Weekend with Tez Ilyas: ‘I get up early to feed my disabled rabbits’
The comedian on his latest stand-up show Tez Things I Hate About You, his favourite places to eat in Blackburn and caring for his two pet rabbits
Tez Ilyas is a comedian and actor. His stand-up shows have received critical acclaim with sold-out runs across the country. Ilyas has appeared across TV and radio, and is best known for starring alongside Guz Khan as Arslan “Eight” Mughal in BBC Three’s Man Like Mobeen.
Ilyas lives in Blackburn with his wife and podcast co-host, Shy.
He is touring his latest standup show, Tez Things I Hate About You, airing all his gripes — large and small — about life in 2026.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does a typical Saturday morning start for you?
On any given week, I might wake up in a random hotel room in a random town in this wonderful country. If I’m at home, which is rare, I have to get up significantly earlier than I’d like to feed our two rabbits. They’re our substitute for children. My wife Shy feeds them during weekdays, but on the weekend, it’s her time to lie in.
Related content
What are your rabbits called?
I’ve got two disabled rabbits — which is quite a funny sentence to say out loud — called Bud and Simba. The older one, Bud, is blind. The younger one’s primary issue is that he’s a crackhead — he doesn’t have his two front teeth. What’s a rabbit without two front teeth? He might as well be a pigeon. So I’ve got these two lads that I’m running a hospice for but I’m not really arsed about them. But my wife loves them so, so much. Till death do us part, I guess.
How long have you had them?
Since we got married. It was all of them or none of them, and I was 39 and desperate, so it had to be all of them.
What happens after feeding the rabbits?
I might go to the gym, but I might just be saying that for the interview. We’ll go see family, we might go to the cinema. My wife loves gardening at the moment, she’s obsessed with it.
What about Sunday?
For a couple of hours, we’ll go into the studio and record our podcast, Making A Husband. Shy rants at me about how I’ve annoyed her that week, and we also try to solve people’s dilemmas that they’ve sent in. We’re preparing for our live show at the moment, on 4 October at the Southbank Centre.
Do you go out to eat or stay in and cook?
I don’t cook, can’t cook, won’t cook. Our favourite thing to do on a weekend is to go out for a meal between lunch and dinner time, around 4pm. There’s some great places in Blackburn, RF Patisserie, The Fig & The Olive. Or just a Chaiiwala bangs.
Favourite cuisine?
I think our people do the best starters on the planet, so if I’m going to a desi place, lamb chops and shish kebabs are my favourite starters. I’d be happy just to eat them every day for the rest of my life. But if I’m going western, I love a pizza, but a bossman pizza, not Italian pizza. Like a kebab shop pizza, fully loaded with random gunk on it, the cheese is synthetic — that’s the sweet spot right there.
I feel like you’re going to offend many Italians
I hope so. Italian food is average. Average doesn’t mean bad. It’s just overrated.
What do you do to relax on a weekend?
I like a long walk. We live up north and we’ve got the lovely Lancashire countryside, the Ribble Valley. It’s a beautiful part of the world.
But I love TV. I love films. And my favourite thing to do is finish a gig on a Friday or Saturday night and stay up late watching a series or a film. And when my wife says “I’m hungry” at 1am, that means we can do an Uber Eats or a Just Eat order. I love her anyway, but I love her a little bit more on those nights.
What are you watching at the moment?
I’m into Lanterns, which is a new HBO series. I prefer DC over Marvel and finally the Green Lantern is getting his moment in this show.
Countryside or city?
Romantically, I would love a farmhouse, but it sounds like there’d be a lot of hard work and I ain’t that guy. These hands are made for resting on my chest, not working hard, sadly.
Related content
What’s your new stand-up show about?
Tez Things I Hate About You is me listing and talking and ranting about the things that are irritating me right now in 2026. The list includes things from my home life, things that are happening out there in the world that are awful and trying to make them funny, which is difficult. So if you, like me, are irritated by the small things but also hate the big injustices in the world, then this is the show for you.
It’s been 11 years since your debut stand-up show, Tez Talks, which was about growing up Muslim in the UK. Do you feel like the landscape for British Muslims has changed?
It’s funny because Tez Talks was about the issues that I faced as a British Muslim, but I look back now and I’m like, that was a golden age. Take me back to 2015. Since then we’ve had Brexit, Trump twice, the rise of Reform, Elon Musk taking over X.
It’s never been worse for Muslims in the west. But you know, this is our country and we’re not going anywhere. So we fight back, through comedy, through laughter. Because our laughter pains them. So laugh.
Tez Things I Hate About You is touring the country until 28 November.
