‘I thought my career was being flushed down the toilet’
OMID DJALILI TELLS JOHN NATHAN ABOUT HIS HATRED OF ZOOM AND WHY HIS OLD JOKES ARE THE BEST
I’M VERY bad at these Zoom things,’ confesses Omid Djalili from the bedroom of one of his three children where the internet connection is best. ‘I did a Zoom gig and the audience muted me.’ Omid is recalling when, during the pandemic, the only way a stand up could reach an audience was by sitting down at a laptop.
Now the British Iranian is on stage again with his optimistically named The Good Times Tour. ‘At the beginning I thought Covid would go on for one or two weeks, maybe a month,’ Omid says. ‘Then it became clear that it would change things, possibly forever. I was extremely worried.’ Omid had recently finished filming romantic drama Text For You with Russell Tovey and Prianka Chopra, adding to an already impressive CV that includes The Mummy, The Infidel and Mamma Mia! ITV later asked Omid to front their new TV quiz show Winning Combination, but his staple of live gigs was gone.
‘I genuinely thought it was over,’ says Omid, suppressing his default funny mode. It quickly bounces back as he recalls the climax to that disastrous online gig, before he was Zoom-savvy enough to choose his backgrounds carefully. ‘One time there was a pair of underpants over my left bicep draped over a chair, sunny-side up,’ he says. He also didn’t know there was a chat box or how to mute an audience to prevent his set from being interrupted with sudden eruptions of ‘Put the tea on, love!’.
Realising his novice status, one wag said in the chat box ‘Let’s all mute him’ and to Omid’s bewilderment the bank of faces in front him were ‘pissing themselves’ before he’d reached his punchlines. Out of frustration he carried the computer to the toilet and pointed the camera down the pan, then flushed it while shouting, ‘This is the sound of my career!’
His sanity is thankfully returning now he is back doing live comedy. Although when The Good Times tour reached the Eventim Apollo just before Christmas, London was the epicentre of Omicron and venues were closing fast. ‘Still, amazingly 2,500 fans turned up,’ says Omid. ‘What a time to be called Omid.’ he told his fans. ‘I’m so glad I changed my surname because originally it was Cron.
‘Up until then the show was all about how we are emerging from the pandemic having learnt we are all communal beings who need to be with other people,’ says Omid. ‘I’ll never forget that night. No one was wearing masks. Maybe the audience were all anti-vaxxers!’
For Omid, the pandemic has been a reminder of how important comedy is. ‘I was talking to Bill Bailey recently and he said we just have to keep going. We’ll never take comedy for granted again, or complain about it. It’s the best job in the world. We’re so privileged. Now all I want in my rider is water and some fruit.’
Lockdown also allowed Omid to focus on his Iranian roots and his Baha’i heritage, a religion long persecuted in the country of his parent’s birth, which he last visited when he was a small child. He is speaking, reading and writing Persian more than ever. ‘I also appear on Persian talk shows outside Iran’, he says. And there is a serious undertow to Omid’s comedy, aside from the Godzilla impressions. ‘I reflect on my own character, my own personality and my role in comedy [in the UK] as one of the first people of Middle Eastern extract,’ he says.
‘Most people had only seen white people doing comedy,’ says Omid about when he started. But in 1995 the comedy establishment either didn’t get the joke or didn’t like it. ‘They cancelled me,’ he adds. The experience clearly still smarts even though today he has many acclaimed screen and stage performances under his belt, such as his Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof. So in his latest show he is reviving some of the old material that caused him so much trouble.
‘In 2022 it’s the funniest bit in the show and I think it shows how far the country has moved on. We do have institutional racism, but we’re not a racist society. Because we are world citizens,’ he says. ‘The earth is one country, and mankind are its citizens,’
So, is that a message he would like to get across in his Good Times Tour? ‘Yes. But I’ll only do if it’s funny, because I’m a comedian.’
Omid plays Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury, tomorrow, and touring, omidno agenda.com