Tez Ilyas: Teztify

If you’ve been following the news for the past little while, you might be aware that it’s a tough time to be a Muslim in this country and many others. The insidiousness of this forms the basis of Tez Ilyas’ follow up to 2015’s Tez Talks, with an opening montage projected onto a big screen depicting the various blame games and overt racism commonplace in the news media.

With such a fearful opening, Tez Ilyas is surprisingly happy-go-lucky. He’s just moved back to his native Blackburn and is enjoying being back amongst his family, and out of the liberal echo chamber of London. He makes light of the racism he faces, laughing that "he wouldn’t have a career without it", so let’s not be so hasty to eradicate it too quickly. Ilyas takes pot shots at posh folk, his nephew and niece’s school friends, and Brexit. It’s all pretty breezy knockabout fun, and he’s not rocking the boat too much (although one gentleman thinks his material on the latter is grounds for a storm out).

The show for the most part feels a little half formed throughout. A series of middling bits of stand up that don’t really lead anywhere. It’s in the final moments of the show that Ilyas expertly brings back several open strands to deliver a pretty stark vision of the future. It may be a little extreme, but then such extreme attitudes have become the norm so it makes sense to fight fire with fire. Ilyas is taking no chances.