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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: Me And My Brother, In Our Pants, Holding Hands
Live Review

It has been a week for shock and numb feelings – emotions repeated for an altogether different reason by the end of this show.

Shappi Khorsandi makes a reference to the riots that have erupted across England and you can see she is clearly concerned by it. She has always worn her big heart on her sleeve and later in this show a letter, supposedly from her brother, about Iranian politics makes a series of earnest points. The sentiments are genuine even if it feels like a contrivance. Unfortunately, it is the impression of contrivance that is the overwhelming one from this show, however well-intentioned it is.

For a start, this is meant to be a show about her brother, but we learn very little about him and he seems to be a cipher for her. When he does come into the narrative he doesn't make the metaphoric leap from the cute enlarged photo of the two of them, which is placed on stage, out into a three dimensional subject.

What we get is a series of brief vignettes from the family life of Khorsandi featuring her parents, extended family and scenes from her life with her young son. None of them seem to build on each other, though, and they tend to be glib and overplayed.

Toddlers, for example are cute because they are pyschopaths. She means that their butter-wouldn't-melt appearance hides a darker intent but she has to over-explain her joke because the initial sentiment doesn't quite gel in our minds; it's like she put the punchline before the set-up.

That said, Khorsandi knows what a gag looks like and sometimes it's just her coy and mannered delivery that tramples on an idea. Sometimes it is the idea itself that crumbles under the weight of its own artifice, for example likening the bedroom she shared shared her brother to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

I left the gig feeling bewildered by the lack of engagement I felt towards it, and conscious that Khorsandi looks as if she has reached a critical point in her stand-up, where successive Edinburgh shows are bearing out the law of diminishing returns.

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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

Brilliant I would definitely go see her purely based on the school uniform pic. Go girl power/female empowerment/ironic photo shoot that really puts all us blokes in our places. In the end all we're left with is some piccys of shappi in a faux school uniform and a feeling that we've been put right about our terrible misogynistic ways. Hopefully her next comedy tour will be about that terrible time she was hounded by the press for all those topless beach pics that were taken by the paparazzi.

Mysterykat, October 2012

Another woman that thinks she is funny. Suffers from delusions of averageness.

Tony Mercedes., August 2011

After enjoying "Shappi Talk" on Radio Four I saw her at Glastonbury but was disappointed at her use of foul language in front of a family audience. And her "joke" about enjoying being sexually-abused by a rugby team was embarrassingly unfunny.

Mark Doran, July 2011

Funny but politically naive.

Bramley, January 2011

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

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