The Griffin Report: The comic who is coming to dinner

NOREEN KHAN has come a long way since she worked as a volunteer in hospital radio to now presenting top shows on national television. Now the dedicated Liverpool FC fan is set to host the annual dinner and awards of Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce. JON GRIFFIN spoke to Noreen about her varied career.

She’s a woman of many distinctive parts – DJ, radio and TV celebrity, Commonwealth Games host, charity ambassador, comedienne – and she’s even famous in India and Pakistan for her love of Liverpool FC.

Noreen Khan has come a very long way since starting as a volunteer in hospital radio in her hometown of Bedford, climbing the showbiz ladder to present some of the best known TV shows in the UK.

She’s fronted the likes of Back in Time for Birmingham, Countdown, Sport Relief, appeared on Celebrity Mastermind and Celebrity Antiques Road Show, co-hosted the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, is an ambassador for King Charles’s charity the British Asian Trust – and now she’s busy carving a new career as a stand-up comedienne.

She’s also preparing to host Birmingham’s biggest business awards night at the city’s premier black-tie dinner at the ICC on February 15 – just two months after being presented with the President’s Award by the Asian Business Chambers of Commerce for her outstanding contribution to society.

It’s an impressive CV for a woman who decided that she wasn’t sufficiently corporate to continue pursuing a career in banking – turning her back on the world of mortgages and investments to take her chances in the highly competitive world of TV and radio.

And now Noreen, who hails from a close-knit Bedford family as the youngest of eight, can claim to be one of the best known Liverpool fans on the sub-continent – thanks to the power of social media and a custom-made sari……

“I come from a family who absolutely love sport, particularly football and cricket, and I also used to watch a lot of snooker, darts and tennis. We are all Liverpool fans and I am probably the first person in the world to have a customised Liverpool sari made, which even featured on Match of the Day.

“I had contacted a London designer and said ‘I want to create a Liverpool sari, can you help me?’ She created this absolute masterpiece and the pictures went viral around the world. I went to India in 2019 – I got invited by the Liverpool Mumbai fan club and I was shocked by the amount of people who knew me because I was a Liverpool fan.

“It was the same when I went to Pakistan – I got invited again to the supporters club and was asked to become an ambassador for them.”

Noreen had donned the Reds sari when she hosted the Asian Football Awards at Wembley in 2013. “I posted pictures on my social media and they just went viral. Liverpool actually contacted me - I went to their Melwood training ground and met Steven Gerrard, Glen Johnson, Daniel Sturridge…Liverpool helped raise my profile unintentionally through that sari. I think my social media profile grew because of my love for cricket and football.”

That profile has never been higher after years of TV and radio work, including a lengthy stint with the BBC Asian Network before she took the plunge to try her luck at stand-up comedy, a far cry from her first career role as a banking cashier.

“I started working in a bank in Bedford when I was 19 for two years, but it was not me. I didn’t like wearing the uniform. I had to be very corporate and that is when I realised at a young age that I am not a corporate person. I cannot wear a uniform, look a certain way and smile at customers.”

The teenage Noreen realised she wanted to “do something creative and possibly showbizzy” and after researching the careers of the likes of Chris Moyles, Chris Evans and Sara Cox decided that volunteering for hospital radio in her hometown of Bedford was the way forward.

After hospital radio she landed a part-time job in London working for a new station for young British Asians before switching to Birmingham in 2007 to work at the Mailbox for the BBC Asian Network. It was a move which would prove pivotal to Noreen’s career.

“I had only been to Birmingham a couple of times to do a bit of shopping and for concerts. I didn’t know Birmingham, I had no family or friends here, I didn’t know anyone. I started doing the Saturday chart show, I have loved being in Birmingham the whole time I have been here.

“I made good friends, I now know a lot of people here – it has been a good base for me. Once I got the full-time drive show on the Asian Network in 2010, I became quite well-known around Birmingham – the Network has got a big listenership of about 550,000.”

Noreen’s career has taken on an intriguing new direction in recent years after she decided to try her luck as a stand-up comedienne in a world previously traditionally dominated by white male performers.

“I was asked to DJ at a comedy night at the Alexandra Theatre by a promoter – the line-up was all people of colour, Arabs, blacks and Asians. I thought I would love to do this one day, this is so much fun. I fell in love with the whole idea of brown people doing comedy.

“Growing up, I just saw a lot of white comedians, mainly male of a certain age, doing comedy but here I saw black, Arab, Asian comedians, male and female, of different age groups, telling their stories through observational comedy.

Once I got the full-time drive show on the Asian Network in 2010, I became quite well-known around Birmingham – the Network has got a big listenership of about 550,000.

“I don’t go for the whole ‘I am going to shock people.’ A lot of my comedy is geared towards British Asian, or black people or women.

“Growing up as a brown person with our trials and tribulations, the struggles which the audience always find really relatable – I just kind of turn it into humour. I write all my own material.”

Noreen says her upbringing has allowed her to plough her own furrow regardless of ingrained cultures or family pressures.

“Some of my friends had to go through arranged marriages or they weren’t allowed to go to university. My parents were very liberal hence I was able to just do the things that I wanted to do.”

Now this daughter of Punjabi immigrants who made their way to the UK in the 1960s is set to take to the stage at the ICC as host of the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce’s annual awards dinner, the premier black-tie event in the city’s business calendar.

“I am very much looking forward to the dinner – I have got to know a lot of people over the years who are involved with the Chamber. It’s a real honour. I enjoy the spotlight but I’m quite introverted as well – I can quite happily spend three days on my own and not see or speak to anyone.”

And while it’s unlikely that Noreen will don her Liverpool FC sari at the Chambers awards dinner, there might well be a few laughs from the stage for the cream of Birmingham business to enjoy on the night.

This article first appeared in the February 2024 edition of Chamberlink magazine.

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