Omid Djalili:'How many other small, fat , bald men get their own show?'

Omid Djalili is one of Britain’s most popular stand-up comics, as well as a star of film and TV. Not bad for an Iranian boy who failed his A levels – three times – and was rejected by 16 drama schools, writes Deborah Ross...

When I arrive at the comedian Omid Djalili's house in nicely tree-lined East Sheen, south- west London, it's his wife, Annabel, who answers the door. Omid's just popped out for milk, she says. He'll only be a tick. They've just returned from a few days in Devon with the children – they have three; the oldest is 15 – and the fridge is empty. Come in, come in. Cup of tea? She puts the kettle on. We chat for a bit. She is lovely; very pretty and smiley. Then Omid returns. "Hello, Omid," I say. "Milk?" asks Annabel hopefully. Omid opens his plastic carrier. There is apple juice. There is a newspaper. There is no milk. "I forgot," he says. "Oh, Omid," we both say in the way women do when they wish to capture centuries of female disappointment. Omid looks sheepish and smiles that smile, the one that says: "Please don't hit me, clever ladies who would get milk if they were sent out for it."

I am minded to stay in the kitchen with Annabel to talk about why men cannot do the one simple thing you have asked them to do (it's not my favourite subject – I'm just determined to get to the bottom of it one day) but Omid is ushering me into the living room with my black tea. That is: tea, which is black, there being no milk. Nice.

The house is 1920s and big but not fancy, with a living room that's all old rugs and comfy sofas. Omid says he doesn't do fancy. "I don't have extravagant tastes. I don't buy fancy cars. I'm not ostentatious. Buying a nice house in East Sheen was really pushing it for me." Having grown up without money, he now worries about his kids growing up with it, worries that they're becoming "bloody rich twats". The other day he overheard them talking about the houses they would like to live in when they were older and so he said: "Not with my money, you won't." He adds: "I saw my parents work desperately hard."

He settles on to a sofa, feet up, yawns, then yawns again. I'm keeping you up, I say. He says he's sorry, he's knackered. He's mid-tour plus has just driven the four hours back from Devon. He says that once, returning from a gig in Liverpool, he was so tired while driving down the motorway he hallucinated pterodactyls flying around his head that he had to flap away. He was eventually stopped by the police who asked him: "How fast do you think you were going, sir?" He said: "100mph?" No, they told him, "you were going 10mph in the middle lane while slapping yourself." They were nice, though, the cops. "They sat in the car with me while I had a little rest." He is amazed that "more comedians don't die on the road". I say I'm amazed more can't remember milk. Honestly, we send you out to do one simple thing...

He is a big man, hefty, but not Channel 5 freakomentary fat, although the way he speaks about himself you'd think he was. When I ask him if he still has a personal trainer he says: "I have to, I'm so heavy." I tell him he's not that heavy. Come off it. He disagrees: "I'm deceptively heavy. I'm 15-and-a-half stone, four stone overweight." He's not sure what the problem is, but thinks it might be food. "I eat too much on tour, because of the stress. It's comfort eating. It's soporific." What can't you resist more than anything? "A bowl of chips." He does like to cook, yes, and particularly Iranian dishes "full of walnuts and pomegranates".

Born in London to Iranian parents, he is that rare thing: a comedian in the West who, having a Middle Eastern background, can tell jokes about the Middle East. But although culture and ethnicity – as well as some wonderfully silly dancing – are at the core of his act, I do think he is mostly funny just because he is just funny. I like his joke about the Middle Eastern equivalent of our knock-knock jokes. "It's the Floomph, Floomph joke. Floomph, Floomph? That's someone knocking on a tent." That said, he often will make a point: "An asylum seeker arrives at Dover. 'Why are you here?' asks the customs officer. 'My house was bombed,' comes the reply. 'No, why are you really here.' 'Um... because I've always wanted to work in a chip shop in Basingstoke?'"

Success is good, and the money is good, but he's not in it for the money or the fame. "For me, it's always been about respect." He's failed a lot, and has been rejected a lot. He took three A-levels three times and failed them all. He was basically booted out of school. He was refused a place by 16 – 16! – drama schools. He says he's had to fight all the way to get to where he is with his sell-out tours, film roles and his own BBC sketch show. "How many other small, fat, bald men get their own TV shows?" he asks. "Kojak?" I suggest. "Apart from Kojak," he says.

One of his most recent film roles was in the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which I could not make head nor tail of. What was it about, Omid? He says he has no idea. He took the part because he was told he'd get to do a scene with Keith Richards. He adds: "I didn't understand the script or even the scene I was in! I'd ask the others: do you know what this is about? They'd say: no idea. Just shut up and do it." He is most proud of his performance as Picasso in the film Modigliani, although wishes he had been given more time to lose weight. "I was Picasso in his porkadelic phase."

His parents moved to London in 1957 – Omid was born eight years later – where his father, Ahmad, worked as a journalist for the Iranian newspaper Kayhan. However, this career came to a sudden end with the Islamic revolution in 1979 and the new regime's official campaign of persecution against the followers of the Baha'i faith, which include Omid and his family. To earn money, his parents turned their small Kensington mansion-block flat into a sort of pension for sick Iranians who had travelled to Harley Street for medical treatment.

"Iranians don't like staying in hotels. They want to stay with families. So my parents would take them in and cook for them and translate for them and take them to their appointments." Omid rarely, if ever, bought friends home from school. "Too embarrassing and too complicated. They'd want to know why a sick old man was wandering around in his pyjamas at four in the afternoon and I'd have to explain." He didn't have his own bedroom – "bedrooms were money" – so slept in the lounge. When I ask about siblings he says: "I have an older sister and brother who shared a room and escaped as quickly as they could." His mother, Parveneh, was also a dressmaker. What was her style? "Very flamboyant, very few clients," he says.

He went to trendy Holland Park school which is where, he thinks, he first learnt that being funny could feel really, really good. In his first year he wrote a sketch for his classmates that his teacher suggested he perform in front of the whole school. The sketch involved a monster lying under a blanket that no one could look at because the monster was so ugly that if you did look at him, you'd die. He primed a few kids to come up on stage, lift a corner of the blanket, then scream and drop dead. He then asked the deputy head to come and have a look but when the deputy head did so, the monster died, "because the head was so ugly". The sixth formers, he says, "roared with laughter and I felt like a rock star".

Alas, Omid did not make it to the sixth form himself. He was expelled, although never formally. The head – perhaps the deputy had been promoted and didn't think he was that ugly – just said: "Please don't come back." Why? "I was told I was disruptive. I was a real tearaway. I'd run into the staff room, take down my trousers, play the piano and then run out again." He went to some kind of college to take his A levels (English, Economics, French) which he thought he could do in a year. He could not. "I failed in January, took them again in June, and then again the next January." All in all, he has worked out that "I failed 49 separate papers". Omid, I say, you're obviously a smart guy, so what is with all this failing, already?

He says it was probably his chaotic family life; he could never get down to any studying at home because he was constantly being asked to drop everything and go and pick someone up at the airport, or drop everything so he could go and translate for someone. Your parents weren't interested in your education? No, he says. I say that's weird. Usually immigrant parents are mad for their children's education; mad for them to become doctors and lawyers so the whole family can feel somehow legitimised. This is true for some, he says, but not for him. Weirder still, he says, he comes from a background of doctors and lawyers on both sides. There was an actor though; his mother's brother. "He married a Mormon, went to live in Utah, and had a small part in Starsky and Hutch. Unfortunately, he died young, but when I said I wanted to be an actor, she encouraged it." And your dad? "He paid no attention until I started making money."

He didn't take his failures lightly. When his A-level results would come in the post he would implore: "Please let it be an A, maybe a B, and it would always say 'unclassified'." Each time, he'd get the results investigated but "they were always right". In the end, "I was so desperate to go to university I lied on my UCCA form, putting down Bs and Cs instead of Es and Fs." This led him to an English and Theatre Studies degree at the University of Ulster. When he graduated, pretty much top of his year, he confessed but was not run out of town. "They said that I obviously deserved to be there."

Next, all those auditions for the drama schools. Sixteen! Maybe you were crap, I suggest. He didn't think so, he says. He even got to the point where he phoned one school up to ask: why? They sent him a letter saying "that although I was very talented they also thought I was very arrogant". He probably is a bit arrogant – he couldn't believe his A-level results, he couldn't believe anyone would turn him down – but still. Do actors require humility? "I think you do have to be quite malleable and I was too much the finished article."

Luckily, at around this time, he met Annabel (Knight, an actress and playwright) and together they moved to the Czech Republic where they became involved in experimental theatre. Their company, In Theatre, was highly rated and travelled extensively. "I did think: this is it. This is what my life is going to be." But he felt he had to come back to London in 1995 when his mother died because "my father took it very hard, and was lonely". What does Ahmad think of his TV, movie and stand-up star of a son? "He does like the fame by association. He's 84 and says he has a lot of women in their sixties and seventies flirting with him."

I say I don't see where the stand-up comes into all this. He says it was Annabel, who just kind of saw it in him, and persuaded him to put something together for the Edinburgh Festival. You have her to thank for all this yet you can't remember to get milk? Omid, you should be ashamed. "I got apple juice!" he protests.

Anyway, our time is nearly up. He's got to get to Salisbury for a gig. Omid kindly gives me a lift to Richmond station, wearing a peaked cap that makes him look all cheeky. He says his life seems fantastic to him now, as if it is happening to someone else. He may be considerably more vulnerable than he cares to let on. Still, this is no excuse for not doing that one simple thing.

Never is, never will be.