USING humour to interest a class of unruly boys in physics set Britain’s only Muslim stand-up comedian on her new career.

Now Shazia Mirza has been invited to America to tell jokes about Osama bin Laden in a bid to boost morale while the war rages in Afghanistan. She will wear traditional dress when she appears as a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman in New York and the Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago next week.

The Birmingham-born physics teacher has split her past four years between teaching at Langdon secondary school, in East Ham, London, and training to be an actress at the Rose Bruford college in Sidcup, Kent.

She won London’s Best New Comedy Act at the London Comedy Festival at the Hackney Empire earlier this year.

Last month, Prime Minister Tony Blair presented her with the Young Achiever of the Year award at the GG2 Leadership and Diversity ceremony hosted by Asian Marketing Group, which publishes Garavi Gujarat, a news magazine. She was praised for breaking down racial stereotypes.

The 26-year-old is currently supply teaching at St Michael’s RC secondary school in Bermondsey, south-east London.

Her script has been praised for tackling serious issues such as racial abuse and arranged marriage. (“People ask me why does your mother walk five steps behind your father? He looks better from behind.”) After the September 11 attacks it was updated to include jokes about the Taliban and terrorists. (“My name is Shazia Mirza. At least that’s what it says on my pilot’s licence.”) Shazia says: “The Americans are so upset about what has happened to them they want me to explain things from a normal, light-hearted point of view.”

But she admits joke-telling can be a hit or miss affair, similar to attracting her pupils’ attention in science lessons. “When I arrived at Langdon, the pupils were hanging from the walls in the corridor and escaping through the classroom windows,” she says. “I used to go home crying. The only way to get the boys to listen was to tell them a joke.

“They may not have understood any physics but when the class ended they said, ‘you’re all right, Miss’. It became a big thing for them to be able to laugh in lessons.”

Her comic career began at secondary school with her deadpan reading of the Bible. One school report read: “Shazia enjoys acting the class clown.’’ Shazia encourages female Muslim pupils to voice opinions and pursue ambitions, spelling out the message: “You can be a Muslim and also who you are.”

She backs the Government’s line on dealing with the war in schools. “It’s a personal issue. If a pupil’s parents support the war because they believe in Islam, that’s the line the pupil will take. If teachers then tell them not to support the war, they will get upset.”