it is tiring but it is also motivating. for 100 years, politics in northern ireland has been defined by what side you re on. rua unionist or are you a nationalist? we have a look in the mirror and think, what are you doing thinking you can change that and convince people that politics is about what it is in the rest of the country? sometimes, it feels like an power struggle, but mainly when i m trying to explain it to a journalist, who maybe don t really understand the dynamics and the changes that have happened in society over the last 2a years of the good friday agreement, or when i am arguing with trolls on twitter, which unfortunately i still do despite all the advice to the contrary, they want to put me into a box and pigeonhole me in politics, and at that time i do feel like it is an uphill struggle, but when i talk to the public, when i m out meeting people on the doors, which is minister ofjustice, it makes sense. it doesn t feel strange
to vote for them? and at the end of that process, that test, you know, you re going to end up with the person that l you think can lead. in the old days, a leadership contest, the sign of it starting was somebody hiring an office and putting the phone lines in. i don t know, do we still have landlines? no, no, no they all sign up to tiktok! what is the 2022 version of that? is it like, oh, a liz truss branded ruler arrives in your pigeonhole? a priti patel mug? it s probably a whatsapp group. are there any of them already? well, that s- for you to find out. oh, i m sure we will! mark, thank you very much. thanks, mark. mark has led us to the end of this episode of newscast, but i ll be doing another episode tomorrow, and i ll be sitting in chris mason s chair because i m going to stand in for him on any questions, and i m going to be in burnham on sea in somerset. no idea how i m going to get there, but it sounds like it s very nice. it s very nice. i ve been there in a b&b overn
said the ethnic scumbag. yes, that was one of my firstjokes. i am an arab scumbag specialist but in the bond film, i did play the second azerbaijani oil pipe attendant, which is a major departure for me in my career! but here you are, walking yourself into a pigeonhole. i love that, i love it when you get challenging! it wasn t that, it was back in the 90s when i started off, i felt it was the only way to get work because, you know, you see films where in another country, you ve got all these actors with high cheekbones and they were good looking, i realised i was a short, squat, iranian bloke. that is why i fought back with comedy by doing the show called i am a short fat kebab shop 0wner s son, because i look like a short fat kebab owner s son. as you can hearfrom my voice, there was a tall, thin, high cheekbones english ponce screaming to get out. this was me reacting. but how frustrating for you. oh, so frustrating. i m being serious. you walked into an image which then it s taken
happened so it had had an massive impact on me as a child the way people thought i was from a very weird culture. so, i think humour became a comfort. a weird culture, you say, and of course that is the way some in england at the time would have seen it but i wondered the degree to which you would have then sort of played into that notion of being a bit weird, a bit of an outsider in your early profession? in the memoir, there is this fascinating letter that you recount you wrote to a talent agency, and it goes like this. you said to the agency, i think the way forward is to go down the ethnic bit part route, i am quite adept at accents, you said rather immodestly, iranian, afghani, turkish, pakistani, i could even play a russian commandant or a bulgarian gymnast trainer, a slovak border guard. i can play french, german, american mafia boss, i m pretty good at regional british accents, too. so, you were pushing this idea that you could be put into a pigeonhole, i think you have later
yourself into a pigeonhole. i love that, i love it when you get challenging! it wasn t that, it was back in the 90s when i started off, i felt it was the only way to get work because, you know, you see films where in another country, you ve got all these actors with high cheekbones and they were good looking, i realised i was a short, squat, iranian bloke. that is why i fought back with comedy by doing the show called i am a short fat kebab shop owner s son, because i look like a short fat kebab owner s son. as you can hearfrom my voice, there was a tall, thin, high cheekbones english ponce screaming to get out. this was me reacting. but how frustrating for you. oh, so frustrating. i m being serious. you walked into an image which then it s taken you decades to sort of develop, evolve, and move beyond. yes. look, at the end of the day, it took a long time before i got my first lead role. i remember playing picasso