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
in sometimes unlikely places, omid 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? omid 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 an interview, it will be a monologue! let me ask you this, you have been doing comedy for almost 30 years, do you find the same stuff funny today as you did back then? what a tricky question! what a way to start. that is such a tricky question. look, at the end of the day, it is a big subject now because we saw the oscars and we saw will smith smack chris rock. can i just tell you, just to speak personally, i saw the video the day after, and i bleary eyed woke up on monday
Of characters, and does that work today in the same way that it worked 30 years ago? it does, but you have to navigate it. when we talk about ethnic humour, we come from the age in the 60s and 70s when there were those awful irishjokes, you know, englishman, irishman, scotsmanjokes, and the idea was that we were at war with the ira so english people culturally were doing jokes to make irish people look stupid. and some white middle aged male comedians were doing jokes about africans and about other ethnic minorities, adopting silly voices and getting a laugh but it wasn t a laugh which was really with those characters they were portraying, it was at them. it was at them, and i have to say, did i find that funny? i didn t find it funny in those days, i still don t think it is funny now. so, now, if you do a joke that feels a bit mean, what you have to do is you have to cushion it. i ll give you an example. i did a testicular cancer benefit gig and some
But that is if your comedy is just about the laugh. i think there is a higher level of comedy where you use the comedy to make a point. so, that to me is childish. yeah, they are funny, and they can do it, and they are very funny guys. but there are loads of funny people out there. i know lots of people in comedy clubs in britain who are just as funny and can do that kind of thing, but there are lots of us who just choose not to do that kind of comedy. you re too nice, is that what you are telling me, you are too nice? it s not too nice, ijust don t see the point of it. so we can all snigger like children? it doesn t turn me on, as a comic. do you have red lines, then? what are things that you. actually, considering this notion of where lines should be in comedy and what offence is beyond acceptable for a comedian to rouse, what would your red lines be? that is a really good question because on the one hand, as far as free speech is concerned, there should be. no subject is off limits,
The person to do this, but hey, i will be the first person to go from the west to the east. people come from east to west but i am the first person doing it, and they actually liked it, which is great. and a final thought, for more than two years, thanks to covid, it was hard for you to be funny in front of an audience, but you are back on the road now, you have got a new tour going across the uk, you have talked about the pure joy of making a live audience laugh. how much did you miss it? oh, my god. i missed it so much that when i did a zoom gig. can you imagine doing a zoom gig and just before. it s not like we muted everyone, butjust before a punch line, you hear someone going, martin, can you let the cat in! it was a disaster for comedy, and i often used to take my computer into the toilet and say, here is the sound of my career, and i would press the flush, and that would be my toilet flushing, and that is kind of what i thought. if you speak to any comedian now, i have spoken