There’s a great article written by Fiona Sturges in London’s The Independent about Omid Djalili, a British comedian (with a background as a classically trained actor) that I’ve always looked up to. The article’s mostly about Djalili’s new movie, The Infidel, a British comedy where he plays a Muslim man who discovers that he was actually born a Jew, but a good chunk of it talks about Djalili’s career and his rise through the comedy ranks. This is part of it:

In 1992 Djalili married actress Annabel Knight, with whom he now has three children – Isabella, 16, Louis, 14 and Danny, 10. The couple spent a few years in the Czech Republic doing experimental theatre, after which they came home to start a family. 

It was Annabel who suggested he try stand-up – she had once shared a flat with Alan Davies, and watched his ascent – and in 1994 persuaded him to go for a night out at the Comedy Store. Djalili’s initial reaction – a shrill “I can’t do this! Are you insane?” – gradually gave way to curiosity. 

He took a show to the Edinburgh Fringe called The Short Fat Kebab Shop-Owner’s Son. On returning home he wrote to every comedy establishment in London telling them how he had stormed Edinburgh (which wasn’t strictly true) and would like to perform at their club. No one responded apart from a small place in Twickenham which gave him a five-minute slot. 

Djalili raised the roof after just three minutes, at which point his stand-up career was up and running. He was taken under the wing of the comic Ivor Dembina, with whom he briefly formed a double act called The Arab and the Jew, and who tutored him in the ways of the stand-up – “he would always give me notes after a show, a typical high-status Jew”. 

There were disastrous nights when the compere couldn’t get his name right – “ladies and gentlemen, Omad Darjeeling!” — and where he didn’t get a single laugh. On one such evening the crowd cried “off, off, off” to a slow-handclap. Djalili squinted into the lights to see his wife leading the chant. “In her defence, she saw how badly things were going and she just couldn’t bear it. She thought I’d be better off if I just left.” 

There have been suggestions that Djalili wouldn’t have had a career without September 11, but the truth is that it nearly finished it off. Immediately after the terrorist attacks he was dropped from corporate gigs and from theatre performances. “Their excuse was that they were dropping comedy altogether but I would find out later that someone had taken my place,” he recalls. “Fortunately, I had just won the Time Out comedy award and they had me booked in at the Bloomsbury Theatre. I didn’t want to do it but they were the only ones that hadn’t dropped me. There were posters around town saying ‘Middle Eastern madman!’. We had people running all over central London tearing those posters down.” 

Djalili rewrote his material to reflect the new political times, and the resulting show, Behind Enemy Lines, was a huge success, earning him adoring reviews and a nomination for the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh festival. Since then he has become the cuddly face of the Middle East, a cultural standard-bearer with a big grin and a nice line in belly dancing. 

His story is pretty interesting. Elsewhere in the article he talks about his feelings on his role in Whoopi, an NBC sitcom that lasted only one season a few years ago, and on his HBO special, both of which came before he felt as if he had really established himself as a comedian in the UK. It’s a great article. Read it.

Here’s the trailer for the film:

And one of my favourite Djalili jokes:

Related posts:
Omid Djalili co-stars in NBC’s “The Paul Reiser Show”
Sweet Lord – Omid Djalili in his prime
From TED: Bill Gates talks about reducing CO2, uses a photo of Baha’is to represent humanity and its diversity
The Gift – a short film by Carl Erik Rinsch
I’m trying to think of a good analogy for this.