Tom Rhodes Radio Smart Camp

"If we are to survive as a human race we have to hide our hatreds, we have to find things we have in common if we want to progress and move forward."   I first met Shazia Mirza in 2002 when I had my late night talk show in Amsterdam when we did shows around The Netherlands together. I was riding high with the dream TV job and Shazia was a cultural juggernaut at the time because she was playing a pro terrorism Muslim character on stage with her one liners and was getting a lot of media coverage at the time. When we met on this tour Shazia had a reporter from the Guardian following her and writing a story about her. It was a very exciting time for both of us in our careers and even though we are both from very different cultures we bonded because we are in the same tribe of stand up comedy. "The Jews have a great history of producing comedians, so do the Catholics, we have never had a history of comedians. Islam is a new religion and so is our comedy and satire. It takes time before you can laugh at something."