Comedy may have been a man’s game, but Shazia Mirza entered and the game changed. Shazia has been rewriting the rules on her own terms. From Birmingham classrooms to sold-out stages around the world, Shazia has transformed the space for Muslim women in comedy, turning punchlines into rebellion and laughter into a universal language of defiance.
An award-winning stand-up and writer, Shazia has become one of Britain’s most fearless and unpredictable voices. Her latest show Coconut toured more than 100 dates across the UK and earned a nomination for Best Stand-Up Tour at Channel 4’s National Comedy Awards, cementing her reputation as a performer who doesn’t simply chase laughs but sparks debate. Her earlier shows — from the groundbreaking The Kardashians Made Me Do It to the bold With Love from St. Tropez — have sold out internationally and become reference points for how comedy can interrogate politics, religion, and pop culture with razor-sharp wit.
Television has only widened her reach. In 2023, The Telegraph named her one of the 50 funniest comedians of the 21st century, and she continues to prove why. Shazia has appeared on QI, Have I Got News for You, Would I Lie to You, The Jonathan Ross Show, Celebrity SAS Who Dares Wins, and even Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls. Most recently, she took a turn in EastEnders, playing a doctor, showing once again her ability to cross from satire to drama without missing a beat. Her voice has carried internationally too, with appearances on CNN, CBS’s 60 Minutes, NBC’s Last Comic Standing and beyond.
Yet it is the stage that remains her sharpest weapon. Shazia has never shied away from provocation, whether it’s skewering the contradictions of her strict Muslim upbringing in Birmingham, mocking the absurdities of airport stereotyping, or daring to joke about politics and power in ways that make audiences squirm and howl in equal measure. As the Evening Standard observed, she is “a fearless comedian… thoughtful and thought- provoking… funny and illuminating.” Not everyone has embraced her candor. Some in her family have chosen not to watch her perform, while critics have tried to box her in as “controversial” or “one-note.” Others in her community have openly disapproved. Shazia has learned to shrug it off. “At first, I thought I had to represent people,” she has reflected. “Now I just want to be funny — and I know I can be funny about anything.”
That clarity has propelled her into pioneering spaces. In 2024 she headlined Comedy Queens, a women- only, halal comedy tour that sold out across the UK, including London’s O2, a landmark moment for Muslim women on stage. Alongside comedians like Ola Labib and Zain, she has launched the podcast Halal-ish, once again amplifying voices too often overlooked. Shazia thrives on contradiction: intellectual yet outrageous, fierce yet approachable, irreverent yet thoughtful. She can drop a biting joke about geopolitics in one breath and a story about her own parents in the next. She can survive on a desert island with Bear Grylls or spar with Graham Norton on radio, then walk into EastEnders as a doctor without anyone blinking. And when she’s on stage, critics say she leaves her audiences breathless — “provoking laughter and large intakes of breath once again… brave and urgent,” wrote The Telegraph. Shazia Mirza is not here to fit in. She is here to prove that comedy at its best is never just entertainment. It is commentary, it is confrontation, and it is liberation wrapped in laughter that leaves the world a little less certain and a lot more awake.
CEO : Zahra Saifullah
Managing Editor: Nashmia Amir Butt
Creative Director: Kaniz Ali
Photography: Javed Mohammed
Hair & Make Up: Kaniz Ali
Assisted by Safa Koreshi
Location: Colonel Saab, London
Editorial Words by Kaniz Ali
