Omid Djalili Discusses Comedic Inspirations, Finding His Voice and Performing All Over the World

The last time I saw you in a comedy theatre you weren’t on stage, but in the audience seeing Colin Quinn in London, just before the pandemic. How much has your attitude to comedy changed since then?
I think that was the last night out I had before everything got closed down! I was talking to Colin recently about the pandemic, how much it made us miss comedy and how we’ll never take it for granted again. You appreciate it more, the audience appreciates it more, and the last couple of years has made us more conscious adults – so it has all changed. I think about every single aspect of it now; my material, how I’m delivering it, what I’m wearing. Is my beard too long? Are they going to get worried that I look like an Islamic fundamentalist? The desire and hunger from the audience for a really good night is the highest it’s ever been – they’ve watched comedy digitally and they understand that live comedy has a physiological impact on you. You can watch comedy on your phone and get distracted by something, but when you’re there, live and totally in the moment, there’s a symbiotic energy between the audience and performer that has been missing, so it’s a really exciting time getting back. 

It's interesting you bring Colin Quinn up – that comedy voice takes years of perfecting. He’s been doing it for thirty-odd years, and is one of the most underrated comedians out there – I think [Quinn’s Netflix special] Red State, Blue State was a masterpiece. I’m in my 26th year of comedy and I feel like I’m only now finding my voice. 

I thought you were great in Killing is Easy, the documentary about another of those American East Coast comedians, the late Patrice O’Neal. Are you a fan of that comedy scene in general?
I’m a fan of anyone who is completely authentic. We really get inside our own heads in Britain because the reviewers are so sharp, and the audiences have seen a lot of comedy. We get worried about how we’re coming across and don’t always put forward our most authentic selves. I appeared on Tough Crowd [a former American comedy panel show hosted by Colin Quinn] with Patrice, who I knew from the time he spent in London. We’d done loads of gigs together and I found him to be one of the most authentic people I’d ever met.

Authentic how?
Well on one occasion we were backstage at the Comedy Store and he was reading about the Holocaust, and he didn’t have a proper education on the subject. He said, “Omid, man… did you know all about what Hitler did to them Jews? It’s some messed up bullshit right here!” I was like, yes Patrice. It’s called the Holocaust, have you never heard of it? And it’s not bullshit, this all actually happened. “Omid are you kidding me? This is all true?” He couldn’t believe it, and was trying to educate himself, and that’s what I loved about him. He was so open and honest, like all of those Tough Crowd guys were. I came from a theatre background before going into comedy, and I was always struck by the openness and honesty of comedians. 

Is that comedian-level of honesty something that’s rare in entertainment?
In the theatre world if you’ve presented a final piece and people don’t like it, they’ll always lie and say, “Oh, you’ve done it again!” But with comedians, they’ll just tell you. Andre Vincent saw a show I was doing in 1996 and said, “Yeah the opening was good, but the middle bit was shit, and you’ve got to cut the last bit, that was bollocks.” I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, they’re so honest!’ But I loved it. 

Having performed stand-up all over the world, do you have to adapt your act to suit different countries or cultures?
People like funny, but your approach has to be different. Most clever comedians will arrive in a new town or country a day before so they can settle, try out your material on people, maybe get some local references. Funny is funny, and by and large people laugh at the same thing. You know, that crowd we were both in when Colin Quinn was in London, that was a comedy-literate audience that had obviously seen a lot of comedy. You have to have seen a lot of comedy to appreciate Colin Quinn - he's a comedian’s comedian. Audiences that are comedy literate often sit back and relax a bit more. 

I have noticed that post-pandemic audiences are becoming more American - there are more applause breaks, they appreciate it more and give you more as a result. Although now we're getting into January and February, British audiences are going back to their ‘come on, make me laugh fat boy’ ways. 

You mentioned that you only now feel like you’re finding your voice. Did taking a forced break from stand-up during the pandemic help that process?
Definitely, but it's also age. We were all given time to reflect, and I've definitely reflected a lot. I looked back at some of my stuff during lockdown, and was very fortunate to be able to delve into my Persian heritage as I've been doing stand-up in the Persian language over Zoom. I was going to be a guest on a Persian language comedy show and it went so well that I ended up being given my own show to host in Persian. I spent time looking back at old tapes of myself trying to see where I wasn't being authentic, and realised that the missing bit was doing stuff in the Persian language. 

It sounds like people seeing you on this tour will be seeing a very different comedian than they might have done pre-COVID…
Yes, I think they will. You're sometimes defined by the first thing people see you in. Certainly in comedy, one of the first things people saw me on was Live at the Apollo, which was a major show. I did the very first series, and a lot of people saw it both at the time and repeated afterwards. What people saw was a really overweight, mentally-ill person who didn't know what he was doing. Sometimes mental illness makes for great comedy, but the truth is I wasn't doing very well in life. You could see I wasn't well. So a lot of the time when people come up to me, they treat me with the respect that that set deserved, because it was mad. But that was sixteen years ago, and I'm a very different person now and, I like to think, a better comedian. Like Colin Quinn again, he really hit his stride when he was 58 or 59. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting there. You need to stick with it. 

Omid Djalili: The Good Times Tour will be at Nottingham Playhouse on Saturday 5 March