In this “Because I’m Shappi” tour at Salford’s Lowry theatre Ms Khorsandi comes on stage bang on 8 o’clock in what must be the comedienne’s standard dress code consisting of black leggings and fancy trainers with a long top.
She informs the audience that she will be “doing her own warm up as times are hard” and for the next half hour she talks to the audience about nothing in particular, swapping pleasantries with a number of people on the front row.
She says that this is ‘Little Shappi’ and that this section will be nothing like her main act which consists of ‘Big Shappi’ doing her thing.
Her first act on returning to the stage after the interval is to notice that people who she had spoken to on the front row have now been moved, she asks if they have gone home and is informed that they have in fact been moved as they were in the wrong seats.
She then gets one of the people who are now seated to move so that the original people can return to the front row all of this is done in a nice way and has the audience on her side.
After this we are privy to a number of sharp one liners around the issues of left-wing politics, racism, single motherhood, and internet porn.
Quite a lot of her act cannot be republished here due to its adult content.
We are however provided with quite a bit of information about her two children, who have different fathers neither of which Shappi lives with.
She tells a nice story about how her best female friend was her birthing partner during the delivery of her second child and how the nursing staff thought they were lesbians.
Her experience of racism began at a very early age as her father had to leave Iran as a fatwa had been placed on him by the Ayatollah.
There follows a good selection of funny stories around her and her family’ experiences of racism.
A joke which can be repeated here revolves around the issue that her brother will come out as gay…once their father is dead.
Her politics are clearly left-wing and she recounts a couple of cracking stories about the EDL and UKIP.
The second part of the show with ‘Big Shappi’ is much stronger than her warm-up material.
She is obviously a fierce character and during her act she looks knowingly at the audience a number of times whilst telling risqué anecdotes, her dialogue as per a lot of modern comedy is littered with the “f” word, however I do not think anyone took exception to her use of this language.
She bounds off stage as the audience give her a warm round of applause, safe in the knowledge there is another anti-facist comedian keeping things ticking over nicely.
