Omid's Metamorphosis

When one considers the current crop of British comedy’s heavy-weight talent, the likes of Stuart Lee, Jimmy Carr, Eddie Izzard and—when he’s not swanning about in Los Angeles—Billy Connelly spring to mind. But there’s someone missing from the list. Think BBC1 comedy and there he is. Recall the last Hollywood blockbuster you saw – the generic excitable Middle Eastern man? That was him. Indeed, for all his seeming omnipotence, in the hustle and bustle of the Edinburgh Festival it can be all too easy to overlook one of Britain’s most successful comics, Omid Djalili.

As far as zero-sum economics can be trusted, Djalili is the most successful Fringe comedian in history. His 2005 show No Agenda holds the fringe record for most ticket sales, with a staggering 16,500 bums placed on seats before him, this success later spawning a nationwide tour and best-selling DVD. Critically, he has excelled; his 2002 show Behind Enemy Lines garnered a staggering six five-star reviews. He is joined most notably by Izzard and Connelly in being one of few British comedians to have any meaningful success stateside. He is only the second British comic to have recorded an HBO Special and has an extensive film career that includes appearances in Hollywood blockbusters such as Gladiator, The Mummy and Pirates of The Caribbean.

Not bad for the London-born son of Iranian immigrants.

Of course, all this has meant that Djalili has taken something of a hiatus as a stand-up; he hasn’t been back to Edinburgh since his record-breaking spell in 2005. When I catch up with him on holiday in Sardinia, Djalili is in high spirits.

“I’ve been doing a lot of film and was working on my TV series for the BBC over the last few years so I’ve had to sort of force myself back into stand-up. But I’ve really enjoyed it, it’s been going really well and I think I’ve got a really good show for this year, a really fun show. It’s the kind of show that No Agenda should have been. You always find yourself saying the things you really wanted to say two or three years before. This is the stuff I wanted to be doing in 2005.”

Talking to Djalili ahead of his seven-night run, it is clear he feels that he has begun to grow into the type of comedian he has always wanted to be. Remembering the criticisms he faced in the wake of No Agenda—when some critics accused him of trading off cultural stereotyping—I ask him about how his comedy has evolved over the last three years.

“The things I’m talking about are the things I wanted to talk about more with No Agenda; go further into identity and do lots of current affairs stuff, cover things that have been on the news that I’ve got something to say about.”

Uniquely placed as a British-Iranian, it was perhaps inevitable that Djalili’s comedy would eventually address the problems of his parents’ homeland and its position on the world stage. It is strange though that it’s taken him the best part of fifteen years to do so.

“As a stand-up, you can’t really properly explore things before people know who you are. No Agenda was my first DVD and it was about culture and identity, it was about people but it wasn’t really political. It was stuff that, perhaps, I’m a little bored of now.

“The thing is, you have to earn your right to say things or else people will think ‘who are you to comment on the Labour Party or Middle Eastern politics?’ You have to build your audience first, only then can you really be the comedian you want to be.

“If you look at someone like Bill Bailey, I remember seeing him about eight years ago. I remember that he’d touch on something political, but then go straight back to his piano for fear of losing his audience’s attention. I asked him ‘why did you do that?’ and he’d say he was frightened that the audience was getting bored. Of course they weren’t but it takes time to build the confidence that you need to be able to say what you want to say."

So does this make Djalili, as he approaches the age of 43, something of a late bloomer?

“I don’t think you’ve reached your potential as a comic until you’ve been doing it for ten or fifteen years," he says. "Think about Bill Hicks. Everyone says he died so young, and it’s easy to forget that he’d been doing comedy since he was 15. Then there’s Ross Noble, who was selling out huge venues in his early twenties and he’s still young now. But he’s been a stand-up since he was twelve. Think about someone like Christian Bale and how successful he is now and then remember he started out in Empire of the Sun when he was 13. It really takes time to find your voice as an artist.”

In the past, critics have remarked that Djalili the stand-up had the appearance of a character performed by Djalili the actor, that there was something unnatural about his onstage persona. Now though, with the passage of time and with a greater confidence in his material, he seems certain that this year’s show will bring the audience closer to Djalili the man.

“I think I’ve always seen myself as a comedy actor rather than a stand-up comic,” he says. His comedian friends, he tells me, often let him know that while they think he’s funny, they don’t believe him to be a stand-up in the traditional respect. Now though, he tells me, he has dropped much of the character aspect of his performance.

“Even if I start with the Iranian accent at the beginning, people know it’s an ironic throw-back to the stuff I used to do. Now, I feel I’ve really found my voice and that I no longer need to fall back on that characterised persona.”