Omid Djalili Interview

One of our favourite stand-ups of all time, Omid Djalili will be embarking on his first ever Australian tour this October. We’re so excited, we can hardly contain ourselves. We did, however, manage to sit down and have a chat with him about his upcoming shows, including Just For Laughs inside the Sydney Opera House, as well as football, jellyfish, the secret code to marriage and what he makes of the next generation of comedians…
Hello Omid, how are you?
I’m very well. While we’re talking I’m just getting some physio because I played 90 minutes of football the other day and I’ve totally seized up!
Are you a big football fan?
Huge, yes! I still play – although I shouldn’t – and I’ve been a big Chelsea fan since 1971, so I’ve been going there since I was six. I lived in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea so I felt that I had to support the local team.
Are you looking forward to this season then?
Well, it’s going to be an exciting season. I’m a big Mourinho fan and I actually saw him shaking hands with all of the Arsenal players and it was a great moment when him and Wenger both decided not to, so I’m looking forward to more moments of pathetic intrigue! Every week there’s something so it’s great.
And you’re filming at the moment too…
Yes, how lucky is this? The two biggest television series that could possibly be happening in London right now, I’m in both of them! One is Lucky Man with Jimmy Nesbitt, which is Stan Lee’s latest thing for Sky and NBC. This series is based on a survey he conducted, asking everybody what is their most coveted superpower, and of 1000 people, 900 wrote back saying “luck”. So there’s a lucky bracelet, and for those whose hands it falls into, they get tremendous luck, but it comes at a price, like their wife dies. Jimmy Nesbitt is investigating all of these terrible things that seem to be connected, and then he comes into contact with the lucky bracelet… It’s a very exciting, dark series set in London and London is shot in a very gothic, new way. And then at the same time there’s Dickensian on BBC1, with all of Dickens’ characters thrown together – Fagin, Miss Haversham, Scrooge – but not at the point where they end in their respective books. I play Mr Venus, Inspector Bucket’s sidekick, and it’s a look at how we see “detective-ing” emerge in Dickensian time. It’s a very exciting project and both happening simultaneously, so I’m jumping from one project to another!
What else have you been up to during the British summer?
I was at the Montreal Comedy Festival, which was wonderful. That was a great experience doing my own show and watching roast battles – the UK won hands down. We had Jimmy Carr, and he absolutely wiped the floor with everyone – the Americans, Australians and Canadians, they just couldn’t touch him. They tried to roast him, and one of the American comics goes “Jimmy Carr looks like the kind of doctor who would sedate his patients to have sex with them.” And Jimmy Carr just said, “I never sedated them…” They threw in the towel after that.
Speaking on stand-up, you’ll be coming to Australia in October. Are these really your first shows in Australia?
Actually, yes. I count them as my first shows because the only other time I was there was in Adelaide in 1997 with a bunch of comedians. We were all supposedly the top circuit comedians at the time, none of us were well known and we caused complete havoc. We had a wonderful time, but I’ve never been back with a possibility that an audience might know me this time. I’ve also got a premier in Australia of my film We Are Many, so I come bearing gifts! The stand-up itself has gifts, where I reveal the code for long-term relationships, which no married person tells you. There’s a framework, which we all know as married people, but we never tell, because we want everyone to suffer the way we’ve suffered…

Have you been to Australia at all since?
After Adelaide, I went to Sydney in ’97 and all I remember is being taken to Bondi Beach and going into the sea and getting stung by a bluebottle jellyfish within the first two seconds. I came out and find myself lying on the ground with four other British people, all sunburnt, and I just remember a pain going up from my ankle and shooting up to me groin. We all just laid there while they poured blue rinse over us – and it helped!
Hopefully this time around will be a bit more pleasant! You only have two shows – Melbourne on the 20th and Sydney on the 22nd – will you be sticking around to do some sightseeing?
Yes, of course! In my film We Are Many – it’s about anti-war demonstrations – and one of the most famous ones was painting “No War” on the Sydney Opera House. In honour of the blokes that did that, I’ll hopefully see them, and we’ll hang out for a few days. I’m not gonna fly all that way and just do two shows. If I was to live in any city in the world other than London it would be Sydney, because back in ’97 I was tremendously impressed with it; it’s a futuristic city, the restaurants are fantastic and everything works!
You’ll definitely get to see the Sydney Opera House, as you’ll be performing inside it! What are your feelings towards venues? Do you prefer intimate venues or do you like the big stadiums?
Do you know, I always used to say I would never play arenas. Hammersmith Apollo holds 3,500 and to me that’s maximum. Only because, people move around a lot and you can’t expect 3,500 people to sit still. There’s always people going to the toilet and I just find that distracting. But I did the O2 recently as part of a charity night, and I only did about 10 minutes, but I remember looking up right to the top and thinking, “Cor, I like this!” And that night there were 16,000 people. But I don’t mind playing to 16 or 16,000 as long as they’re listening and not on their phones!
Do you get that sometimes?
Unless you have a go at them, there will always be people- it happened to me! I went to a musical recently and my wife texted me just as it started. I was anxiously trying to text her and the bloke next to me said “Turn it off!”, and I explained I was just sending a quick text and he said, “Well you can do it outside” and it got quite heated. I ignored him and carried on, and then apologised to him, but then I saw he was a reviewer and he started writing. So I said, “Stop it”, and he goes, “I’m a reviewer”, so I said, “Do it outside…” He wasn’t best pleased at all! In the end he told me to f**k off! So then I pretended I knew him, I went, “Oh it’s you. I know you.” I said, “Don’t you remember me?” He went, “No”, so I said, “You don’t remember Edinburgh?” And he looked at me, and he went, “Oh God, six years ago?” I said, “Yes”, and he said, “I was very drunk.” I said, “You were!” He said, “I’m very sorry”, and I said, “You should be.” And I left it at that…
With regards to the shows, you reveal the framework and code of marriage, and you also touch on the subject of getting older; would you say that comedy is the one sector of the entertainment industry where age and experience is actually really beneficial?
I think so, yes. Of all the shows I’ve seen in the last five years, I found that the older they were the more I enjoyed it. The oldest being Billy Connolly – the most entertaining, he was 67 years old and still throwing himself about on stage. Absolutely hilarious, but at the same time very thoughtful.
Do you keep your eye on new talent?
Yeah, it’s good to know the new people coming through. I enjoy watching comedy in general. Although, I did watch BBC3 recently, and Russell Howard had a clip of all the guests he’s had, and I thought my generation were mentally ill but the younger generation take the biscuit! They’re far more disturbed! It’s very interesting to watch people younger more mentally ill than me!
Another component of your stand-up has been your Iranian heritage…
Yes, well not anymore, it’s actually this show where there’s almost nothing. Everyone knows my heritage and it’s time now to break out and speak about more generic things, because, why not? It’s exciting; I can talk about the things that I was always too scared to.
What are your plans after the tour? Will you learn to ride a unicycle?
Yes – and try to understand Judaism!
Don’t miss Omid Djalili at Just For Laughs Sydney at the Sydney Opera House on 22nd October! Book now >>>
By Charlotte Mellor
@cmellor_03