SORRY, which region did you say your paper covered?
Omid Djalili's attention was being torn between the start of this phone interview and his noisily playful young son.
Switching rooms, he could focus now. "You cover York. Ah yes, I'm opening the comedy festival there, aren't I?" he says.
Indeed, you are, Omid, just as you were booked to do so last year, until motion sickness forced a late cancellation.
The mention of motion sickness initially took him by surprise but then the memory came flooding back. "At the time, I was travelling between London, New York and Los Angeles once a week, and I became very ill... but I'm fine now."
Omid, the Anglo-Iranian comic with the 2002 Time Out Best Stand-Up Award to his name, had branched out into Hollywood cinema and American television. Now he is on a 13-date tour with an updated version of his open-hearted, humorous commentary on world events, Behind Enemy Lines, a show that visits the Grand Opera House on June 5.
First, however, thoughts return to the exhausting schedule that led to his motion sickness. "I was this fat, bald boy from West London who couldn't believe his luck, so I went on working till I dropped. That was literally it," he says. "For two years, I worked till I dropped, and it wasn't any old work.
"It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, signing a talent-holding deal with NBC, where they wanted me to write a sitcom built around me and my act - and it's been many years since that's happened to a British comedian."
Fate, however, intervened. "They pulled it because they thought it was inappropriate to have an Iranian comedian on TV with the Iraqi war going on," recalls Omid.
However, as one door closed, plenty more opened in the form of a pilot show for a Whoopi Goldberg sitcom and film work to add to a CV that already included Gladiator, The Mummy, Anita & Me and Spy Game.
"I got cast as the young Picasso in the film Modigliani, starring opposite Andy Garcia. It's just been shown at the Cannes festival last week; I was over there for the screening, and it went down very well," says Omid. "Now it's in competition at the Venice Festival."
The work has been piling up. "I've done 22 episodes of Whoopi, and even before I went to do the pilot, I was filming Captain Sky And The World Of Tomorrow with Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. Not to be confused with The Day After Tomorrow, it's a big blockbuster that's coming out at the end of June."
Omid has been on the multiplex screens this spring in the Orlando Bloom movie The Calcium Kid. "It's a cross between This Is Spinal Tap and the first Rocky movie, and my character is a London boxing promoter who works out of Shoreditch. He's kind of like a Turkish Barry Hearn or Frank Warren," he says.
Did you meet any of our esteemed fight promoters in the cause of research? "No, the filmmakers didn't want me to do that. They thought it was best if I just copied off the TV, which is what the character does," says Omid. "He's this Turkish Jewish character who gets rich and has got into boxing without knowing exactly what he's doing."
By way of contrast, Whoopi Goldberg was on hand to give advice whenever Omid sought guidance for his role in the Whoopi sitcom. "It was good working with Whoopi; she's a real comedian, she's got a good spirit, she's very generous and she gave me lots of ideas," he says.
"I had been crow-barred into her show because I had this NBC contract, and Whoopi was very nurturing, telling me not to be afraid of improvising."
Whoopi Goldberg is an Anglophile, Omid reveals. "She only watches BBC America; she loves Graham Norton and she's in love with EastEnders. If she misses an episode, she has a tape sent to her," he says. "She has a very English sensibility, and she's forever impersonating The Queen.
"In the Whoopi show she even ended up like a cross between Basil Fawlty and Alf Garnett, and I was a Sybil and Manuel conglomerate!"
While in New York, Omid had a two-week run at the British Comedy Festival in Greenwich Village.
"I was the first Middle Eastern act to get up on stage and talk about 9/11 after it happened. I'd talk for an hour and a half, and I talked about it from a humanitarian point of view," he says.
"Comedy extremists have said it was not extreme enough but I'm not an extreme person. I'm not a fundamentalist. I deal with the issues with a more intelligent perspective than just saying the Americans deserve suicide bombings. I try to make it entertaining, educating and elevating - the three Es - and a good night's comedy."
Addressing such sensitive issues as the Iraqi war makes for risk-taking comedy but Omid says: "How this show goes is down to how I feel each night, and so far it's had a very high strike rate. I've performed in 15 countries and everyone has paid for someone to make them laugh, and so if you're willing to impose what you believe and you're energetic about it, they will go with you. But if you start doubting your material or you seem tired, only you can undermine your material."
Omid says his style of comedy performance is not built on rat-a-tat gags but on considered, conversational thought.
"I keep it personal. Audiences don't just want a quick laugh; they want to know you and your viewpoint and engage with that viewpoint. So you have to present a fresh perspective that will make them think, but not an ideology because it's not a heavy show," he says.
"There's a structure to it when you're doing a two-hour show. They have to like you and trust you, so once you have set your stall out and they see you're likeable and reasonable and intelligent but not overtly intellectual, they will click into it and stick with you."
The film offers continue to roll in, and Omid is enjoying his stand-up work more than ever.
"I'm more comfortable with it because I've ceased to care what people think about what I say. I say what I feel, and at the end of the day people want to feel they are in comfortable hands."
Omid Djalili, Behind Enemy Lines, York Comedy Festival, Grand Opera House, June 5, 8pm. Tickets: £14, concessions £12; ring 0870 606 3595.
Updated: 09:00 Friday, May 28, 2004
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article