Shaparak Khorsandi (, ; born 8 June 1973), who previously performed as Shappi Khorsandi, is an Iranian-born British comedian and author.
She is the daughter of the Iranian political satirist and poet Hadi Khorsandi.
Shaparak Khorsandi was born on 8 June 1973 in Tehran.
Her parents were Fatemah, and the satirist and poet Hadi Khorsandi.
The family fled from Iran to London after the Islamic Revolution following a joke that her father composed which was seen as critical of the revolutionary regime.
1979
Her family left Iran for the United Kingdom following the 1979 revolution, and her Iranian heritage and reactions to it are frequently referenced in her stand-up comedy performances.
1995
Khorsandi graduated from King Alfred's College, now the University of Winchester, in 1995, with a Drama, Theatre, and Television degree.
After graduating, she worked in various roles, including at a community theatre, in a sandwich shop, as a telephone fundraiser, and as a nude life model, whilst starting her career as a stand-up comedian.
1997
Khorsandi performs stand-up comedy, and appeared at Joe Wilson's Comedy Madhouse in 1997.
Her Iranian heritage and reactions to it are frequently referenced in her comedy performances.
2000
In 2000, she was runner-up in the Hackney Empire New Act of The Year, and William Cook of The Guardian found her "feisty self-mockery" to be "refreshing... with something new to say and a new way of saying it".
That summer, she made her debut at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the three-person show Pablo Diablo's Cryptic Triptych, performing between ventriloquist Mark Felgate and Russell Brand.
The same year, she was nominated for 2000 the BBC New Comedy Award.
2004
A short 2004 preview in The Times read that Khorsandi's act "uses her turbulent background to confident, creative effect".
2006
Khorsandi rose to national prominence after her 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show Asylum Speaker and her appearance at the Secret Policeman's Ball two years later.
Her 2006 show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Asylum Speaker, drew on her experience of leaving Iran and her fear on learning of death threats to her father.
It was praised by Mark Monahan of The Daily Telegraph as "lively, ambitious and interesting" although he felt that the quality of the second half of the show was not as funny as the first.
Jasper Gerard of The Sunday Times called Khorsandi the "surprise hit" of the Fringe.
Theatre academics Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harris later wrote that this show was the "act that brought her wide media attention".
Khorsandi was a panellist on Question Time in 2006 and returned in 2010, 2015, and 2018.
2007
In 2007, Khorsandi travelled to Australia and performed at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.
Later, she was nominated for the best breakthrough act at the 2007 Chortle Awards.
2008
Khorsandi was one of the acts at The Secret Policeman's Ball 2008 show for Amnesty International; writing in 2021, she reflected that this appearance "led to regular TV bookings, including Live at the Apollo, which meant I could tour. Being a touring comic meant that I made much more money than when I was on the circuit."
In December 2008, she appeared on the BBC stand-up television show Live at the Apollo alongside Russell Kane and Al Murray.
2009
She has featured on numerous British television and radio programmes, including the BBC Radio 4 programme Shappi Talk (2009 and 2010), and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in 2017.
Khorsandi has authored several books.
Her memoir A Beginner's Guide to Acting English was published in 2009.
She performed her show, The Distracted Activist, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 6 to 31 August 2009.
The theme of the show was her involvement in campaigns, while being "distracted" by being a single mother.
Aston and Harris noted that Khorsandi made a point of emphasising that she was Iranian and a woman, but by highlighting her skin tone and dark hair, "simultaneously defamiliarises the feminine and makes the foreign familiar: ethnicity and gender intersect to deterritorialise the category 'Woman' as a site of privileged white femininity".
They remark that while her act seeks to expose the concept of the "exotic foreigner" as the construct of "a white imagination", her self-description as "exotic foreigner" as "foreign but not in a way that we hate" as potentially reinforcing "stranger fetishism".
Brian Logan's review in The Guardian found the show lacking in direction, and described it as "conventional comment on geopolitics amid much directionless banter and biographical gossip".
Reviewing a performance in Brighton, Sarah Lewis-Hammond wrote in The Argus that she found the show relatable, and that the audience clearly enjoyed it.
2010
In 2010, the university awarded her an honorary doctorate.
She originally performed professionally as Shappi Khorsandi.
Khorsandi explained in The Independent about her decision to revert to using her full name, Shaparak, professionally.
Having had her full name mocked and mispronounced when she was a child, she decided to be known as "Shappi" from the age of 16, but eventually decided that this was an attempt "to bend in a direction which would make my foreignness more comfortable for other people", and to revert to using her original name.
Reflecting on her career to 2010, they considered that a key aspect of Khorsandi's comedy was that "her humour resonates with common experiences of racially marked prejudice and 'othering', but is rooted in the specificities of her own, lived, migratory experiences".
2016
Her first novel, Nina is Not OK, was published in 2016, and her young adult fiction novel Kissing Emma, was published in 2021.
The autobiographical Scatter Brain followed in 2023.
