Hello and welcome to another episode of I Way with Jimmy Ligemail. Are you okay? I don't know if I am.

I haven't been sleeping very well and I've been eating rubbish because I'm stress eating and that's also not really making me feel much better outside of the moment.

I wake up every hour with anxiety and have to fight the urge to grab my phone and check to find out if democracy still exists in America. What a week.

I'm not going to dwell on it too much because I know that you are probably soaked in it just the way I am.

And I'm also not going to be a hypocrite and tell you to step away and look after your mental health because even though that's what we should all be doing, it's really fucking hard with this much going on in the world right now.

We're all kind of glued to this monumental and historical moment.

So let's hope in the next day or so we will have some sort of answer.

We know that this isn't going to be easy. We know that even if Biden wins, there is still going to be a very potentially violent and upsetting backlash.

And so we're all just going to have to hold each other through that time.

And as I said, I know that I'm not supposed to tell you to take a break, but if you want to, I have this lovely podcast episode in which we don't really talk much about politics.

I sat down with Amru Al-Qadi who is a British Iraqi, who grew up in Dubai and then Bahrain and then moved to London and they are a non-binary,

writer, screenwriter, filmmaker and drag queen, iconic drag queen.

They are such an interesting person, such a warm and kind and inquisitive human being, exactly the kind of person that I hoped would eventually come on this podcast.

I'm so lucky to have the guests that I do and I was so excited to have this conversation with Amru because even though we're very different people, we have some real similarities.

And I haven't really had much of an opportunity in my life or in my career even to sit down with someone else who shared similar background experiences for me because there are so few of us in this industry.

And so I got to sit down and talk to Amru about growing up in quite a strict Muslim background and working out how to navigate yourself in the West through holding on to your identity and your culture, but also understanding that some things maybe don't fit the person that you are today based on the teachings of those religions and those cultures.

So we sat down and talked a lot about Islam, the things that we don't resonate with and the things that we do and the ways in which it's frustrating to watch Islam be so misrepresented all of the time, not just by people who aren't Muslims, but by some Muslims themselves who've kind of taken this religion and bastardized it to their own agenda.

And it's a conversation that we in the mainstream just don't have enough and it was funny and it was heartfelt and really eye opening I think I really, really, really love Amru and if you want to follow them, they are at glamour on social media, they have a book called Unicorn and they are just a joy so bright, so ridiculously and intimidatingly bright and fun.

And human and vulnerable, I loved this episode and I hope you will too and please as ever let me know what you thought and if you learned anything or if you didn't like anything or if you want me to cover something else, I'm all ears, especially now in this moment where we just need to only have the difficult and important and stigmatized and taboo conversations with as much love and empathy as we possibly can manage.

Wishing you all loads of love and and sending hugs to your frazzled nerves, I can't quite believe this, but I remain hopeful, I remain hopeful because of people like you because of how much you inspire me and push me to carry on and keep seeing the beauty in the world.

So before I just cry, I'm going to go and not burden you with how emotional I feel at the moment, but please enjoy the wonderful Amru.

Amru, you are a public speaker, an artist, a writer and truly one of the most iconic drag queens of all time. Welcome to Iway.

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