Interviewing Ahir Shah, there’s a temptation to simply ask: How? Of course, student stand-up comedians at Cambridge often have no prior experience and face their own challenges trying to establish themselves in what is arguably the UK’s (if not the world’s) best student comedy scene. But there’s always that thought in the back of your head: could I ever be good enough to do this for real? How will I know, and what do I need to do in order to try? Why not ask someone who has, I thought. Ahir Shah is certainly qualified to advise.

After reading PPS at Clare, directing the Footlights Spring Revue and graduating in 2012, he tells he me applied for a master’s degree but was rejected because, in his words: “my application was effectively an acrostic poem that said I’m not ready for the real world yet, please help me”. His latest show, Duffer, debuted at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and enjoyed a sell-out run which earned him his second consecutive nomination for Best Show at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards. He’s currently on tour and brings the show to the Cambridge Junction on Friday 8th February. But how did he make that decision that every performer in Cambridge theatre and comedy struggles with at some point: can I really justify turning down a more orthodox, financially stable career for a passion like acting or comedy, loaded with far more risk?

“As human beings, we will always be varied in what we’re thinking about and what defines us at given points of time”

“It’s difficult. To go into stand-up requires a degree of self-delusion, so it’s then difficult to ask the people interested to be realists”. Shah adds that “No one cares if you didn’t get the shiny grad scheme straight away” and that “you don’t want it to be something you regret not trying”. He tempers his pep talk with a dose of caution: “Equally, know when to fold”.

Folding is clearly the last thing on Shah’s mind, however, and so it should be. I saw his previous show, Control, at the Cambridge Junction last year and enjoyed it immensely. His latest, Duffer, represents a marked difference in its content. Control was filled with incisive political comedy, equally disparaging of figures and ideas from the left and right, but Shah tells me that Duffer is a far more introspective affair.

“I wouldn’t even describe it as a political comedy show,” he says. “This is a human story, rather than ‘this is why I’m very angry with the world’, which is much more what [Control] was about.”

Was this a concerted effort to make a clean break between shows, I ask.

“Partly, but what you end up writing about ends up being defined by what you’ve been thinking about at that time. For the 2017 show, I was very much thinking about Trump and Brexit and the political backsliding that seemed to be happening across the world, whereas in the leadup to the 2018 show, what I was thinking about was, and what the show is based around, was a trip I took to India and a few family members dying after being severely ill.”

“I was thinking about my own future and mental health, and it became much more inward-looking and about family.”

Shah is, understandably, wary of his comedy ever being typecast.

“I don’t want it to be like, this is the politics guy. It’s more, as human beings, we will always be varied in what we’re thinking about and what defines us at given points of time. And [Duffer] is just an exploration of that particular point in time for me.”

Most Cambridge stand-ups are used to tight five- or ten-minute sets, and the idea of writing a whole show can be intimidating. I ask if he starts with an overarching narrative or theme, or with the jokes themselves.

“The answer is both. There was one particular story that I wanted to tell [in Duffer], and I tried to make sure the other things in there fit in with that." He adds: “other times you write seemingly disparate things and hope something cohesive will come through,” and that “a combination of inspiration and desperation will make you realise everything hung together in a beautiful way.”

Arts students will be encouraged by Shah’s analogy for show construction: “As with writing anything, five- or ten-minute sets or an essay, you need a beginning, middle and end. The skill isn’t particularly different, it’s more the practice of being able to do it over a longer stretch of time.”

I’m pushed for time, so I ask one final question. Canadian comic Norm Macdonald once remarked that the perfect joke is one where the setup and punchline are exactly the same, giving the following example:

“Julia Roberts told reporters this week that her marriage to Lyle Lovett has been over for some time,” he says, as a picture of the country singer’s asymmetrical face appeared behind him. “The key moment, she said, came when she realized that she was Julia Roberts, and that she was married to Lyle Lovett”.

I recount this to Shah and ask him what his perfect joke would be like. He’s impressed, clearly not for the first time, by Macdonald’s wit: “That’s really nice. My perfect joke would be one told with the style and cadence of Norm Macdonald, and written by Norm Macdonald”.

It feels appropriate that we should end our interview on a tribute to a living comedy legend. It may very well be that one day, Ahir Shah joins him.