‘Does anyone not know who I am?” Coy pause. “Well, 1.8 million people do.” A content creator from Blackburn, Shabaz Ali made his name mocking those who flaunt their perfect lifestyles online. The concept (already parlayed into a book and a breakout broadcasting career) now makes a faltering transfer to the stage at the Glasgow comedy festival as part of a UK tour. It confirms the 30-year-old as a cheeky and charismatic host, but exposes his taunting comedy – frequently directed tonight at people’s clothing – as itself pretty threadbare.
The evening mixes standup with PowerPoint presentations based on Ali’s online work. The former draws on his family life in Lancashire, at home with a tyrant mother. The material doesn’t stray far from child-of-migrants cliche, as Ali cracks wise about the pressure to become a doctor. There’s a fine gag about the cautionary example Sajid Javid sets to young Pakistani Brits, and a confused routine about Ali’s four-year-old niece, whose privilege he deplores even as he insists that she, like him, remains poor.
The PowerPoint routines, meanwhile, are by some distance sub-Dave Gorman, as Ali invites us to guess which retail items are expensive, and which are sweatshop-cheap. Here, and in another slideshow comparing outre red-carpet couture with Elmo from Sesame Street, or to “an anal prolapse”, the humour rarely extends beyond playground abuse. But it looks positively Wodehousian next to the section in which our host “roasts” audience members for their “shit outfits”. It may, as Ali insists, be “all a bit of fun”. But I’d have preferred funny.
In the closing stages the show takes on a political edge, as this self-styled “King of the Povvos” critiques “poverty chic” in high fashion, and makes the legit but banal point that the lifestyles paraded on Instagram should not be muddled with the real thing. No doubt Ali’s heart is in the right place – but he’s still to prove the stage is the right place for his comedy.
