[electric guitar music)
- [Narrator] It's Set List Stand Up Without a Net
live from the from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!
Comedians from around the world are coming on stage
and they're going to riff on topics we gave them.
Zero preparation, making comedy out of thin air
for your sadistic pleasure.
(energetic music)
- [Comedian] The great thing about the Set List audience
is generally, they're people that get that
the thing that you're doing is not easy
and not meant to be easy.
That almost becomes part of the fun of
what we're experiencing together.
- [Host] The never-before seen set list of Ahir Shah!
(applause)
- [Ahir] Hello! Okay, we don't have time for all of that
because I've been in such a mood all day,
I've been in a real mood all day, and here's why.
(audience laughter)
Why are they always so fucking quiet? (audience laughter)
'Cause I don't trust people. I don't trust people
who are that nice. I think that
that's my fundamental problem.
I don't trust people who are that nice.
I feel as though there must be some sort of
secret agenda kind of in there, lurking behind the thing.
Because, these kinds of people, I don't trust,
I don't trust the religious, I don't trust the kind,
I don't trust anyone... (audience laughter)
Their entire kind of order is predicated
on the notion of sort-of shaking and everything.
(audience laughter)
Which is fundamentally... is that because
they're kind of quaking in some sort of metaphorical
sense, or is it because they want to make themselves
more difficult to capture on film? (audience laughter)
Next! (audience laughter)
In Scotland they can get very creative, the men
with nicknames for their penises.
(audience laughter)
Next!
And these are the sorts of nicknames
that they have for their penises in America.
(audience laughter)
The Anaconda rule is actually a portion of history.
It was a period (audience laugher)
It was a period in history
I don't know how well versed any of you are kind of
in the Mayans and the Aztecs and these sorts of people.
I'm an extremely well-read person
so I can talk you through
(audience laughter)
this sort of thing. There's no need for you to fear.
I mean, I don't want to patronize you in any way
by the implication that you're not fully ofay
with the Anaconda Rule
(audience laughter)
which is of course what preceded Montezuma, you'll remember
(audience laughter)
The Anaconda Rule, when of course millions were sacrificed,
had their hearts torn out at the top of the pyramid
to the feathered snake-god Quetzalcoatl.
(audience laughter)
And it was during a particularly bloody time
of Aztec history that this kind of occurred
and it is known, for the number of people
who were sacrificed to this feathered snake deity.
And you know, thank God that we've moved on now
and we don't feel as though we need to do that
but we can kind of look back on history as all our
collective history as a species,
as humanity is the cumulative evolution of our society
as a whole and think like,
"Fuck, thank God we don't do that no more."
(audience laughter)
But I do feel that it's very important for you to know.
Because if we're not laughing, and let's face it
at the moment we're not
(audience laughter)
we are at the very least getting a stellar experience
of Aztec history. (audience laughter)
Next! (audience laughter)
What the Coalition Government is doing
to our health service is nothing short
of creating a monster.
(applause)
Next!
(audience laughter)
The monkeys, they're flinging shit at me,
but I'm flinging it straight back
(audience laughter)
out of my mouth, 'cause I do that! I do that because,
we've got all these social conventions in day-to-day society
Like I go up to you, and kind of I'm talking to you now,
if I call you a dickhead you're upset right?
But if you say that to an Emu
they don't know what the fuck's going on right?
(audience laughter) Get away with all sorts of stuff.
It's the only place that I feel that I can actually
access a notion of freedom of speech.
I'm so constrained in my general life
between people's assumptions of who I should be
and who I need to perform, what aspect of myself
do I need to perform in front of the people
I'm interacting with. What will not alienate them?
How do I maintain my dwindling group of friends?
You can then go off to a zoo, and call a leopard a cunt
you're feeling great about yourself.
(audience laughter)
Call a leopard a bellend (audience laughter)
But all the time, you know, all the time,
I just got one eye, one eye on the corner
make sure there's not some fucking nice religious guy
with an agenda. (audience laughter)
My name's Ahir. I tell jokes.
Thank you very much. Goodnight.
(guitar music)
To have something come at you, from elsewhere
and tell you that "This is what you're doing now,"
and you've got absolutely no choice in the matter.
Yeah, I mean, otherwise, I'm a person who maybe
can write a joke and deliver it competently.
But I'm a comedian, that's kind of the difference.
(energetic music)
(electronic music)