list.co.uk/festival Teen Religion | FESTIVAL COMEDY
HEAVENLY PURSUITS
There’s a swarm of Fringe comedy shows this August with stand-ups refl ecting on their heavily religious teenage years. Claire Sawers talks to a trio
about their confl icted views and what made them leave the faith
A black Christian, a gay Baptist and a radical evangelist all walk into a bar. Well, they had to, they were booked to do a stand-up gig in there. They’re not the only ones either: this year’s Fringe programme reveals a clutch of comedians whose shows are inspired by their childhoods growing up in religious households.
Shazia Mirza returns to the Fringe for a ten-night stint, continuing her quest to make sense of her experiences as a British-Asian woman raised in multi-faith Birmingham by a Muslim mum who is now ‘strongly anti-burka’. Tom Ward was raised by a fundamentalist Christian dad and Catholic mum who banned Christmas and fashionable trainers in the house. His show Sex, Snails and Cassette Tapes looks at how he found personal salvation through girls, surf-rock bands and charity shops. Elsewhere, Ali Hassan examines his Muslim heritage in Man Interrupted, if only to answer his four children’s knotty questions about modern-day Islam.
And who knew that Katy Brand, star of Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show, was once a radical fundamentalist Christian? ‘My local church seemed really cool and vibrant to me as a 13-year-old,’ she remembers. ‘It was one of those Church of England ones that got hit by a trend which came over from America in the 90s, and suddenly we were speaking in tongues and praying out demons.’
It didn’t hurt that Brand had a crush on the worship leader, and there was a gospel rock band that she could sign up for. ‘I felt like a celebrity,’ she winces, before confessing the whole thing gives her ‘the massive, deep cringe’ now. ‘Suddenly I felt important and I could show off. We’d go into supermarkets on Saturdays and preach, and I’d tell all my friends they’d go to hell if they didn’t go to church . . . Looking back, I was an obnoxious dick.’ She’s grateful that her self-imposed radicalisation was short-lived, but now, as stepmother to a teenage daughter, she can see exactly why it
4–11 Aug 2016 THE LIST FESTIVAL 37