It has taken Omid Djalili a while to get back on the road but he is as perceptive and funny as ever. James Rampton reports.

For a comedian capable of provoking laughter and profound thought at the same time, it’s strange that Omid Djalili has not toured for three and a half years.

The title for his new show, Tour of Duty, is understandable then. Yet the British Iranian stand up’s motivation for getting back on the road was not a duty to his fans but a duty to himself.

“Last Christmas, I did a corporate gig, which can be notoriously difficult and I was so nervous I couldn’t go on,” said Omid, 46, who has also starred in films like The Mummy, Gladiator and The World Is Not Enough.

“I hadn’t done a gig in about a year. The event organisers were getting nervous that I wouldn’t go on so they cited all kinds of legality at me if I failed to perform.

"As I took to the stage my mind was telling me, 'you’re going to die. You’re just a fat, needy man pleading for attention. You have no integrity and the act has no artistic merit. That’s why I’m here, for the money, not because I care or they care. They don’t even like me’.

“I went out with that devil on my shoulder, and on the other shoulder was another one going 'listen to the devil on the other shoulder, he’s right’. Then the opening joke got more laughs than I’d expected. I started thinking 'they’re laughing because you’re famous, not because you’re funny’. It was at that moment I thought 'Wow. They’re laughing and I’m not even funny. I’m going on tour’.”

The EMMA Award, Time Out Award, and LWT Comedy Award winner has not been idle in the interim. He has made two series of his own comedy show for BBC1, starred as Fagin in Oliver! in the West End, made a US sitcom for NBC’s The Paul Reiser Show and appeared in Howard Marks’ film, Mr Nice, and David Baddiel’s movie, The Infidel.

Known as a deep thinker about comedy, Omid has worked hard on the structure of the show, which he tested out at Canterbury’s Gulbenkian Theatre earlier this year.

He said: “It’s based on an Eleanor Roosevelt quote about the different levels of thinking. She said, 'great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds only talk about other people’.

“In stand-up, you do all those things – you talk about other people, you make sense of events and you elevate lofty ideas. Once you have set up the concept that great minds think about ideas, then you can say things like, 'doesn’t Ed Miliband look like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit’?”

The comedian has equally wise things to say about the Middle East. In the wake of the seismic changes that have gripped the region during the Arab Spring, Omid said: “There are so many different levels to what is happening in the Middle East now. With profound transformation in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria and Libya, the people of Dubai have a very British attitude to revolution: marching on the streets chanting 'What do we want? Democracy! When do we want it? After Happy Hour’!

“People are taking charge – governments can’t get away with it any more. In fact no one can get away with anything. You certainly can’t get away with genocide in the age of Twitter – or at least I hope not. Alex Reid was trending the other day so you can never be too sure.”

Omid Djalili’s Tour of Duty comes to Dartford’s Orchard Theatre on Sunday, November 13. Tickets £20. Box office 01322 220000. He visits Tunbridge Wells’ Assembly Hall Theatre on Thursday, February 16. Tickets £19.
Box office 01892 530613.