Khorsandi began performing in pubs in her mid-20s and her career has gradually gathered momentum over the decade-and-a-half since. Today, at 39, she’s an in-demand name at comedy stages all over Britain as well as on television—but unseen in North America.
In a conversation with the Cambridge Evening News, Khorsandi said she was just eight years old when she decided she wanted to be a comic. Loving the limelight from an early age, she was at her happiest when entertaining her parents and their friends.
Khorsandi’s father, Hadi, was a satirist, journalist and comedian, writing for Iranian newspapers during the time of the Shah. His comments didn’t amuse some in the regime. So, the family moved to London. The move was meant to be temporary, but when police appeared on the family’s doorstep to inform them they had word of a plot to kill Hadi, they went into hiding for a week and have remained in the UK ever since.
The experience has, however, provided the perfect fuel for her stand-up routines and sparked a book, too, “A Beginner’s Guide to Acting English,” which recounts her adjustment to life in the UK and is sort of a British riff on “Funny in Farsi.”
As for the dating scene, Khorsandi says, “It’s really good fun” and easier to enjoy in her late 30s than early 20s. “I wish I had the confidence I have now when I was in my 20s, but you can’t have everything. When you go through a divorce, it’s really awful; it’s like you’re Mr. Potato Head. You fall apart and then you have to put yourself back together again. After a couple of years, you realize you’ve put yourself back together but you’re a different shape to the shape you were. It’s not better and it’s not worse.. . . it’s probably better, actually, because you’re stronger and all that clichÈd rubbish that you tell yourself in order to justify the fact your heart’s been drop-kicked into a fire, but you do learn how to have loads more fun.”
Khorsandi was born in Tehran and came to Britain when she was three and a half. “My memories of Iran are like anyone’s childhood memories where ever they happen to be, whether it’s Iran or Cornwall. I do remember being in London in the 70s and the revolution happening and suddenly everything changing and Iranians going from being quite exotic people from the land of cats and carpets to, you know, hostage takers. And that was really tough as a kid.”
During the family’s brief week in hiding from presumed assassins, her father got chewed out by Scotland Yard because he was doing such a bad job of hiding. “My dad wasn’t supposed to have told anyone where he was, yet about 30 of our mates from London had come to stay in surrounding B&Bs and my dad had persuaded them to come on a picnic with us. My dad’s like that. No one can pass my dad’s path without having a vodka and a kebab. It’s impossible.”
She says she gave her dad a hard time about his career. “I was always asking ‘Why do you do this? Why can’t you have a normal job? Why can’t you work in a newsagents [selling magazines and newspapers]?’ I had this thing where I wanted my dad to work in a newsagents or a printers.
“I didn’t understand his need to attack those in power and I didn’t understand his need to write. I do now, and I’m very proud of him now. But I think when I was a child, I was just terrified and I didn’t understand. The way I saw it was he was putting our lives in danger, too. But what are you meant to do? Not write? Not do anything? My dad is just the most fearless person I’ve ever met in my life. He’s utterly funny and sweet and a clown.”
She isn’t political in her act like her dad; she’s more of a social commentator. But she says there are some things that she keeps out of her routine even if they would get a good laugh.
“There are lots of things about my son I wouldn’t say. I don’t like saying my son’s name because he’s four. I talk about motherhood, but there are other things about my child that he says or he does or he thinks or he feels that I don’t talk about on stage because they’re his things and they’re so special.”