Shappi Khorsandi – Me and My Brother in our Pants, Holding Hands (Tour – Salford)

Shappi Khorsandi’s a perpelexing comedienne. She’s charming on stage, that’s for sure, engaging; definitely, interesting; absolutely but is she very funny? Opening her tour of the new show, Me and My Brother In Our Pants, Holding Hands she jokes about having to be her own support act, ‘times are hard and this bit won’t be as funny as the bit after the interval’.

Dressed in a cutesy blue dress and glamorous heels, Khorsandi is a conundrum. She’s at ease on stage and in this opening routine, there’s an improvised feel with much audience interaction. At times, it’s too relaxed, like a pal holding court at a party. Some of the jokes fall flat and reliance wholly on her audience to provide much of the material is a tricky game.

She touches on such subjects as gaining her British Citizenship – for this she takes us through the Dummies Guide questionnaire, on being a sexy MILF (and her re-telling of its meaning to her own mother ‘Mother I’d Like to Finger’) and about her single life. It’s entertaining enough and inoffensive but as the lights come up for the interval, there’s a slight niggle that it was all much ado about nothing, so fluffy it’s sort of forgettable.

The second part is the title tour. There’s a blown up picture of her and her brother as children and the hour consists of the comedienne discussing their love/hate relationship, her upbringing (which is well documented), her divorce, her own son and being back in the dating game.

There’s more than a nod to Larkin’s ‘they f**k you up, your mum and dad’ in the show and it’s a genuinely interesting life that Khorsandi’s leading. There’s wit and warmth in her humour and if there’s such a thing as Conversational Comedy, then Khorsandi is a master of it.

– Lucia Cox
(Reviewed at the Lowry, Salford)