Quite the fringe journey for Ahir Shah this year, who arrived in town with an unready work-in-progress, and has now been nominated, again, for the Edinburgh comedy award. He excuses his poor festival preparation with reference to the recent death of his long-term director Adam Brace who would have surely been proud of Ends. It is a barnstormer of a set from the 32-year-old albeit one that assails the heartstrings at least as much as (OK, more than) the funny bone.
As usual, Shah has at least twice as much to say as most comics on the fringe, and a fervour to say it. His imminent wedding has prompted reflection on duty and “generational sacrifice”, such as the one made by his maternal grandad – or nānājī– when leaving India, alone, to spearhead a new life for his family in northern England. Also as usual, the personal and political intertwine for Shah, who takes the chilly temperature of despairing modern Britain and offers a corrective by asking: what would grandad back in 1964 have thought if given a glimpse of his adopted country today?
Shah’s answer is unfashionably upbeat. “Politically, I’m furious,” he says, and “racially, thrilled” about Rishi Sunak, whose ascent he views through the prism of British multiculturalism and the Amritsar massacre, which the PM’s great-grandfather survived. None of this is Pollyanna-ish; at one point, Shah bursts the idealistic bubble with a droll crack about his grandad’s Islamophobia. But it is tremendously powerful, as Shah applies his considerable oratorical talents to his forebear’s self-sacrificing life – and to the touching moment when his grandparents’ laughter at a certain British Indian TV show triggered comedy ambitions in the young Ahir.
There are laughs here, of course, as Shah discovers the Arabic meaning of his name, decries our collective addiction to handheld “shiny fear oblongs”, and recalls the schooldays occasion when Latin-class solidarity helped him avoid a mugging. But we find ourselves just as often on the end of an impassioned speech or tender encomium as a joke. You might consider that a flaw in a comedy show, but – goodness gracious me! – Shah makes the combination sing here.
At Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh until 27 August.
