Shappi Khorsandi: The War On Comedy

Iranian born Shaparak ‘Shappi’ Khorsandi has been making waves in the comedy world for over a decade, but only in recent years has she hit the mainstream with her comical take on being an Iranian comedienne and stories of how her family fled Iran for fear of her father’s assassination.

We take a look at Shappi's life and how she's currently setting the stage alight with her unique stand-up comedy.

Forced to Flee
In the late 1970’s, Shappi Khorsandi was born in Tehran and lived with her brother, mother and father, Hadi, a satirical columnist for a national Iranian newspaper and women’s magazine.

In 1977, Hadi wrote three somewhat controversial articles about the key figures of the revolution, and not ones to be criticised, the Islamic regime targeted Hadi with death threats forcing the Khorsandi’s to flee to the U.K.

Shappi was only 3½ when her family arrived in London, where the Khorsandi’s made a new life for themselves.

Her father continued to write about the regime in his own satirical newspaper but Hadi’s popularity made him a threat to the regime and in 1984 Scotland Yard caught wind of an assassination plot against him, resulting in the family being put into police protection.

Shappi recounted to The Times how ‘they were planning to shoot my dad as he took me and my brother to school’.

Not the most stable of starts for Shappi then, but what doesn’t kill you only makes you funnier right? 

Onwards & Upwards
Called an anarchist by her own father, Shappi as a child, entertained her family with impersonations of Margaret Thatcher and found herself in an environment where she was praised more for her ability to make others laugh rather than her school grades. 

Described as a secular Muslim (an oxymoron if ever I heard one!), Shappi was raised with little to no religion.

She makes light of the fact she thought ‘Rabbi’ was the plural for rabbit and has no qualms poking fun at Muslims and the Middle Eastern troubles in her stand-up material these days. 

She’s a Brit and proud of it.  In a recent interview with the Metro she tells how she thinks English people smell of milk whereas Iranians smell of coriander!

After picking her son up from school one day, she picked him up and he smelt of milk and thought ‘Ah he’s a proper English lad’ – now that’s patriotic.

Khorsandi has made it known many times how she would love to go back to Iran but fears she would be held in the country for her past comments and jokes made about the Mullah’s, and being married with a child feels it’s just not worth the risk.

Read on to find out about Shappi's stand up career.

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