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More Shappi Khorsandi videos

Born in Tehran, Shappi Khorsandi was bought up in London after her family fled Iran following the Islamic Revolution as her satirist father, Hadi, criticised the Ayatollah.

She started comedy around 1997, and made her first appearance at Edinburgh in 2000 – as part of a triple-hander show with Russell Brand and Mark Felgate.

She made her solo debut in 2003, returning in 2006 and 2007 – the year she was nomianted for best breakthrough act at the Chortle Awards.

She has appeared on a number of Radio 4 programmes, including Quote... Unquote, Loose Ends, You and Yours, Midweek, Just A Minute, The Now Show and The News Quiz.

A book about her childhood experiences of growing up in London in the Seventies is due to be published in spring 2009.

Shappi Khorsandi: The Distracted Activist - Fringe 2009
Live Review

Over the past 12 months, Shappi Khorsandi has written an autobiographical book, recorded a Radio 2 series and appeared on just about every TV show going, from Jonathan Ross to Al Jazeera, via Question Time. You do wonder where she found time to write an Edinburgh show.

In fact, The Distracted Activist does feel like something of a placeholder: a reminder that the live stage is where she shines brightest, but perhaps not as polished or as structured as her best work. It’s testament to her warm wit and light touch on matters serious that the show is nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable, despite some wobblier, underwritten moments.

The amount of audience interaction is one clue that she hasn’t quite generated enough top-drawer material, yet her easy banter with the front row of teenagers does bear fruit. Absent-mindedly wondering aloud just how much give there is in the microphone cable is an unsurprisingly less productive time-filler.

But then ‘distracted’ is what it says on the poster. It’s a reference to a litany of short-lived, but consumingly passionate, causes she has backed over the years: from animal rights to feminism. Events in her native Iran this year have suddenly made her a semi-reluctantly political act – and prompted that suddenly prolific TV career - and fired up that campaigning spark once again.

Khorsandi has finely-tuned social antenna and a strong sense of injustice, but she will never be an overtly hectoring polemist. Instead she draws you in by being bubbly, chatty and all-round charming in her enthusiastic middle-class way, before gently suggesting her opinions, cosseted in the cotton-wool of middle-class niceness.

Such stealthy charisma gets the political message across more effectively than ranting and raving, while the topical, relevant content ensures the show is never less than interesting.

A few routines sit oddly in the mix – the relevance of her arm-wrestling with a butch Manchester lesbian seems especially out of context – but for the most part Khorsandi delivers affectionately witty jokes with her astutely-observed commentary on contemporary life.

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I saw her in Birmingham performing in front of an Asian/back audience and she just seemed uncomfortable. She was part of an all-female Asian stand up night but seemed to be culturally devoid. She talks about Iran and her Iranian roots like someone who has ever only known Hampstead. It could be funny, if she played up the differences but she just isn't. I think it was a bit of a misbooking, she had no idea about the audience and seemed to grin her way uncomfortably throught her act, alienating her still further. Perhaps her act, so obviously grown on the London club circuit, should stay there.

Nazreen, April 2020

I've only heard her radio show, Shappi Talk. I'm sure she's a really nice person, but how she has made a career for herself in comedy. Her standup is utterly pedestrian, lazy and derivative.

James McMann, October 2010

I think Shappi is wicked and had me in stiches. Lmao.

marriya zaman, May 2010

A woman whose presence on the airwaves is entirely disproportionate to her talent as a comedian. This is clearly someone who ticks all the right boxes as far as radio & TV producers are concerned, but leaves the rest of us struggling to see what the appeal is beyond the engaging personality and pleasant smile. Her recent series on Radio 4 revealed the 'depth' of her talents. Take away the racism material and there's virtually nothing left. And it's at that point you find yourself slightly irritated by the central theme of her act (...that 'we' are all racist to a greater or lesser extent) and start to consider the likely fate of a female comedian in a short skirt in the country her parents were forced to leave.

Nigel Lord, October 2009

Well, I think Shappi is my cup of tea, even if the reviewers below don't. Her humour tends to the sweet side and she has a charming, confident delivery.

Donna Scott, July 2009

هه هه هه هه، درست چند لحظه ي پيش بود كه شاهپرك رو شناختم، توي بي بي سي داشتن باهاش مصاحبه ميكردن و من خوشحالم چون يك دختر خيلي پيرين زبون رو شناختم و فهميدم كه يك هنرمندي هست كه در انگلستان در حال هنرنماييه و مايه ي افتخار ايراني ها. به تو افتخار ميكنم شهپي «تكاور»ا

تكاور مط, July 2009

Utterly charming performer with woeful, uninsightful, cliched material.

Brian Suda, April 2009

I cannot believe how she was ever considered to appear on Live At The Apollo. I saw her live a couple of weeks ago and considering how rich her background is in culture, all she could talk and make jokes about was how her family aren't "normal". Isn't that obvious in a Christian state? She talks about them being "hopeless at texting", a piece of pedestrian material by all newcomers that she's disguised and tried to fit her mould. Not clever and didn't really work to my mind. Although, she did have some neat (unexpected) gags thrown in for good measure, but others i felt were verging on the boundaries of transferred racism: 'I wanted to know what the weather in India was like, so i called my bank.' I'm not sure a white middle-class comic would have left the stage unharmed with a line like that in his or her act. Overall, I find that she just masks pedestrian material to jump on the bandwagon of the cultural comedians.

Stacey Rostram, April 2009

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