WE all have our routines in life, our self styled plan which we stick to for comfort or as we enjoy the routine.
The author of the Sherlock Homes novels, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said: “My mind rebels at stagnation.
“Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere.
“But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.”
Comedian Omid Djalili likes to end the day and start the day with a smile and a laugh.
He said: “Comedy makes me happy very much.
“I like to try and make sure I go to bed after having a bit of a laugh. I like to watch Curb your Enthusiasm, Frasier or Sex and the City.
“I like to find something to make me happy before I fall asleep.
“My wife always wakes me up with a laugh in the morning.”
Maybe this is the perfect cocktail for happiness.
As for making people happy, Omid has been making a comedic impression on people since he had great success performing A strange Bit of History, which won the Spirit of The Fringe Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1994.
Comedy for Omid first entered his world when he was about six years old. He was listening at home in Iran with his father to a reel to reel tape of a comedy commentary making fun of World Cup commentaries.
Omid said: “I thought when I heard it, what I was listening to was Egypt v East Germany v Paraguay v Holland. I did not find it funny and I did not connect to it as it was not based in real life.
“I did not think it was funny at all.”
He cannot be funny with non-generous spiritual people but he can be when people are spiritually generous.
This makes sense when he explained to me what comedy meant to him.
He said: “Comedy means the uplifting of the soul and lightness of being.
“You need to be a deep thinker for it to work in comedy. When I first saw the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being I thought it was a book about comedy.”
One of the things which amuses Omid is the stuff which nobody else finds funny.
Omid tells the story of how he heard the former leader of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe when he spoke a lot of people could not understand what he said it was almost incoherent.
He said he would tell the audience this and then say: “Mr Mugabe how do you answer this accusations?
To which Robert Mugabe would say in a jazz scat La,la,la,la,la, la…
He said the first time he told the joke there was deathly silence in the audience-nothing. He went on to tell the joke three nights running with the same result.
His wife asked him: “Are you still telling the Mugabe joke, yes, it is not funny. “
Omid said: “I know it is funny, I tried it three times but it never got a laugh. I still think it is funny and no one can tell me it is not funny.”
His credits range from Hollywood to television and the West End stage. Earning praise across the world for his performances Omid recently starred in Dickensian (BBC1), Lucky Man (Sky1) and Going Forward (BBC4) with Jo Brand.
What you will be able to do is see how funny Omid is as he will be at The Brewhouse in Taunton on January 23, with his new show Schmuck for a Night.
Speaking about what he hopes people will get from coming to see the show, Omid said: “Hopefully, they will get a tool kit to understanding the world as things are quite crazy now.
“People are becoming keyboard warriors on Twitter. What I want them to see is life with the sword of truth and the shield of honour.
I used to wake up at night and take to social media, now I try and not look at it before 8pm. But then you see my history and I have been on line loads of times at 7.59am.”
What you will find if you go to his show, as I discovered when speaking to Omid, is someone who has ‘funny bones’.
He is a comedian who knows all about ‘the sweetest laugh’.
This he told me is when a woman in her 30s/40s cannot stop laughing at a joke even when it is over and then everyone is laughing with her as she continues to laugh once it is pointed out to them and a man who has changed going from someone who shouted and looked like he should be in a mental asylum to a calmer man who thinks about his comedy and his audience.
Tickets for Schmuck for a Night cost £25. Buy online at thebrewhouse.net or call the box office on 01823 283244.
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