Shappi Khorsandi - Carry on Shappi

Published Thursday 23 August 2007 at 12:55 by Nick Awde

We’ve had waves of stand-ups in recent years suddenly settling down and introducing reassuringly safe material about marriage, children, turning 40 or simply discovering what a laptop can do.

That sort of material, however, has something of an (hilarious) edge to it when that stand-up is nine months pregnant and gives instructions to someone in the front row on what to do if her waters break onstage.

Welcome to Shappi Khorsandi, Iranian mother very nearly about to be. In fact there’s a bit of a double act going on here as she talks in asides to the bump (it’s a boy) or stands or sits according to which part of her insides he’s kicking. Despite admitting to hormone-induced amnesia, Khorsandi delivers a high energy set about mothers and low esteem - clearly a favourite topic with both her and the audience - and strangers touching her expectant belly inappropriately in the street. Her horror at finding herself married to a comic and musician sparks the fond memory of dumping his predecessor - you almost feel you were there - while the analysis of retro-jealousy gets huge laughs of recognition from the female half of the crowd.

All this somehow leads into a story about Googling a cure for her pet guinea pig’s swollen willy and her mum happily chatting to drug dealers at Brixton tube station.

Unexpectedly, her attitudes of parents to drugs really hit the audiences’ spot as did the frankly appalling memories of her school years in west London as a put-upon Iranian with only two Jewish girls for friends. And somehow all that landed her on a stage in Edinburgh 2007 about to give birth. Now that’s show business.