In the second episode of the brand new second season of Nida Manzoor’s – the director’s raucous Channel 4 comedy which follows Amina ( ), Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), Ayesha (Juliette Motamed), Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse) and Bisma (Faith Omole), the members of an all-female Muslim punk band hellbent on making it big – the latter faces a conundrum. Her young daughter, Imani (Edesiri Okpenerho), has gotten suspended from school for throwing eggs at a teacher who took slavery off the curriculum. “I did what would do,” she tells Bisma, who is visibly horrified.
Later on, though, she sees that while her methods were wrong, she does have something of a point – and it inspires a rollicking new country song: “Malala Made Me Do It”. “Nobel Prize at 17/The baddest bitch you’ve ever seen/Cross your heart and hope to die/It’s Malala Yousafzai,” they croon. And then, as we enter a fantasy sequence with cartoonish cacti and the backdrop of a classic western, we see a shadowy figure atop a fake horse, wearing an elaborately beaded dress and a white cowboy hat dripping with crystals.
As the camera closes in on her, she turns to look at it and you realise, as your jaw drops, that it is, indeed, the Malala Yousafzai. As the band continue singing her praises, the 26-year-old Pakistani activist, Oxford graduate, producer and youngest Nobel laureate in history sways along to the beat. When the song ends, she’s never seen again – but it’s a moment you never forget.
S.