It's not often you're body-searched on the way into a comedy gig. But then it's not often that a stand-up of middle eastern extraction takes the stage to crack jokes about the imminence of war with the middle east. From the moment he announced he was rewriting the material for his two-night London run to accommodate recent events in New York, Anglo-Iranian comedian Omid Djalili has considered himself at risk.
In fact, he was never more necessary. A former winner of the One World media award for his documentary on asylum-seekers, Djalili's preparedness to intelligently discuss the world combines with illuminating anecdotes about his cultural background, making this show a welcome corrective to the current belligerence and stereotyping.
The short section of Djalili's show that deals explicitly with the supposed war on terrorism toys with our received truths about Afghanistan and its neighbours. The response of supercilious Iran, Djalili tells us, to the jumped-up Taliban's call-to-arms was a curt jihad schmihad - which gets funnier the more you think about it. There's an extended riff on the fact that Taliban means student: need we fear a movement whose greatest crime is stealing traffic cones? But there's nothing facetious about Djalili's take on the subject, which reminds us that even those Britons who resemble Arabs (himself included) are now being regarded suspiciously in the street. Except, he jokes, by suddenly over-familiar fellow Arabs.
Djalili's greatest contribution to the current climate, however, is to render Iranian (and by association middle eastern) culture cuddly. In the second half, his eccentric colleague Kemal arrives to provide the music for an "Iranian ceilidh". Djalili duly belly dances; he recasts western pop tunes with an Arabian flavour; he tells a rambling story about his three Iranian uncles and the visitor who had a fatal first meeting with a western toilet.
There's a routine called Ethnic Catchphrase, which satirises the way the media represent the middle east, then adds a few pleasingly unfamiliar cultural stereotypes of Djalili's own. It's gratifying and unusual for a comedy audience to have our interest in culture assumed. But Djalili never seems clunkily educational, because the whole set is underscored with an impish absurdity and a fine line in clownish physical comedy. If we dropped Omid Djalilis all over the west instead of bombs across the middle east, the world would be a far happier place.
