Shappi Khorsandi tells Andrew Youngson why being booed off stage 20 years ago was the best thing for her
During the course of my chat with Shappi Khorsandi, the topic of age came up a lot. We flitted with ease from one vignette to the next – from discussing her experiences growing up, to finding her own two feet, to the fresh perspective having children has given her.
Pretty much all of it features in some way or other in her latest live tour, which concludes in Aberdeen tomorrow night, Friday, July 11. The Iranian-born, London-raised comedian is probably most recognised for speaking candidly about the topics of race and Middle Eastern culture, but she’s keen that people realise there’s a lot more to her besides.
“On this tour, my material is very personal, but more mainstream than it has been,” she said, before going on to dispute any derogatory meaning the word “mainstream” has taken in recent years. To her, it’s not negative at all; it’s simply a way for her to reach out to a wider demographic.
“So the show is just about growing up, having children, childhood experiences, that kind of thing, really.”
So is the Iranian material behind her, I ask? Not quite, she responded, but it was never the entirety of her act in the first place.
“To be honest, the stuff about race and Iran was more what is seen on TV and how it was edited. I guess producers think my unique selling point is that I’m from Iran. But I think that my unique selling point is my badass-ness,” she said with a laugh.
Shappi was sitting on a west-London park bench at the time of our interview, having been out for a morning jog already. Afterwards, she was to head back to her two young children – six-year-old son Cassius and one-year-old daughter Genevieve.
At 41, Shappi is a one-time divorcee, having separated from fellow comedian Christian Reilly, Cassius’s father, in 2010. Genevieve’s father isn’t on the scene, and so Shappi has become a multitasking single mum in recent years.
“I got knocked up like a 1950s teenager,” she said jokingly about her daughter’s conception.
“So a lot of my comedy material is about how I’ve been trying to figure out the best ways to deal with the situation, which I think is to run forward with your eyes shut, arms flailing and hoping for the best.”
As she said, her stand-up us pretty personal. Crucially, she stressed, it’s not presented in a negative way.
“It’s not about heartache,” she said.
Moving on from talk of her kids, we shifted focus to Shappi’s own younger years, resting for a while on her early foray into comedy. Specifically when, at the tender age of 23, she was booed off the stage at a gig in Belfast. A pretty brutal introduction for anyone, but it’s an experience she is thankful for now.
“Being booed off stage tests your mettle. And, in some ways, having people act with indifference is more painful,” she said, noting that, while feeling beaten up, at least she felt alive.
Directly after the fateful gig, she was determined to march out into the audience to join them for a drink – an act of defiance which she recounts proudly. However, it was a different story behind closed doors back at her hotel.
“I bought this gigantic filthy kebab and a bottle of wine and, once I was on my own, it was awful. It was an utter mess of tears, kebab and vomit.”
Despite having the confidence to face her aggressors in that situation, Shappi said she had zero chutzpah when it came to her love life.
“I didn’t have confidence with relationships and sex. Boys were another planet to me. I thought you had to sleep with them to make them like you,” she said.
Talking to girls wasn’t a problem, but with guys she felt the only method of conversation was to be “really loud and funny and silly”.
Now, 20 years on, thankfully she has a better perspective on the matter.
“I’m 41 and I have just realised that I don’t have to sell myself short. Thinking back, I must have missed real gold, and meeting really great people, because I didn’t have the confidence to think I was worth them. I thought you had to be thin and have nice hair. When I think now about men that I’m friends with and get to know them, I think my life would have been so different back then if I could have been myself.”
For now, there’s only one man in her life, and he’s more than enough. Cassius, she explained, has been a faithful companion on many comedy tours, although, now he’s at school, any touring he does is predominantly with his mum on the morning school run.
He and his sister are by no means spoiled children, Shappi added, but being the child of comedians has made for a colourful upbringing, which has given Cassius a wonderful perspective on life.
By way of example, Shappi told me about a recent trip to the Melbourne Comedy Festival when, en route to a children’s show, she asked if Cassius would like a bite to eat.
“He replied: ‘I would rather get some sushi on the way to the exhibition,’” she said exasperatedly.
“When he was three, he once heard me say I had nothing to eat in the house and he said: ‘We can always get room service.’ I mean, my mum took me by overnight coach to Aberdeen when I was seven, but my son on the way to the shop gets tired and says: ‘Oh, mum, can we just hail a cab?’”
Shappi Khorsandi will conclude her live spring tour at Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree tomorrow, July 11, with doors open at 7.30pm. Tickets are available from www.aberdeenperformingarts.com or by calling 01224 641122. She will then perform nightly at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at the Pleasance KingDome from July 30 to August 24. Tickets are available from www.pleasance.co.uk or by calling 0131 556 6550.