Shazia Mirza: Busybody

“My audience are predominantly gay men and Guardian readers,” quips Shazia Mirza near the start of this occasionally confrontational diatribe about modern Britain. It’s a fairly specious comment in a set filled with often crass generalisations, not least about the British Asian culture to which she belongs.

At one point Mirza dismisses the suggestion that she should deal with “more important things” in her comedy, such as arranged marriages. She rails against this idea, insisting that just because she is from an Asian backgrounddoesn’t necessarily mean she has opinions on such issues, conveniently forgetting that minutes earlier she was talking about... arranged marriages.

Targets for her ire are largely soft: the English inability to complain, Kelly Brook, Michael Jackson (still?) and Gok Wan. Meanwhile, more than a couple of times jokes are set up with the much-derided precursor “do you remember...?”, rather than flowing naturally. Items the audience are asked to recall include Points of View and Just 17 magazine. It feels like a cheap television list show has gone on tour.

By far the most successful part of her set comes as she deals with the pointlessness and stupidity of racism, coping with an appalling note left on her car with admirable restraint. Meanwhile, her description of a drunk bigot’s behaviour in a private member’s club should be force-fed to BNP members everywhere in an attempt to convince them of their own ridiculousness.

Idiot-bating aside, however, this is just a ramshackle collection of scattershot musings with a hit rate of well under 50 per cent.