Comedy Doubles - Matt Forde + Bilal Zafar

Matt Forde is one of the country’s most in-demand satirists.

Described as “our foremost satirical stand-up” by The Sunday Times, Matt Forde has toured critically acclaimed shows nationwide including most recently ‘Clowns To The Left of Me, Jokers To The Right’ in 2022 and ‘Inside No. 10’ in 2023.

Matt Forde’s hit live podcast The Political Party transferred to the West End’s Duchess Theatre in 2021 after over 70 sold out shows at Westminster’s The Other Palace, for a twice extended fortnightly residency continuing in to 2024. Matt has brought Parliament to life with his stand-up and debate with some of politics’ most powerful figures including Keir Starmer, Nicola Sturgeon, Tony Blair, Eddie Izzard, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Angela Rayner, Michael Heseltine, Anthony Scaramucci, Alastair Campbell, Gordon Brown and Gary Neville. Matt has received numerous nominations from award bodies including the British Podcast Awards and Chortle Awards and the show is regularly highlighted as a top podcast pick in the press.

Matt wrote and voiced characters for Spitting Image (BritBox/ITV) including Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer and Donald Trump. Matt currently presents Absolute Radio’s weekly Rock ‘n’ Roll Football Show. He is also the co-host of Wondery’s flagship British Podcast Award winning British Scandal alongside Alice Levine.

In 2019 alone, Matt hosted the Alternative News Desk for Channel 4’s election night coverage, chaired the One Nation Conservative leadership hustings and debated Britain’s withdrawal from the EU with Tony Blair for the Institute of Global Change.

Matt hosted four series of Unspun with Matt Forde on Dave, receiving several nominations at the Broadcast Digital Awards, and has numerous other broadcast credits including: Have I Got News For You (BBC One), The Royal Variety Performance (ITV), Mock The Week (BBC Two), 8 out of 10 Cats (Channel 4), Hypothetical (Dave) Rory Bremner’s Coalition Report and Rory Bremner’s Election Report (BBC Two), Question Time (BBC One), This Week (BBC One), Newsnight (BBC Two) and Daily Politics (BBC Two).

Bilal Zafar was nominated for the lastminute.com Best Newcomer Award for his debut show, CAKES, at the Edinburgh Fringe. Bilal also won the New Act of the Year award joining the company of previous winners such as Stewart Lee, Ardal O’Hanlon, Joe Wilkinson and Linda Smith.

He was the runner up at the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition. He has appeared on BBC3, BBC iPlayer, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Asian Network, and has written for The Independent.

An accomplished actor, he has appeared in Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe, Sky sitcom Sick of It and the Paul Feig directed feature film Last Christmas.

He also runs a successful Twitch page which has racked up over 7.3K followers. He streams an interactive, improvised comedy show three times a week where he plays a football manager embroiled in scandal, featuring various special guests. The show is growing every day and has been picked up by multiple radio shows and newspapers.