French dressing

Comedian Shazia Mirza talks to Jane McGowan about questionable beach attire

Award-winning writer and comedian Shazia Mirza has been a regular face on the stand-up circuit for more than 16 years. Not afraid to tackle a topic head on, her subject matter has ranged from everything from body hair to terrorism. And now in her latest tour, With Love from St Tropez, which arrives at Brentford’s Watermans Centre this month, she tackles some of the big issues facing 21st-century society.

“Basically I visited St Tropez last summer and I was sat on a beach, unaware that it was a nudist beach,” she tells me. “And I had my first encounter with a butt plug.” And while I gasp and nod sagely, I nevertheless have to Google the term only to discover it is a tiny sex toy inserted into the rectum for pleasure.

“This was just after France’s ‘ban the Burqa’ campaign and I thought, ‘What kind of world are we living in which bans something designed for modesty but lets people walk round stark naked in public with a diamond-encrusted plug stuck up their butt?’”

Hence the name of the tour, which Shazia announces with some pride (if not a little surprise), has been going down well with a more mature audience.

“I played Epsom the other night and a lot of the audience were of retirement age. One 71-year-old came up to me after to say how much he had enjoyed it – but when I mentioned I also write for The Guardian he made being-sick noises.”

Shazia Mirza was born in 1978 in Birmingham. Shazia had been a comedy fan from a young age, but for a girl brought up by strict Pakistani parents, stand-up certainly wasn’t a career option. She dutifully gained a degree in biochemistry at Manchester University, before qualifying to become a teacher. But it was while she was working at one particularly challenging school that she decided to jack it all in and try her hand at her first love, comedy.

“I taught in some really rough places,” she recalls. “I realised I was doing stand-up every day just to try and keep the kids interested. And then I decided to go for it. I thought, ‘I’d get paid a lot more and abused a lot less,’ so I did.”

Shazia was an instant hit, winning best newcomer awards and plaudits wherever she played. Her success on the circuit soon won her attention from television producers and her 2007 BBC3 documentary F*** Off, I am A Hairy Woman was the channel’s highest rated show of the year. She has since followed that with sell-out stand-up tours, more awards and appearances as an actor in The Vessel and feature film Arifa. She also manages to find time to write for The Guardian and the New Statesman – for which she was named Columnist of the Year.

And while she claims that all her parents ever wanted her to do was get married, work is currently the main passion in her life: “I love everything I do – I write every day, I always have so to me it’s not really like work. I love performing. What I really hope is that I can keep a balance and keep on going.” 

Shazia Mirza – With Love from St Tropez is at Watermans Art Centre, Brentford on Jun 29. For details, visit: watermans.org.uk

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