Omid Djalili, Tour Of Duty, Grand Opera House, York, January 19

OMID Djalili, the “thinking person’s Iranian comedian”, has no regrets over taking a long break from the road before launching his new show, Tour Of Duty.

“You can only do live comedy every couple of years really, because you need a break from it,” says Omid. His hiatus from stand-up stretched to three and a half years before he returned with a series of warm-up shows that included Pocklington Arts Centre last September.

“I’ve mulled and mused,” he said at the time. “A lot has happened in my life. I’ve teetered on the edge of oblivion. I’m back. Let’s see what happens.”

‘Oblivion’ might seem a strange choice of word for this multi award-winning cultural comedian, international film star, West End musical performer and writer/producer, but the 46-year-old British Iranian has known ups and downs in a comedy career that spans three decades, and so he took nothing for granted when he set out on his Tour Of Duty.

“When you have a break from comedy, you see how you’ve evolved… and there’s so much that’s happened in your life that you get a different perspective,” says Omid, whose appearance at the Grand Opera House on Thursday will be his first in York since he played the same theatre on his Live 2008 tour in February that year.

“Some things have a sell-by date, and you find yourself thinking ‘That has to go; I’m not comfortable with saying that any more’. There were things that were funny early on in the tour, but not now – and as Woody Allen once said, ‘Comedy is tragedy plus time’.”

Comedy is a serious business for comics. “Comedians are self-deprecating; we’re our worst critics!” says Omid. “I’ve even had outer-body experiences when I’m performing, telling me ‘Why are you doing this? It makes no sense’. Your mind and your spirit are trying to get away, and at that moment, I will close my eyes tightly and think ‘Come back into my body, keep in control, stay in charge’.

“You have to stay positive and you have to believe you’re the funniest person in the world. A lot of us survive on a wave of self-belief. Total (deluded) self-belief. When I started, I really thought I was the funniest person in the world and I still think that.”

Comedy was touted as the new rock’n’roll when Baddiel and Newman played Wembley Arena in 1993, but what seemed initially a flippant prediction became true as the likes of Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans and Peter Kay embraced the arena circuit.

Now, in the recession, stand-up shows have become in vogue as the relief, the release valve, from stress and strife, so much so that one-liner craftsmen Jimmy Carr and Milton Jones each brought their latest show to the Grand Opera House three times, while Bill Bailey performed Dandelion Mind at York Barbican and the Grand Opera House in quick succession last autumn.

“Comedy has changed so much that you have to do stuff that is ‘p*ss funny’ as people are so comedy savvy now,” says Omid. “You have to do something fresh all the time.

“Like when a woman in the audience at the Soho Theatre shouted at me, ‘I’m sorry that’s just not funny enough’, so I then work-shopped the joke and we all found something that was ‘funny enough’ out of the 150 people who were in this tiny theatre that night.”

A comedian can live or die not only at each show but also with each gag or routine: it is the most gladiatorial and potentially bloodiest of all forms of stage entertainment. “But the one thing you have to do is have the conviction that you can make people laugh,” says Omid.

“As a tour progresses, you have to try to remember how you said something the first time, rather than expecting the laugh. Doing comedy is like spinning plates; you have to keep them spinning and that’s exhausting, but it’s a great feeling when you pull it off.”

Omid’s profile has risen the more diverse the West Londoner’s career has become, whether playing Fagin in Oliver! in the West End or branching out into films with his award-winning role as Mahmud Nasir in The Infidel and appearances in Sex And The City 2 and Mr Nice, to complement two series of The Omid Djalili Show on BBC1 and his DVDs releases, No Agenda and Live In London.

Why, he is even selling you car insurance as the “haggle hero” of the moneysupermarket.com advertising campaign. Yet if that may suggest audiences will raise the bar of expectation each time Omid returns to the comedy stage, the greatest pressure is exerted by Omid himself.

“All the pressure is in your own head. I even have a T-shirt that says ‘Stay calm and belly dance’, and I think I’ve found the solution: the way to stay calm in life is to see it as a process rather than thinking of it as the finished product,” he says.

“The pressure has increased on me, and you have to deal with that, and that’s why you have to see life as a process where we’re constantly growing. If you do that, you don’t beat yourself up because you know you’re growing every day.”

The British-Iranian Djalili can explore the diversity from both sides in tense political times. “There will always be people you can’t please,” he says.

Yet his comedy is inevitably a delicate balancing act. “I did the Royal Variety Performance last year and Princess Anne came up afterwards and said ‘You have great timing’. I said, ‘Thank you ma’am’, and she said, ‘No, I meant with the storming of the British embassy in Tehran’!”

His Iranian roots will always inform his comedy. “You would never tell a mountain climber to climb a mountain without sticks, ‘just climb it with you tongue’, would you? So the Iranian element will always be there with me and you have to acknowledge it, though the Iranian stuff, the material about ethnicity, is less prominent in the show than it used to be,” says Omid.

“But Tour Of Duty still has a good eight minutes of it and people really appreciate it because the issue of modern Britain, modern ethnicity, is in the news every day and people are wondering, ‘What’s the guideline now on what’s funny and what’s acceptable?’.”

Omid’s cultural overview continues to strike a chord. “I’ve been described as having the most mixed audience in comedy and that feels good,” he says.

His award-winning film The Infidel is having an impact too… in America. “There’s a possibility of making an American series for NBC, which we’ll know whether it will happen in the next couple of weeks.

“They saw the film and have offered to work with us on adapting it, and if it goes ahead, I would start work in March/April,” says Omid.

He already has experience of working with American talent in the shape of the Sex And The City 2 girls. “Oh my goodness, to be there with Kim Cattrall and SJP – and I was with them exclusively for a week in Morocca, just me and the four of them for a week!” says Omid, still buoyant at the memory of his role as Mr Safir.

“It all got off to a flying start when I told Cynthia Nixon that I’d liked her performance in Amadeus (where she played the maid sent in by Salieri to spy on Mozart) and she said, ‘Do you know, you’re only the second person outside my family to remember I did that part’!”

• Omid Djalili, Tour Of Duty, Grand Opera House, York, Thursday, 8pm; restricted to age 16 and upwards. Tickets are still available at £20 on 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york

Did you know?

Omid Djalili performed the opening gig at the second York Comedy Festival in June 2004 when he was introduced at the Grand Opera House as “the undisputed Les Dennis of the Middle East”.