‘I knew there was no 15-year-old more interested in religion than sex’

day they’d have to get married. They always used to ask me, ‘are you married and have you ever been in love? What’s it like being in love?’ Some of them did have secret boyfriends in the school . . . But they knew that they wouldn’t be able to marry that boy because that boy wasn’t their parents’ choice . . . But they were very romantic . . . I just knew that there was no 15-year-old in the world that was more interested in religion than sex. I’ve never met any teenager like that. It doesn’t matter what race or religion you are.”

From this initial flash on inspiration, she’s built a whole show that draws on a great deal of research, (she re-read the Koran and Hadiths, interviewed Islamic scholars and childhood friends and watched the Home Office select committee on the case) as well as her own experience growing up in a Muslim family in the UK. As she taps into her own experience, she’s been satisfied to see that she’s reaching a whole new audience. More and more Muslim women — women like her, have been coming to see her show. Previously, her audience was mostly made up of“Guardian readers and gay men. Ever since I started comedy I’ve always had gay men as an audience. They’ve always been very supportive of me even when I wasn’t funny. They’ve continued to support me.

“But I’ve never had so many Asian women come and see my show. I’ve never had so many Muslim women come and see my show.”

She writes a lot about her family — particularly her relationship with her parents. And she pulls no punches. In a recent piece for the FT, she says “My father was a typical 1970s Pakistani father, authoritarian, dictatorial, totalitarian, not to mention lacking in humour and not much fun, and my mother was a good wife. They were more cultural than religious, and my strict upbringing was akin to going on a trip with Idi Amin as a tour guide.”

Amazingly, her parents “read everything” she writes about them. But she claims it causes no friction between them. On the contrary, she says, her dad “photocopied the FT article and gave it out at his local mosque. I thought ‘my god that’s really great.’ In the end, honesty is her best defence. What she writes is acceptable, she explains, because it’s true. “Every Pakistani man of that age, at that time, was like that. It’s like My Beautiful Laundrette. Every Pakistani man who came over in the 70’s was very strict and dictatorial and he was the head of the house.”

They read her hit column in The Guardian “Diary of a Disappointing Daughter, ” a warts-and-all account of her relationships with her parents, every week. Were they annoyed with the exposure? “Well, they know it’s true,” she says simply “They loved to read about things from my point of view. From how I saw my upbringing, rather than how they saw my upbringing.”

She’s also spoken frankly about her parents arranged, but unhappy marriage. “My mother didn’t know any other way. She thinks you just have to endure the bad things. She and my dad would admit that they’re not compatible, and that it isn’t really a happy marriage at all. In their generation though, women won’t get divorced,” she once said in an interview.

Today though, she’s rather more philosophical about it. “I mean, what does that mean, happy? They’ve been married for 47 years. People my age don’t get married for that long. They’ve been married for so long and they have five children — they still live together. They still go on holidays together. My generation, these girls, they talk about romance and love, and they’re always searching for that, romance and love. Whereas people of my parents generation had an arranged marriage. And it was arranged and that was it and that was it for the rest of your life.” For her part, she says it’s never worked out between her and Muslim men.

Presumably the assumption was that her parents would choose a husband for her? “Yeah, they tried,” she says. “They tried very hard. They’re still trying. My mum used to stop Asian men at the bus stop. If she saw an Asian man at the bus stop in Birmingham, who was the right height, she’d go up to him and say, ‘do you have a degree. Are you married. I have a spare daughter going.’ A lot of Asian women would do that in Birmingham. Or,” she says, “you’d go to a woman in the community who had a book of names, and you’d tell her what you wanted.’

Still currently unmarried, she insists that this state of affairs is not due to unwillingness on her part. “A lot of the people they introduced me to, I did meet. And I was always very open minded. But a lot of the people I met — when I started doing comedy 11 years ago, there was only me doing comedy so a lot of people didn’t understand that. They thought it was a really terrible thing. It was like being a prostitute. So I was never successful with any of the people I met,” she deadpans. “They didn’t want a wife who was a comedian. They’d find out who I am and what I do and they’d go, ‘No, we don’t have anyone suitable.”

These days, she thinks it’s best if she finds a husband herself. “Now if my mother says ‘I’m going to introduce you to somebody’ I say no. Because you really have to know your children if you are going to do that. And I think my parents are really out of touch now.”

No doubt to her mother’s continued disappointment, only one of her four siblings is married. “The rest of us are not married. We all just want peace and quiet. We are all very happy and successful. We’ll get married when we want to. We don’t feel in a hurry to do that.” Shazia Mirza, The Kardashians Made Me Do It, is on June 17, as part of the Dalkey Book Festival. She’ll also appear, in conversation with David McWilliams on June 18. www.dalkeybookfestival.org