thu 28/03/2024

theartsdesk Q&A: Comedian Omid Djalili | reviews, news & interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: Comedian Omid Djalili

theartsdesk Q&A: Comedian Omid Djalili

As he announces a new tour, the British-Iranian stand-up tells his unusual story

Omid Djalili is a funny man with a funny provenance. There are not many stand-ups about who speak the languages of Presidents Havel and Ahmedinejad, who have played both Muslims and Jews without being either one or the other, whose CV includes stints performing Berkoff in Slovak and playing Whoopi Goldberg’s sidekick on NBC. In fact none. Djalili is by his own admission an accidental comedian. Though born (in 1965) in the United Kingdom, his Iranian roots made him an intriguing curiosity when he ditched acting for telling jokes. Then the War on Terror turned his comedy into a timely window on the Middle East.

His career has been down many a twisting path. Long before he told jokes for a living, Djalili was a straight actor who spent several formative years in the then Czechoslovakia touring British plays to an audience long starved of Western theatre. The country’s playwright president was a fan. Since turning to stand-up, he has also been a reliable presence in any number of films from Casanova to Sex in the City 2, but most notably in The Infidel, written for him by David Baddiel. While the NBC sketch show he signed up for never happened, two series of The Omid Djalili Show were made for the BBC. He made his West End musical debut when he took over from Rowan Atkinson as Fagin in Oliver!

These extramural pursuits have in recent years kept him away from the thing he is best known for. For the first time since 2007, Djalili is going out on tour. From this October he will be on the road for five months in a show he’s calling Tour of Duty. To theartsdesk Omid Djalili explains how that happened, indeed how it all happened, and above all how he feels increasingly conflicted about going back to his roots as the source of his comedy.

Watch Omid Djalili on Live at the Apollo

JASPER REES:  What has brought this tour on?

OMID DJALILI: It's a tour of duty. It's a duty when you start something to finish it off, and I’ve always felt I was a comedian in development, because I came to this very late and a lot of people don’t really find their voices until about 10 or 12 years into their stand-up career, and I really started my stand-up career properly in 2000, 2001 when I won the Time Out comedy award. Up until then it was all a joke, it was just a dare to get up and make a few people laugh. And then when they gave me an award I really was shocked by it. I genuinely thought, why am I being given an award? And then I started thinking, there must be a responsibility. I always found there’s no merit in just the action of laughing. If you just laugh it’s a human reaction to things but there is no merit in it. If you use laughter to help you evolve something, that’s when laughter is important. I only made that connection around 2001 just before 9/11 happened.

A few days after 9/11 The Guardian ran a piece listing the people who had done well out of terrorism, starting with Mayor Giuliani whose approval rating shot northwards. Could I put it to you that you have actually been catapulted forwards by historical events that have their focus on that day?

I would say it’s a massive no. My career was over on 12 September. When I called up my manager he said, “You know that corporate gig you had on the 13th?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “It’s gone. Do you know those gigs you had at the Comedy Club on the 16th and 17th? They’re gone.” Everything was gone. He goes, “I’m afraid to say I’m getting calls from everyone trying to pull you.” I said, “Is that because of me?” He went, “Nooo, they just don't want to do a comedy night any more.” Then I find out later all those comedy events went ahead but I was replaced by people like Julian Clary. This all came back to me a week later. I had gigs at the Bloomsbury Theatre on the 28th and 29th which we were thinking about pulling, and at least pull down the posters – I had joke ones that said things like “Burly but athletic” and “Middle Eastern madman”; I was trying to play the humble card and get people in because “he can be ironic about himself”. On 28 September when I decided to go ahead it was make or break. It was about saving my career at that point. It was a very difficult month with a lot of soul-searching. And I had no stomach for comedy as well. I couldn’t imagine even getting up and telling a joke for a good two weeks. I sat down with my wife and we wrote some material for it which amazingly worked well.

So the Tour of Duty, will it reflect back on 9/11?

I think so. We did know about terrorism. In 1993 Bin Laden tried to blow up the Twin Towers but we never really took them seriously until that happened. The whole consciousness around the Middle East and terrorism and the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalism is something that was brewing. It was something I was actually talking about in my stand-up set around 1999, 2000, but nobody really took it seriously. But it’s good to reflect 10 years on and see how far the world has gone and how far comedy has come as well.

Were you reflecting in a comedy way about how potentially threatening terrorism had become?

Yes. It got laughs but it got bigger laughs later. In fact, when I did the Bloomsbury Theatre I didn’t write too much new material and I didn't drop anything. I never thought anything I did was inappropriate. Those jokes just became more powerful and I think I just became more conscious socially. In life it’s always about moving from unconsciousness to consciousness. Human beings are never really conscious and then you wake up and get bits of information and you become more conscious as a person. I think that’s what happened to me and many comedians. We became more conscious of material that could possibly be socially relevant. For me talking about suicide bombings has always been about – if you could make fun of the terrorists then you remove the fear of what they can actually do. After 7 July I was very scared to go on a train or a bus. I used trains quite a bit and I stopped. I thought we have to... not make light, because you don’t want to make fun of the suffering of people... but make fun of the terrorists and fundamentalism and if you can create an atmosphere of laugher around it there’s less fear.

The Omid Djalili Show meets Osama bin Laden

Are you ethnically entirely Iranian?

Entirely Iranian, yeah.

So as an Iranian brought here, did you feel a particular sense of responsibility, a self-appointed task to explain that people from that part of the world are in fact human beings?

Yes. Put it this way. I felt, especially after 9/11, someone like me had a lot of explaining to do. [Puts on a very reasonable British voice] “Look, I’m really sorry but these things happen for a reason." A lot of it was trying to find a comedic way of explaining why the Taliban existed. Ten years ago it was such a shocking thing, even for me. Even I had to do some research, speak to some Muslims. Why do they do this? What kind of state do you have to get yourself into to blow yourself up? So it was about exploring those things and trying to do comedy in places where you wouldn’t think there would be any. At the same time I felt that culturally I was almost like a bridge. I am essentially very British. At the time I remember thinking, there are a lot of Middle Eastern traits that if we’re going to live in a multicultural society are worth understanding. But not that I feel my Iranian roots are not that important. I don’t want to be banging on about it too much. I’m also of the belief that it’s important not to bang on about where you’re from. I’m also a world citizen. I’m much more interested in the globe than just Iran. So this tour will be less about Iranian and Middle Eastern stuff. It’s more about my unique view on things. Probably from the perspective of being dual-cultured but also not banging on about it so much. Even my children go, “Oh I much prefer you doing musicals because it stops you shouting about Iran.” He was nine at the time. In a sense I was a poster boy for explaining lots of things. I contributed to a media push towards understanding. I think a lot of that stuff has been covered now.

Comedians are the new poets. There is a duty to say something

So what is going to be in this show?

The Middle East! A lot of stuff about Gaddafi. You can’t get away from it. There was a quote I came across recently and I’d like to talk about it on stage. It was an Eleanor Roosevelt quote. “Great minds talk about ideas. Average minds talk about events. And small minds talk about other people.” Then I’ll launch into how the name Miliband sounds like a sex aid for a very small penis. There will be some small-mindedness. There will be some average-mindedness. When you announce a tour it’s like a journey. At the moment I’m talking about a lot of stuff that is to do with ideas. It’s going to be three-pronged. I’m more interested in ideas and beyond just the intellectual I’m fascinated by the realm of spirituality. This is something that we don't really talk about much in comedy. Bill Bailey touches on it in his latest show. But what are the others aspects? Are we human beings experiencing the spiritual or are we human beings experiencing the human? That essential question is something no one has ever dealt with in comedic form. So it’s about stuff that is beyond the intellectual, stuff that’s almost supernatural.

That is where I am at. You only decide to do a tour when you’ve got a collection of those ideas. I think as comedians we always underestimate what people want to hear. It’s as if everybody has an interest in why they’re here, where they’re going and what’s the purpose of life. And everybody goes quiet. I remember Mark Thomas would go to a very lairy crowd at Jongleurs and do his most political set and then he’d go to a rally and just do knob jokes. He said, “I want to go against what they think I’m going to do.” Hopefully everything that I talk about will be interesting to everybody. And if it’s not interesting to them I’m not bothered. I’m not really worried about an audience.

Two hundred years ago everyone read poetry. Now no one does.

They do in the Middle East. They’ve got two poetic versions of The X Factor. It’s very funny. People just get up and do beat poetry.

Once upon a time Shelley said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the universe. Is that what comics are now?

I have ancestors, five generations back, who were poets and very well known in Iran around the turn of the 19th century. They were like travelling troubadours. There are five of them and I’m descended from one of them and most Iranian people who are into literature will know who they were. They used to pitch up and do poetry and a lot of their poetry was very funny but when they did stuff that was contentious they would be beaten and paraded around the town with dunces’ hats on. They thought it was very funny that one minute they were being lauded and getting a standing ovation and the next minute being put on donkeys or mules and beaten black and blue with chains. They pissed themselves laughing. Talk about a tough crowd! Talk about a heckle that went wrong! Yes, I think comedians are the new poets, which is why the word duty is really important. There is a duty to say something. Try not to just make people laugh. There is a responsibility even for myself to pack it with content, to take words and ideas more seriously than I have before. Maybe comedians have taken it seriously before and I haven’t.

_MG_0045

When did your parents come over?

1958. My mother told my father, “If you want to marry me take me to England because I want to be near the hub of fashion.” She’s a dressmaker. They are the least political people I know. Like a lot of Iranians they settled anywhere near the Iranian consulate which happened to be Kensington. I was born in 1965 in St Mary Abbot’s hospital.

When did you start speaking English?

When I had my first day at nursery school and I vomited because I was so stressed I didn’t understand what the children were saying. I lasted one day. The teacher told my mother, “Take him home and bring him back when he speaks English. Put the telly on around four o’clock, there’s a show called Play School.” I remember saying, “Round window.” That was my first word. I was made to watch TV to learn English. I remember then being taken to Iran when I was six and teaching English to my relatives.

What part of Iran?

It was a town just outside Tehran. I went there twice. I went once when I was four and once when I was six. And then not again. The revolution happened.

Did you feel a connection to Iran or was there a much stronger tug towards London?

At the end of the day I was at school with some other Iranian kids and we all spoke English together and there was a time when I would speak Farsi quite loudly with my Iranian friends at secondary school. It all changed when the Iranian revolution happened. “We’re cockneys now, all right? We’re not going to talk in Farsi.” But those same Iranian kids would support England. There was no Sky TV so you didn’t know what the Iranian team was doing. Iran for me represented a telephone call. My mother would shout loudly to her dad or her uncle.

Did your connection change in 1978?

Yes, because of course we’re Baha’is, we’re not Muslims. The pogrom against Baha’is started around the Eighties. About 200 Baha’is were executed just for being Baha’is. So it was a difficult period for me. I’m a minority within a minority. Even amongst Iranians the Baha’is are a suspect minority because a lot of Muslims don't know much about the Baha’i faith. That mindset was difficult in one sense but it never stopped me being proud to be Iranian for some reason. I just didn’t go to many Iranian events and didn’t hang around with many Iranians. But when my comedy came out I suddenly became this bloke stuck between two cultures.

Was your Baha’i grounding important in your family, in your upbringing? Was it central?

We were very proud to be Baha’is. The Baha’i faith has a connection with Islam in the same way Christianity has a connection with Judaism. It grew out of Islam in the same way that Christ was a Jew. The prophet of the Baha’is was a Muslim and then the Baha’i faith is very much an independent world faith and geographically is the second most widespread faith on the planet. So you’re part of not just a community in London but a worldwide community. We’d go to conferences around the world. That’s probably why I do a Nigerian accent: because I’ve hung around with Nigerian Baha’is. I just thought they’re really funny. The family would go. It would be like a little holiday and a place to meet relatives. There’d be 2000 people there. I remember going from the age of six or seven. There was a big one in Paris I went to, a youth conference in Switzerland where you had to be under 30. I still have friends all round the world.

Omid Djalili's Nigerian accent

You went to Holland Park School. What did you do after that?

Then I went to Hammersmith and West London College to get A levels, and Westminster College in Battersea, did very badly, ended up through the UCCA clearing system in Ulster at the University of Coleraine.

Which is why you also do a thick Ulster accent in your show. Was that a culture shock?

It really was. That was weird. When you grow up in London all you know about places in the media; Northern Ireland was one of the most scary places. I went there and it scared the crap out of me. Beautiful countryside, lovely, lovely people, but in 1985 to 1988 I was very aware of the Troubles and in fact even got shot at one night by some locals who hated students and shot them with a rifle. I remember thinking, it’s like Beirut: people think it’s dangerous but when you go to Beirut it’s a paradise. Same thing with Northern Ireland. It looks bad on the media. But it really was genuinely frightening. I kept being called a Fenian Turk. Playing for the university soccer team I was the only foreigner so I was always the subject of racial abuse. They went in hard. It was tough. They were really awful to me, I have to say. But at the same time I had a great experience. I got a 2:1 degree in combined humanities, English and theatre studies.

What happened then?

I did two years on the London fringe, did six plays, then I went off to Czechoslovakia.

When were you there?

1990-95. I did experimental theatre with a group called In Theatre. International and "in" for cool and hip. Lived there five years, encouraged by Václav Havel. Loved our theatre company, thought I was a cracking actor and asked me to stay. The remit was to do stuff that the Czechoslovak people hadn’t seen and had been banned for years.

Good evening, my name is Omid Djalili, my full name is Omid Abu Abdul Ghassem Etihad Ebrahim Mamdouhh. But call me Trevor"

What gave you the idea?

We just thought it would be fun to do stuff in their language. I had gone to Berlin, met some people there who tipped me off. “The next revolution is happening in Czechoslovakia, do you want to come?” I said, “How do you know?” “You’ll hear something soon, it’s boiling now.” And it did. It kicked off a month later there. I waited a few months, went there in the spring of 1990 and stayed for four and a half years.

Did you speak Czech?

Actually I lived in Bratislava for three years and then a year in Brno. My Czech is not as good as my Slovak. It’s like learning English and hearing English spoken by a person in the Northern Hebrides. It’s very difficult to understand.

How many languages could you do a show in?

I performed in Slovak in theatre. I could probably do a stand-up set in French and definitely one in Farsi. In fact, apparently I’m very funny in Farsi, I’ve been told. It has been suggested to me with what’s happening in Iran where they’re on the verge of revolution and apparently I’m a bit of name, one YouTube clip of a political statement or a human statement with humour in Farsi would have millions of hits. It’s something that’s in the back of my mind, it’s something I’d like to do but I have a tour to do to reach English-speaking people first. But it’s something I don’t discount.

Did you meet Havel?

Yes, he’s a wonderful person. And I met Václav Klaus who then took over from him. I’m very happy to have been there mainly because there was a survey done around that time. They did a survey and found that the least number of books per household was in the United Kingdom: 2.7 books per household. And the highest at that time was in Czechoslovakia with 1,024 per house. I rented a house from a football ref – a football ref – just outside Bratislava and he apologised that he couldn't take out all his books and would I mind if he kept at least 1,000 there? This is a football ref who asked me what I knew about Kafka and if I’d read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, if I’d read Milan Kundera and if I hadn’t I should if I had any future in Czechoslovakia.

How many shows did you do?

At one point we had four in repertory. Two of those were touring in Germany, Austria, Sweden and Denmark. With my wife we did Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs. We were compared to the Berliner Ensemble. Overall we did about six shows. We had a conversation with a theatre that said, “We hear of man called Steven Berkoff. Who is he? There is play, Decadenzia.” They wanted to see that. We then contacted Sir Peter Hall who said, “You can have my son, Edward.” Edward was 24. So he gave us Edward Hall. He directed me in a British version of Decadence which then inspired a Slovak version. There was constant collaboration. I can’t tell you how exciting it was.

How did you meet Havel?

We met him at this theatre do. He was always coming to these theatre dos. It was a very relaxed affair. He was standing around and he was introduced to us. He said, “I am aware of your stuff. I have seen your stuff.” We thought, when did he ever come to our show? It wasn’t announced. No one ever said Havel was in the audience. He said, “I hope you stay. It’s very important.” I stayed an extra three years after that.

_MG_0104What brought you home?

My mother got cancer and she passed away and I just came home to look after my dad. That was a total change, living in a flat with Iranians and my father being very depressed. That whole excitement came crashing to an end.

So when did you decide to step on stage to tell jokes?

When we came back to Britain and it was clear that we weren’t going back to Czechoslovakia, which I thought was my creative hub, we had no money. It was my wife who actually suggested, “Why don't you do some stand-up comedy?” I remember saying, “What is that?” She said, “Well, you’re always making people laugh.” Whenever I went to a wedding they always asked me to do a bit. Bear in mind I’d been in Czechoslovakia for the past five years. I really wasn’t aware of comedians. I think Have I Got News For You was on. I remember being really shocked by it. "This is really so harsh. I hope people never talk about me like that." I was doing theatre shows at the Edinburgh Festival, winning awards. We’d clean up. But of course a theatre award is not like the Perrier Award. It doesn’t really get any attention. So I was a bit pissed off that I was winning awards but playing in front of 10 people. My wife said to me, “You need to get on telly. No one knows who you are.” I said, “How am I going to get on telly?” She said, “You should do stand-up comedy. I’ll take you to the Comedy Store."

I remember thinking there’s no way I could do this. "These guys are geniuses. It’s impossible." And Lee Hurst was the MC. I remember thinking he was hysterical. I remember having an argument. “How could you ever think I could do what these guys do?” I didn’t see it as acting. I said, “This is a whole different discipline. This is not me at all.” She said, “You should give it a shot.” And we wrote some jokes. I remember the first two jokes. She said, “You should do a joke about your name.” And that was the thing. The first joke was “Good evening, my name is Omid Djalili, my full name is Omid Abu Abdul Ghassem Etihad Ebrahim Mamdouhh [with a stress on the H as if you’re vomiting at the end]. But call me Trevor." That was the first ever joke. And amazingly it got a laugh. At the time there were foreigners who called themselves Max or Trevor. It was making a point.

Have you been telling a version of that joke ever since, the joke being about living on a cultural faultline?

Another joke that summed it up was, "We could be at war with Iran and if there is a war I’m going out there. And my father said, 'Who are going to fight for?' And I go, 'Fight? I’m not going to fight. I’m going to entertain. I can entertain both sets of troops. Take my wife. Take-a my wives.'"

Even now my opening does play on a Middle Eastern thing. I wish it didn't

Was there an instinctive gravitation towards that material that no one else can tell jokes about?

Yes, because you want to find your niche. Comedy clubs are quite comedy-literate. These are people who had been going to stand-up for 10 years so you needed something that was quite original. I remember people saying, “Have you heard about the Iranian guy?” “No!” “Yeah, there’s an Iranian guy, and I think he’s off the boat.” I remember The Times called me up and said [adopting slow patronising voice], “Hello, we’ve got your number. Can we do an interview?” “Yes.” “Well, before we do, we’re very excited, we hear you’re storming the comedy circuit. Can you just tell us a bit about yourself? How long have you been in Britain?” I said, “Well, I was born here.” “Oh. Can we get back to you?”

The first few gigs I did, I’ll never forget the laughs. I wanted to call my show "The Law of Diminishing Charisma" because I was getting less and less funny for some reason. Once people realised I was just a Brit it wasn’t so funny any more. And then I started going back to the accent.

Is it your father’s accent?

It’s actually a relative of mine who was a professor of English literature at the American University of Beirut who is Lebanese – he then went on to Oxford. I met him and he made me laugh. It’s actually a generic Middle Eastern accent.

Is there a part of you that has any doubt about mining this furrow? Were you perfectly happy in this seam or did a part of you want to say, this is not really me?

A big part of me. In fact my wife said, “You really need to break out of this.” I think it’s what this tour is about. Even in the last couple of tours I said I would but I didn't really. There was a mental problem I had on the comedy circuit that I didn't think I was funny unless I had the accent. I had to do the accent at the beginning to get the laughs for people to trust me comedically. That’s why the first 10 seconds are really important. Even now my opening does play on a Middle Eastern thing. I wish it didn't.

As a film actor you’ve been cast up until The Infidel as a generic Middle Eastern character. Does that go with the territory?

At the beginning, yeah, sure. I’ve just done a series in America with Paul Reiser where I did it just on the condition I didn't do the accent. And they said, “No, we want you to do a bit of the accent. It’s an Americanised Iranian Jew.” It was actually an American character. I liked that.

How did you get involved with Whoopi Goldberg?

NBC saw me at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002, I got a deal to do my own show, they got me writers, the guys who wrote Analyze This. Wrote a pilot, it all got canned when troops rolled into Iraq in February 2003. March 2003 NBC pointed out that they could also use me as an actor in somebody else’s sitcom. So for me to fulfil my contract I had to be in someone’s sitcom. Whoopi Goldberg found out, flew me over to New York, I met her, we had dinner together for one hour, I flew back the next day. She said, “I want him in the show.” We did a pilot three weeks later and did a series of 23 episodes, and it didn’t get picked up for a second series.

Omid Djalili and Whoopi Goldberg in Sticky Fingers

Who did you play?

It was kind of Fawlty Towers and I was a conglomerate of Polly, Sybil and Manuel. I had the accent. I was a handyman around the hotel. We ran that hotel together. Fabulous time. It was really, really great. But very aware that it was her show and you are an actor. It was a funny show as well. I learnt a lot from that show, that canned laughter is sometimes there to cut the real laughs which are too hysterical. And I worked with the great Terry Hughes who did lots of the Monty Pythons here. He was always helping me out. It was a really great experience but it didn't continue.

And then you got your own series The Omid Djalili Show.

It was very long between the first and second series. It takes so long to write them and also when you give them the BBC takes so long to put them out. It was 18 months between the first and second series.

Did you get out of them what you wanted? Were they satisfactory for you?

They were really fun to do and it’s great that you do a show and as you’re doing it you’re believing in every single bit of the sketches. I didn’t write them all but even the ones friends of mine wrote I tinkered with until I was comfortable. Then I realised the battle is in the edit to get what we want. In general I thought it worked very well. I remember when the executive producer signed off on the second series he said, “This is exactly where the BBC should be: it’s smart, funny, it’s edgy and it’s great.” He didn't say anything more and that was it.

Do you want a third series?

I don’t know. It’s so much work. If I did it would consume me.

Watch the trailer for The Infidel


Had David Baddiel had the idea of casting you as a Muslim who discovers he is a Jew in The Infidel before seeing you play the Jew Fagin in Oliver!?

He had the idea when I was doing No Agenda at the London Palladium in 2006. In fact, from the moment he pitched me the idea to the premiere was a four-year process. He wanted us to write it together and I was too busy with other things. I was in the middle of writing my TV show. I didn’t actually read his script. Two weeks after he emailed me and actually left messages saying, “If you’re not going to read this, let’s just bin the whole thing.” I couldn’t believe anyone could write something so good in 10 weeks. I remember thinking, what’s David Baddiel ever done? He’s a novelist now. I thought there’s no way he’s written a good script so I won’t bother reading it. I’ll get my people to read it. And he’s texting me. I remember there was one saying, “Listen, you fat cunt. If you don’t read it I’m moving on.” Then I read it all in one go. I often joke about it as the best first draft of any script I’ve ever read. Unfortunately it’s not what we filmed.

What was it about the idea that grabbed you?

As a Baha’i I thought that was brilliant. Baha’is believe in the oneness of religion. For me any religion to fight is ridiculous. If you speak to any Muslim who is enlightened, if he finds out he’s born a Jew he’s like “So what?” I remember saying it has to be an unenlightened Muslim because only an unenlightened Muslim would see it as a problem and that’s where there’s a drama. It’s written by an atheist who is not anti-religion but he thought, for God’s sake, we’ve got to deal with this religion problem now. All religions are one and you’re all fucking wrong. I came at it from a religious point of view that they’re all right but they shouldn’t fight. So it grabbed me totally. And the fact that there’s a very limited pool of people who can play this: someone who can look Muslim and look Jewish and who’s had a bit of experience. I really responded to it and really liked the script. It was a fun experience all the way along. It was sold to 62 countries.

Has it been shown in Middle Eastern countries?

It didn’t pass the certificate. Israel and the Middle East wouldn’t do it. But Robert De Niro and TriBeCa bought the rights and showed it round America. What a thrill in one year to meet Robert De Niro and Jedward. I don’t think many people can say that.

I’m not going to ask you about Jedward. Was Sex and the City 2 any good?

It would have been better if they’d kept all my scenes in. That’s all I’m going to say.

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