AHIR Shah is a deep thinker with and a razor-sharp wit – who better to dissect the mad, bad, pandemic era?

The stand-up comic is coming to the Dixon Studio at the Palace Theatre on Saturday 5 March with his latest show Dress.

Audiences are in for a hilarious (and also familiar) chronicle of life during lockdown and making sense of everything that has happened.

“I am not going to light a candle and make the audience mourn with me for an hour, it is going to be a fun show. There’s a really good bit about scurvy in there,” laughs Ahir.

“I talk about everything that’s happened to me over the last 18 months and when my job became effectively illegal. All of us have gone through something life changing it would be weird for it not to affect us.”

A regular on Mock The Week, Have I Got News For You, Live At The Apollo and The Mash Report, Ahir details his happy life in January 2020 and then when he goes from a sought after comic to being out of a job.

There are also the themes that remain important aspects of his life such as race, class, religion and mental health, which he handles in a funny and thought-provoking way.

Ahir's shows Control and Duffer were both nominated for Best Show at the 2017 and 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festivals.

His 2019 show, DOTS, was filmed at London's Vaudeville Theatre for HBOMax.

He has performed multiple sold-out runs in London's West End and toured nationally and internationally in Europe, Australia and India.

The comic tackles some big topics and delivers them in clear and concise way.

“I can’t play an instrument that well so I can’t make a song about it, I don’t have the patience to write a book, so comedy is my outlet,” he says.

“I am talking about the pandemic because that has been my experience. It was a strange time, we are told all the time to live in the present and that point there was no escape from the present, and it was pretty terrifying.”

For Ahir when people laugh at his jokes they are truly understanding his work and philosophy.

“Laughing at a joke means there is total understanding, I compare it to a zip file being upload to someone’s head, then they get it,” says Ahir.

“Being a stand up, my job is to make people laugh, how I do that is up to me.”

Visit www.southendtheatres.org.uk for details.