A Muslim woman comedian who uses four-letter words on stage? There's more to my act than that, Shazia Mirza tells Brian Boyd

YOU won't find any comics who complain about the level of press attention they receive. Except for Shazia Mirza. The British act, one of the highlights of this year's Galway Comedy Festival, is scathing about how media coverage of her always concentrates on the fact that she's a female Muslim comic - even though she is not a practising Muslim.

"I've been doing stand-up for about seven years now," she says. "In the very beginning, when I was still working out my material and trying to find my own voice, I got all this press simply because I was a Muslim woman. I was featured in the New York Times, I was on the American TV show 60 Minutes, and I hated every minute of it because I think I was treated like a novelty act. 'Oh, look, she's a Muslim woman and she says cock on stage.'

"I wasn't allowed to develop normally. I didn't have a full act when I started, didn't know what I was about, and you need a few years to develop as a comic."

From Birmingham, and now based in London, Mirza found that one line from her set in the early days was referenced each and every time she was written about.

"I was doing my first show in New York, not long after 9/11, and I had this opening line: 'My name is Shazia Mirza - or at least that's what it says on my pilot's licence.' But, for me, that was just one tiny part of my act . . . I wasn't been taken for what I was but more for what I represented to people and whatever stereotypes they had about female Muslims."

Mirza's routines are now firmly rooted in the contemporary criticism tradition - wherein she dissects all the foibles of modern-day life with strongy worded phrases and some lacerating insights into the changing roles of men and women.

She became a comic as a direct result of a disastrous teaching job.

"It was after university, and I got this job teaching science in a really rough school in the East End of London to 16-year-old boys. "I hated them and they hated me. I taught them fuck-all. I was a really bad science teacher. The class used to say to me, 'Miss, do something else instead of this, you're really crap at it.'

"The only way I could possibly try to control them was by having a laugh with them, so I had to work on doing jokes for them. . . Whatever I have to face from an audience now will never be as bad as trying to impress a bunch of 16-year-old boys."

Mirza was brought up in a practising Muslim household. She is not religious, but she did wear a headscarf on stage at the beginning of her career.

"People got the wrong idea of me wearing the headscarf. I'm an Asian woman. You can't tell I'm Muslim from the way I look but, because I was talking on stage about my life - which obviously involved being brought up in a Muslim household - I decided to wear the headscarf because I was playing a character. I only did it for six months.

A consequence of all the press attention is the hostility she receives from certain people. "I do get certain people verbally attacking me for 'letting down' the religion."

In a recent column in New Statesman magazine (she's a regular contributor), she talked about how at a recent UK gig a "bearded Muslim man whose attitude to woman was pre-medieval" stormed into her dressing room demanding that she give up comedy. "It is not respectable what you are doing. You will answer for this on the Day of Judgement."

Mirza's hope is that, as an established comic, she's transcended all the early labelling. "It's different now for me. I've found my feet and I think I can only be judged on what I do on stage, not what categories I fit into. I hope."

Shazia Mirza makes her Irish debut at the Galway Comedy Festival on Monday, April 9th

The New Kilkenny

Last year's Galway Comedy Festival was a hoot and a half, and this year's event looks promising. Organised by longtime Galway comedy promoter Gerry Mallon, the Easter Weekend festival kicks off on Thursday, April 5th with the regulars from RTÉ's The Panel - Colin Murphy, Andrew Maxwell (below) and Neil Delamere - all doing stand-up sets at the Radisson Hotel. You can catch Killinascully's Joe Rooney, over at Cuba on the same night.

Other shows include Abi Philbin Bowman's one-man Jesus: The Guantanamo Years (which did very well for him at last year's Edinburgh Festival) and arguably, the festival highlight in Tommy Tiernan's Comedy Circus, starring the Navan man alongside a mixed bag of comics and musical acts.

You really wouldn't want to be miss US comic Reginald D Hunter, one of the best acts around, who combines vicious wit with an endearing charm.

Further details and ticket booking at www.galway comedyfestival.com