MY FIRST LONDON HOME Actor

MY FIRST LONDON HOME OMID DJALILI

The comedian, actor and TV personality tells of growing up in the Royal Borough, spotting the Hollywood glitterati, and his Iranian heritage

I was born and raised in the Royal Borough of Kensington and

Chelsea and it’s where comedy really started for me. I went to Holland Park School and I remember doing a sketch for an assembly of 2,600 kids. The punch line got such a laugh the stage was shaking. There were two pretty girls called Pinkie and Perky who wore baseball jackets and French berets, and I became like this funny pet for them. I remember thinking that it was what boys had to do to get girls’ attention.

In my teens I started hanging around the King’s Road and going

to Chelsea parties. I had the typical Sloane Ranger car, the red Renault Five and was trying my best to blend in. There were all these exclusive bars, parties and clubs and my friends and I would inevitably end up somewhere down the road eating a couple of saveloys before some bovver boys would come up from the wrong end of town and there would be a fight. It felt gritty and exciting.

As the only ethnic minority I was

the odd one out. I was always a focus of interest with people asking me why I was there, but it was seen as acceptable because my dad worked for the Iranian Embassy as a liaison officer.

I realised quite quickly that I was the wrong ethnicity for anyone

to find me vaguely attractive. If there was a party, people would start coupling off, but I’d always be the one speaking to someone’s grandmother, or I’d end up in the garden discussing Plato with an intellectual dad. I never felt alienated but what it did was make me develop a sense of humour so I look back on those days with real fondness and feel so grateful that that was the beginnings of a career.

Because of the film studios like Shepperton and Pinewood, there was always filming going

on and Hollywood stars would be put up in hotels next to Kensington Palace. I used to go by myself to Chelsea matches and the football team would attract people like Sir Laurence Olivier, Robert Wagner, Michael Caine. The Hollywood glitterati would always end up at the football ground.

I often saw people like Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffmann, or

Al Pacino just walking around with their shopping. I remember seeing Freddie Mercury just after he’d debuted Bohemian Rhapsody on Top of the Pops. As an Iranian, hearing him say ‘Bismillah’ – in the name of God in Arabic – in a rock song, was amazing. I was ten and went up to him and said, ‘You were on the telly’. He looked right at me and said, ‘Yes I was, and wasn’t I fabulous?’ He really owned his celebrity.

We used to hear about his

parties and a friend of mine lived nearby so we’d peer through a vantage point and you could see dwarfs walking around with saucers on their heads with lines of cocaine. We naively thought they were trays of sweeties.

There was and is a big Iranian

community in Kensington. There was a restaurant called Yas, an all-night restaurant, then there was another on Fulham Road and Sloane Rangers used to go there because it was open until 3am. It was always packed at weekends. I was proud that it was Iranian.

I then went to Northern Ireland

for university and was there as a representative of Kensington and Chelsea. I took my red Renault Five and draped cricket jumpers over my shoulders with cream chinos. It was a big clash but one of the best things that happened to me. To go from Chelsea as an ethnic minority, to The Troubles of Northern Ireland in the mid 1980s, you can’t get a bigger clash. I was even shot at one night when someone mistook me for an Irish Catholic. When I reported it to my professor the next day, I was told to wise up and say nothing. It was a real eye-opener.

All these experiences, school, Chelsea, Northern Ireland, taught

me about the world, taught me to talk to people and speak up. I’m so looking forward to getting back to performing. It’s like that old Joni Mitchell song, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. Comedians have the luckiest job in the world to spread joy and make people laugh. It’s a privilege. L Omid Djalili’s The Good Times Tour is now on, omidnoagenda.com

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