'I've worked my hijab off': Fatiha El Ghorri on comedy, identity and being unapologetically herself

This year has been a whirlwind for Fatiha El Ghorri. The no-nonsense British Moroccan comedian is currently travelling up and down the UK as part of her first live tour, Cockney Stacking Doll, and the publication of her debut novel, The Perks of My Hijab (Simon & Schuster) is currently underway.

Earlier this month, she took home a Broadcast Digital Award for Best Short Film Script for her working-class British Arab comedy Donkey, which was also nominated for a BAFTA in May.

She has also been gracing the red carpet in an array of show-stopping modest gowns carefully coordinated with her hijabs, inspiring Muslim women across the globe. Is there anything this woman can’t do?

“Cockney Stacking Doll is an introduction to me,” Fatiha tells The New Arab. “It's about my life, where I grew up, the divorces and the different sides to me. I do have a softer side that people don't always see. That soft side is invite-only! It’s about exploring the different layers to me, what people expect of you as a woman wearing a hijab. It’s a big mix of things.”

Alongside her tour, Fatiha is currently editing her forthcoming middle-grade novel The Perks of my Hijab, aimed at 8–12-year-olds, which she says is part semi-autobiography and partly inspired by the hijab journey of her teenage niece. It involves a mystery that the protagonist, 13-year-old Aya Mustapha, has to solve.

Fatiha grew up in Hackney, East London, alongside 12 siblings. Her father passed away when she was six years old, which meant her mother had to raise them single-handedly.

Despite the loss of their father at such a young age, Fatiha says the house was always filled with laughter. During family trips to Morocco, she became acquainted with her grandmother’s North African sense of humour.

“My brothers were always teasing each other, and there was just laughter all the time. I wouldn't say I was the funny one or anything like that; we all were,” she shares. “I think North African Arabs are just naturally funny. Once, I was at my grandma's house in Morocco, and the kettle was boiling. She had an old kettle, the one you put on the stove. It was whistling, and my cousin was in the kitchen ignoring it. My grandma shouted at him, ‘The kettle is losing its mind!’ And he said, ‘It's a kettle. Does it even have a mind?’ They just find humour in everything.”

Kicking down doors

Growing up, Fatiha watched many British comedies, sketch shows, and panel shows, from Live at the Apollo and Only Fools and Horses, to 8 out of 10 Cats and French and Saunders.

While she had a desire to pursue drama at college, she quickly realised that in 1990s Britain, the acting industry did not accommodate Muslim women.

“There wasn't anything on TV without nudity,” she says, “And I thought, I can't do that because I can't compromise my faith. So, I always thought it [acting] wasn't for me, but I was a creative person.”

Two decades later, after Fatiha’s second divorce, she finally took the leap and decided to pursue a career in comedy.

“I was on a website looking for a local walking group, and then a pop-up ad came up, and it said, ‘Try stand-up comedy.’ I thought, ‘Okay.’ And then the rest is history, as they say!”

And it’s just as well that she did, because Fatiha is the first hijab-wearing Muslim comedian to have made a breakthrough into mainstream British television, opening the doors for other female Muslim comedians in her wake.

Coming full circle, she has performed at Live at the Apollo and is now a regular face on British TV game shows like Taskmaster, Blankety Blank and, my personal favourite, Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel.

“That was really fun. That wheel is quite fast, you know. My hijab was flapping in the wind!”

Being one of the first and one of the only hijab-wearing British TV personalities means that sometimes Fatiha feels like she is part of a diversity tick-box exercise.

This is not always the case, she says, emphasising that she has worked damn hard to get to where she is, but she says it is obvious when some TV production companies have placed her on a panel to make it more inclusive.

“There are times I can tell I'm ticking a box because there will be five white people and me, or five men and me,” she says. “But I'm still there on merit. I deliver. I've worked my hijab off to get to where I am.”

She adds: “This industry hasn’t had a choice but to let me in. I feel like I kicked the door in and they haven't had a choice. It's either they let me in and work with me and make money from me, or I make money on my own; they'd rather do that than let me make money on my own.”

Being in the public eye has its challenges, and for Fatiha, it often feels like being stuck between a rock and a hard place: between non-Muslim audience members who have certain preconceptions and members of the Muslim community who expect her to behave in a certain way that represents them.

Fatiha is adamant that the comedy she makes is for everyone, regardless of background. Her mission is simply to make her audience laugh and have a good time.

“People [in the Muslim community] still come for me for the swearing,” she says. “I think there’s a difference between Muslim comedians and Muslim comedy. I am just a comedian who happens to be visibly Muslim. I remember this one guy said to me, ‘You’re not a Muslim. You need to take your hijab off.’ I think there’s a double standard because they won’t say that to Muslim men. They won’t say that to Riz Ahmed or Guz Khan.”

“I have done Muslim comedy events where it is family-friendly. People come to see me because they see my hijab and think, ‘Oh, it’s going to be family-friendly.’ I’m like, no. On my tour, I have clean show dates, but that just means I’ll be doing the same material, just without the swearing.”

A new chapter

Whether she means to or not, Fatiha’s stage presence and relatable comedy are breaking barriers, especially in Britain’s current tense racial climate.

“You do gigs, and you have to win over the audience because they think, ‘I’m going to have nothing in common with this woman. This woman isn’t someone from a group of people I like. I don’t like what this woman represents,’” she says. “And then I come out, I do it, and then they’re like, ‘Oh, f***. We’ve got more in common than not.’ It’s not something I do intentionally.”

“I’ve done gigs where people have come up to me and asked if they can hug me. They say, ‘You sound just like us,’ and if it was anyone else saying that, I’d be like, ‘What the ****?’ But this person was trying to connect with me. I know they didn’t mean it in a bad way. It was like the MasterCard advert — a priceless moment. This guy’s head was just shaking.”

Fatiha’s continuing rise to fame has come alongside personal struggles. At the end of last year, she took to Instagram to share her journey with stage one endometrial cancer.

She has been juggling work alongside a medically induced menopause, which began immediately after she underwent a hysterectomy. She says she will continue raising awareness, whether that is through interviews or on stage.

“Alhamdulillah, I’m better,” Fatiha shares with The New Arab. “You do become a different person after you go through something like this, and you’ll never be normal. That’s even the case for women who go through a normal phased menopause. It happened instantly; I woke up in menopause after the operation."

“People don’t understand the side effects of it: the brain fog, the low mood, the body aches, the changes in your body, skin and hair — everything. Alhamdulillah is all I can say.”

Tickets to Cockney Stacking Doll can be purchased via Fatiha El Ghorri’s official website. The Perks of My Hijab is available to pre-order now

Yousra Samir Imran is a British Egyptian writer and author based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press

Follow her on X: @UNDERYOURABAYA