mean, we’re not doing stand-up in Afghanistan every night. We’re not risking our lives; we’re telling jokes. There’s nothing brave about it, especially when you think about people in the NHS, firefighters, surgeons – they’re really brave people. So it’s really silly to call a comedian brave, because, really, anybody can say anything these days.

What inspired you to pursue comedy initially? Do you have any particular comedy heroes who inspired you?

It was an accident really, because I never planned to be a comedian. When I was growing up in Birmingham, nobody was a comedian. I’d never been to a comedy club in my life until I started stand-up. I wasn’t brought up in this culture of comedy; I didn’t know about stand-up. I watched Richard Pryor on TV live on Sunset Strip when I was growing up, and I thought that was amazing and hilarious (I still watch it now from time to time because it was so brilliant). And I watched Eddie Murphy and people like that. But I never thought that I would do it – I never thought it was a job for me, so I never planned to do it. I feel like it was an accident. Now, I feel like I love it, and I would not do anything else.

You’ve been doing comedy for a while now, back since 2000. Have you noticed any particular changes in the industry from then to now?

Well, when I first started, obviously I didn’t get paid, and I just did one gig here and there. I didn’t start properly until about 2006; I started gigging every night, sometimes 2 or 3 times a night, and writing new shows, taking them to Edinburgh. And even though 16 years doesn’t feel like a long time ago, there have been massive changes since then.

When I started, there were hardly any women, and I was the only Muslim woman. There were no Asian women, no Muslim women, and not really many Asian men either. The black comedians that were on the circuit – people like Gina Yashere and Angie Le Mar – they were fantastic, but they were not getting the breaks they deserved for being great, which they were and always were. Now it’s changing.

I do think Black Lives Matter and the death of George Floyd has changed things for black people on TV and in comedy. Not so much for Asian people, but I do feel that now there are more Asian comedians than there’s ever been before; it’s a case of, if you can see it, you can be it. When I was growing up, there were never any Asian women on TV. I think the first Asian woman I saw was a newsreader, and the other one was a cook, Madhur Jaffrey. So one was a cook and one was a newsreader, but there weren’t any women of colour doing stand-up. But now, there’s a few, and I think that has really inspired others to try it.

With that in mind, do you have any advice for aspiring young comedians, particularly women of colour, who might have an interest in stand-up?

With stand-up comedy, it’s something that, if you’re going to do it, it’s something you have to love. You have to love it because it’s so difficult; every aspect of comedy is difficult. It’s not just doing the stand-up; it’s the writing of it by yourself, the travelling by yourself, staying in hotels by yourself. If it goes badly, you have no one to blame but yourself. In terms of trying to get breaks on TV, getting gigs, and getting commissioned, every aspect of comedy is difficult.  If you want to be famous, just go on Love Island. Just take your clothes off and put a sex tape on the internet because, if you just want to be famous, comedy is not the thing for you. Comedy is all about grafting, hard work, taking the knocks and coming back.  You feel like: ‘I have to do this. If I don’t do this, there’s no point me being alive, I HAVE to do this.’ And that’s what comedy is. I do think there has to be something wrong with you to want to do stand-up, because it’s such a strange, bizarre and difficult thing to do.

As you know, this is going in our student newspaper. I know you were a student yourself. How was that for you? Were you a good student, would you say?

I love learning new things. I love comedy because you learn and you get to be on so many kinds of shows where you learn stuff. I had a great time as a student. I loved being a student, I loved Manchester University, and then I loved Goldsmiths even more, where I trained to be a teacher. That year at Goldsmiths was one of the best years of my life. It was just so much fun. Goldsmiths had a great ethos – it was very much into women, feminism, fighting for your rights, protesting and very famed for art. I did two acting courses while I was there and I just loved them too. It was just such a great time to learn.

Finally, for people who haven’t seen Coconut before, what can we expect from your show?

Well, a lot of laughter. You’ll probably be offended – someone’s always offended. But it’s your right to be offended and it’s my right to offend you, so it’ll all be fine; there’ll be a lot of fun, a lot of laughter. The main thing is there’s a lot of laughter, and that’s what we need right now.

Shazia Mirza will be at the The Rep on Saturday 11th March. For tickets, visit https://www.birmingham-rep.co.uk

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