Ahir Shah

Ahir Shah (born 28 December 1990) is a British comedian. He was nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017 and 2018, and won the award in 2023. Before that he was a finalist in the 2008 So You Think You're Funny? competition for new acts. Shah has been called "one of his generation's most eloquent comic voices." Born and raised in London to parents originally from India, he attended Preston Manor comprehensive school in Wembley and went on to the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2012 with a degree in Politics, Psychology and Sociology from Clare College.

Shah started doing comedy at open mic nights when he was 15, after his father encouraged him to try different extracurricular activities. He took his debut show Astrology to Edinburgh in 2011, followed by shows including Anatomy (2013), Texture (2014), Distant (2015), Machines (2016), Control (2017), Duffer (2018), and Dots, which he toured in 2019 and which became an HBO special in 2021. He is a writer and performer on BBC Two's satirical news show The Mash Report and has appeared on panel shows including Have I Got News For You, Mock the Week, and BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz, as well as Live at The Apollo.

In 2023, Shah won the Best Comedy Show award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for his show Ends, which streamed as a Netflix special from September 2024. In 2024 he appeared as a co-host of The Bugle podcast, and in 2025 he made the BBC Radio 4 series Ahir Shah's 7 Blunders of the World, based on the Seven Social Sins. He has spoken openly about suffering from depression, and during the November 2015 Paris attacks he was performing only a few doors down from one of the attack sites, an experience that formed part of his 2016 show Machines.