In 2012, U.K. comedian Mawaan Rizwan was making videos for YouTube and gaining modest success. One day, he found himself in need of a stooge for his latest sketch, so he roped in his mom, Shahnaz. The resulting video, “My Mom Hates Me,” in which the two of them banter back and forth about all the ways in which they annoy each other, took off in a way he’d never experienced. “That got 115,078 views,” he says. “So we did loads more sketches. In one of them, she dressed up as a goth, in another she was a midwife.” His mother proved to be Mawaan’s secret weapon: In his first year on YouTube, working alone, he had managed a million views in total; by 2013, with his mother alongside him, he was getting 6.1 million. Then, almost exactly a year after he’d first put Shahnaz in front of the camera, Bollywood came calling. Mawaan was thrilled; still in his early 20s, he was convinced his big break had arrived. “I thought, ‘Here we go! Fame is around the corner. When do you want to meet me?’ And they said, ‘Oh, it’s not you we want. The person we’re interested in casting is your mother.’” “I thought, ‘There’s no way mom will be interested in a career in Bollywood.’ But when I mentioned it to her she said, ‘Why not?’” Five years on, Shahnaz is one of the most recognized faces in Asia after starring in a TV series called “Yeh Hai Mohabbatein” (“This Is Love”), one of India’s top five TV shows. Mawaan, meanwhile, still a struggling standup, has incorporated the story of how he accidentally made his mother a Bollywood superstar into the show he’s taking to this year’s Edinburgh Festival. Mother and son are fast-talking live wires — colorful, engaging and funny. But it’s very clear that Shahnaz is center stage, and Mawaan waits for his cues with charm and obvious pride in his mother’s achievements. Those achievements, it transpires, are as much off-screen as on: In 1994, when Mawaan was 2 and his older sister was 4, Shahnaz realized they were never going to get the sort of education she wanted for them in Pakistan, so she brought them to Britain. “I knew no one,” she says. “Had no contacts, no money, and my husband said he didn’t have the courage to come. But I knew I had to do it.” When her husband followed them to Britain, Shahnaz had another son and turned her single-minded approach to raising the family. “If we needed help, my mom would teach herself, whatever the subject was, so she could tutor us,” Mawaan says. “Then she started tutoring other kids to make some money.” But as well as Shahnaz’s energy — she was holding down two or three jobs at a time — Mawaan was aware of her dramatic potential, because his mother had form: Her father had been an actor and director and, aged 3, she had made her film debut. She had gone on to appear in 35 black-and-white Pakistani films. She gave up when she hit her teens because her family didn’t approve of acting as a career. When Shahnaz embraced Bollywood, she gave her son the space he needed. She headed to Mombai and signed a TV contract, working in India for five years. There has been a downside: Without his mother, Mawaan’s YouTube views have declined. But Shahnaz has given him so much more than material. “The truth is, my mom is an unstoppable force. She’s broken every convention, defied every rule, and she’s taught me that same spirit. Because of her, I’m aiming for the top.” (SD-Agencies) | 