Sami Shah

Sami Shah (born 24 August 1978) is a Pakistani-Australian stand-up comedian, writer, improvisational actor, and radio presenter.

For a while after the September 11 attacks in 2001 he was drawn into Islam, partly as a reaction to its persecution and also because of his opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

Shah was a member of the improvisational comedy group "BlackFish" created by Saad Haroon in 2002, and later performed the first solo English-language comedy show in Pakistan.

He had several tours across Pakistan.

He moved back to Pakistan in 2002 and gradually rejected all religion and openly embraced atheism.

Shah joined BlackFish, a comedy troupe created by Saad Haroon, in 2003.

The group of eight comics employed improvisational theatre as well as scripts, using a repertoire of characters created by each of them and performing 50 times in 2003.

In 2004 they performed in the UK, representing Pakistan as part of a British Council "Connecting Futures Project".

Shah co-wrote We’ve Made Contact, a half-improvised half-scripted original format play for the performance in Manchester.

Shah performed his first solo show in Karachi on 13 November 2005.

Entitled "Nobody Moves, Nobody Gets Hurt", it raised funds for victims of the 2005 earthquake.

He remained an active member until the troupe disbanded in 2006.

In 2006, he toured Pakistan with fellow comics Haroon and Danish Ali, in what came to be called the 3-4-5 Tour.

His regular contributions as a music critic resulted in him being a judge for the prestigious Lux Style Awards in 2006.

His 2007 solo Karachi show spared nobody, aiming at mullahs, Pakistani culture, advertising agencies, local and international politics and various groups of people.

In 2008, Shah hosted, wrote, produced and directed a news satire television show, News Weakly.

It ran for two seasons on the 24-hour news channel Dawn News and won acclaim both locally and internationally.

He later said that the government's strict blasphemy laws, incurring the death penalty, affected the content of his performances; after being accused of blasphemy by an audience member after his first stand-up gig, he never again mentioned religion while performing in Pakistan.

He moved to Australia in 2012, and has since hosted several podcasts and shows on ABC radio as well as writing several books, performing in comedy festivals and participating in the Jaipur Literature Festival in Adelaide.

He has appeared on television in Australia, Pakistan and the United Kingdom.

Born in Pakistan to a moderate Shia Muslim family, Shah studied English at the University of Virginia in the US.

Shah wrote for Pakistani magazines and was a columnist for The Express Tribune in 2012.

Shah and his wife, psychologist Ishma Alvi, moved to Australia with their young daughter in 2012, partly because of the lack of freedom allowed to women and girls in Pakistan.

In 2013 he won Best Local Act at the Perth International Comedy Festival and in 2016 Best Comedy WA 2016 Fringe World.

In January 2014, Shah gave a talk at TedX in Melbourne entitled "The Unseen Laugh", in which he talks about some of his experiences in Pakistan and Western Australia, Australian attitudes towards asylum seekers, and using comedy to change people's perspectives.

In July 2014, he published an autobiography entitled I, Migrant: A Comedian's Journey from Karachi to the Outback, which was shortlisted for the 2015 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards NSW Multicultural Award as well as the Russell Prize for Humour Writing.

After spending some years in the small town of Northam, WA, they moved to Melbourne in 2015.

In 2016 he published his first foray into young adult fiction, Fire Boy, with its sequel Earth Boy released in 2017.

They became Australian citizens in January 2017.

The couple divorced in 2017.

In July 2017, The Islamic Republic of Australia was published.

In 2019, Shah remarried, although the second marriage only lasted a few months after his wife had an affair.

In 2023, Shah and his partner, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, had a daughter, Leah.

Leah.

In October 2023, the family was the subject of an episode of the ABC Television program, Australian Story.

Although an atheist, Shah has self-identified as a "cultural Muslim", saying that it's part of his background and he loves it.

He also describes himself as a "serial blasphemer", and embraces the freedom he has in Australia "to talk openly about the major issues that need to be addressed in Islam".

When in Western Australia, Shah travelled around the state doing comedy gigs, and he later made a name for himself poking fun at his adopted town at the biggest comedy festivals in the country.

He appeared at the 2019 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

In November 2019, Shah will be a presenter and participant in panel discussions at "JLF in Adelaide", the first time that the Jaipur Literary Festival had been presented in Australia.