INTERVIEW | 'WHY I DON'T TALK TO PEOPLE ABOUT TERRORISM' HARUN MUSHO'D, EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE

The countdown to the world's biggest arts festival Edinburgh Festival Fringe is on and arrives this month for its 75th anniversary. Between 5 - 29 August you can enjoy a diverse selection of work from across the UK in Scotland's capital city. 

Ahead of the festival, I have fantastic interviews coming up from some of the acts who will be heading there to showcase their work.

Today's interview comes from Harun Musho'd. Harun discusses his political, stand-up comedy Why I Don't Talk To People About Terrorism.  

So to begin with, tell us where your interest in comedy came from?

Long term, since I was a child; the usual thing: class clown, joker at work and so on. I started writing funny fiction in the early 2000s, and belatedly went to university in 2010 to study English Lit and Creative Writing. Once there, I joined the Royal Holloway Comedy Society and started doing stand-up comedy. 

What is really interesting is that you performed stand-up comedy whilst studying as a mature student at Royal Holloway university. What would you say drew you in?

Initially, I wanted to join a sketch writing and performing group, but the focus of the Comedy Society was stand-up so I leaned into that instead. Luckily I turned out to be pretty good at it from the beginning, at least for the first six months, even performing at my first Edinburgh Fringe in 2013.

Your new piece Why I Don’t Talk To People About Terrorism is heading to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next month. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

After those first six months, I hit a wall for about a year, trying to find my voice (AKA jokes that worked). I broke through that wall when I wrote a set combining two things, my family and terrorism (I should clarify none of my family are terrorists … as far as I know). One or both of those themes has informed both of my previous two shows and forms the basis of my club set. This show is a development of the club set.

The show itself pretty well does what it says on the tin (a conscious marketing decision from me). It’s structured around eight reasons why I don’t like talking about terrorism. Unfortunately, that does result in me talking about terrorism for around half the show, so I didn’t really think that concept through. Some of the reasons, however, are hooks to talk about wider political issues, my family, and me.  

When you were developing this material was a lot of it personal experience or did you draw from people in your community as well? 

Some of it is personal, but the political parts are partly about my own views and partly about the craft of technically reverse engineering a punchline to design a set up. I’m not sure I consider myself part of any community. As my background is really diverse (Muslim, Catholic, Atheist, British, Sri Lankan, Swiss, and so on, full list available as part of the show) I consider myself an outsider of sorts, not in a bad way, more as an observer of different cultures. In that respect, I guess I am channeling an aspect of Swiss neutrality, in that I tend to approach my material from different perspectives. 

Was any of the material difficult to dive into and create comedy around it?

Emotionally no, technically yes. Criticising my family hasn’t been too hard, because I have some distance from most of them, and others are dead (e.g. my dad). I just make sure I’m not performing anywhere they can easily get to. That said, my younger brother is aware that I talk about his conspiracy theorist tendencies, but he’s ok with that; he’s more bothered about my links to the “deep state” (ie public sector - more details in the show). 

Technically, writing most comedy is hard and writing jokes about any aspect of terrorism is particularly difficult in terms of not crossing a line. I have one joke in the show (and it’s also on my publicity material and front page of my website, so I don’t mind giving this one up): "Harun Musho’d is an Arabic name. Good news is I can’t fly a plane or even drive a car. Bad news is I have a rucksack." In the publicity blurb, I follow that up with “If you don’t like that joke, don’t come to this show!” On the front page of the website, I instead direct them to a link to Michael McIntyre’s website. In the show itself, if people laugh at it, I know the show will probably go well, particularly if the laughter is also accompanied by a sharp intake of breath.

You talk about terrorism in particular - is this a topic that you think is particularly important to create work around in the current climate?

I don’t think terrorism is a particularly hot topic at the moment, but it has been current for decades in one form or another, so unlike an ultra topical political comedy show, I can return with this show in future years, which is good for me as I don’t write quickly enough to produce a show a year or be a good topical comedian (but I know who is, see penultimate question). 

Do you think your piece of work will enable people to have a different perspective on how we talk about terrorism?

I talk about terrorism from the perspective of direct victims (having had two close shaves myself in my life which I talk about), indirect victims (the wider community from which some terrorist come e.g. Muslim or Irish) and the terrorists themselves. I talk about some of the factors leading to terrorism including, in particular, religion. All of this with, or just for, the jokes.

The most important perspective for me in writing this show is ensuring it’s funny. I deliberately wrote and structured the show so that humour is at the forefront. This is a reaction from me to what I perceived as a growing trend in comedy to foreground and address serious themes in a comedy show format, but at the expense of the humour. I first noticed it with Richard Gadd’s and Hannah Gadsby’s Edinburgh Comedy award winning shows in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Both are excellent shows but not because they’re funny, and I think it encouraged a trend in comedy that I want to challenge. So, I hope audiences come out of my show thinking it was funny, with perhaps something to think about, rather than blown away by my challenging perspectives but not laughing.  

What has been the best part of developing your material for this?

For me developing long complex routines that I can get to a point where they pay off. For example, there is one routine about the history of terrorism in the UK that took me months to get right. Another that I honed for years, is about the butterfly effects of an inconspicuous and obscure public building near where I live, on a heap of events of national and international political significance including the rise of ISIS, Brexit, and the war in Ukraine.

How do you feel about performing in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year?

This is my fifth fringe and my third time with a full-run solo show, so whilst not exactly a veteran, I appreciate the concentrated opportunity to hone my show and my skills as a performer. The Edinburgh Fringe improves my skills as a comedian more than anything else I do. I hope this show will be seen by  more people than my last show Dark Side of Harun. That was fun to do but difficult to get people to come to because it had no USP, hence my decision on the title and theme of the current show.

Why is this festival important for people to see and support during August?

With rising accommodation costs for both performers and audiences that is a debatable point. Is it still worthwhile? The Fringe is increasingly evolving into a showcase for already established artists, and losing the sense of purpose that was established in 1947, as an open access alternative to the curated Edinburgh International Festival. I strongly believe my promoter, the non-profit making PBH Free Fringe, embodies that ethos more strongly than the mainstream Edinburgh Fringe Society itself. When one sees government grants intended to help the Fringe re-establish itself and help struggling artists being handed out by the Fringe Society, mostly to the big four and other commercial promoters, it is making a lot of other artists struggle with rising venue costs and accommodation, wonder if the financial sacrifice of doing the Fringe is still worthwhile. 

For example, it isn’t clear to most of us why some of that £1.5m grant couldn’t have been spent on updating the official and previously successful Fringe app, which was an amazing tool allowing the public to find shows about to start near them, many of them free. Instead, the Fringe Society scrapped it for this year. 

 

That said, Edinburgh Fringe (alongside the other Edinburgh festivals) remains the only festival I’m aware of that allows you to spend the whole day, for days or weeks on end just going from show to show, taking risks in what you see. It’s an exhilarating experience. 

Besides your show, are there any that you’d recommend that people go and watch during the festival?

Ashley Haden (On the Outside Pissing in), is a truly up-to-the-minute topical comedian. So much so in fact, that each year he finds himself having to ditch his show and totally rewrite it in July. This year it was Boris Johnson’s resignation, in 2019 it was Theresa May’s. Other comedians look to Ashley to predict the future in a compass-pointing-south sort of way. Yet he pulls it out of the bag each year, so much so that the 2018 and 2019 shows are on the Next-Up streaming service. 

Katie Pritchard (Disco Ball)  - insane, inspired musical comedian complete with homemade props and costumes , one of the best acts I’ve ever booked when I ran a comedy club in London. 

Sindhu Vee (Alphabet)  - another of my favourite acts when I ran a club. Nominated for Best Newcomer in the 2018 Edinburgh Comedy Awards for Sandhogs.  

Steve McLean’s  Action Figure Archive Volume 2: WTF!? Volume 1 was my favourite Edinburgh Fringe show of 2019.

Where can people come and see you during the festival?

Harun Musho’d: Why I Don’t Talk To People About Terrorism 5.20pm 6-28 August except for Wednesdays PBH’s Free Fringe @ Legends, 71 Cowgate, EH1 1JW. Further information here.