jens stoltenberg was speaking as leaders of nato countries prepare to meet at a summit in madrid on tuesday. now on bbc news, it s hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i m stephen sackur. what i find funny, you might find offensive. comedy challenges taste and convention and it can rouse strong reaction, as we saw at this year s 0scars when a joke earned comedian chris rock a slap in the face from the actor will smith. my guest today has spent more than 25 years finding laughs in sometimes unlikely places. 0mid djalili was born in london to iranian parents. he has thrived as a cross culture comedic chameleon, but is it possible to be funny without being mean? 0mid djalili, welcome to hardtalk. stephen sackur, my friend, my fellow presenter in the business of show, man who is so unbelievably good looking and thin that he walks into snooker hall, they start chalking his head. i am so happy to be here, this is one of my favourite shows. well, if you carry on like that, this won t be a
Of 0svaldo ardiles, a tottenham hotspur player who came over from argentina, when he spoke english and he referred to tottenham as totten ham. so, that is how they describe my persian. but i guess what i am driving at is not so much whether you are gifted as a linguist but whether it works, just doing a show where you might be thinking in english, concocting jokes in english, and translating them straight into farsi and hoping they will be funny in tehran, too. yes. what i did was the show was 33 minutes long, we made about 70 minutes at stuff and then we, in consultation with iranians in iran, they said, look, we find this funny but that not so much. but, you know, funny is funny and i am actually very proud that i have exported this kind of british humour directly into iran, bbc persian is shown in iran, and to see people saying, wow, this is the kind of comedy we need, this is exactly the kind of relevant humour that really speaks to people in iran, so i was very proud that coming
Whoever you are, as long as we understand we are all fundamentally one. if we understand that, then the comedy will be easier to do. you are currently making comedy in farsi. how is your farsi? not very good. well, it better improve, because you want to win a big audience in iran on bbc persian, you are doing a comedy chat show. and i am just wondering whether you think the humour that is fundamentally, you know, it is about 50 odd years living in london, being brought up in this cosmopolitan and diverse city, is that humour going to work in iran? well, apparently it has. it is now. these are not my figures but the bbc figures, it is now the most watched comedy show on earth. they told me it was a minimum of 12 million people watched it. the only negative comment we have seen is that 0mid djalili s persian is similar to the english of 0svaldo ardiles, a tottenham hotspur player who came over from argentina,
Well, it better improve, because you want to win a big audience in iran on bbc persian, you are doing a comedy chat show. and i am just wondering whether you think the humour that is fundamentally, you know, it is about 50 odd years living in london, being brought up in this cosmopolitan and diverse city, is that humour going to work in iran? well, apparently it has. it is now. these are not my figures but the bbc figures, it is now the most watched comedy show on earth. they told me it was a minimum of 12 million people watched it. the only negative comment we have seen is that 0mid djalili s persian is similar to the english of 0svaldo ardiles, a tottenham hotspur player who came over from argentina, when he spoke english and he referred to tottenham as totten ham. so, that is how they describe my persian. but i guess what i am driving at is not so much whether you are gifted as a linguist but whether it