EXCLUSIVE: Comic Omid Djalili and TV psychic debunk fake news about England's last warrior king
New Sky History TV show hosted by comic Omid Djalili and a metaphysical Sherlock Holmes discovers the gory truth behind the Battle of Bosworth
Comedian Omid Djalili is full of surprises. Especially when it comes to Donald Trump, who shares his passion to fight fake news. Only Omid’s quest is restricted to shattering just one myth - that Richard III, whose remains were discovered under a Leicester car park, was a hunchback and a tyrant.
Somewhat counterintuitively, he is hoping to rewrite history, establish the truth of what happened at the Battle of Bosworth and prove King Richard to be a hero and not a villain, with the help of a psychic, Konstantin Pavlidis. He calls him a “metaphysical Sherlock Holmes.”
But that’s Omid all over – a mass of contradictions and tales of the hilariously unexpected. A desire to debunk fake news is not the only thing he has in common with Donald Trump either …(more later!) In a rather alternative Sky History show called Battlefield Healers, Omid examines how the Battle of Bosworth - fought as part of the Wars of the Roses - changed England forever.
And Konstantin uses his powers to discover where the last king to die in battle fell and to heal the blood-soaked earth from the ghosts of a 400-year-old war.
Speaking exclusively to The Mirror, during a break from his sell-out stand-up UK tour, Namaste, Omid says the whole experience, working with spiritualists, historians and archeologists, banished his skepticism.
“We challenge peoples’ perception of Richard III. He wasn’t just some evil hunchback. He was a strong warrior,” he says, contradicting the picture of the monarch painted by William Shakespeare.
“There’s evidence that he tried to fight back against 10 or 15 soldiers until the very last moment. It will shock people when they see the post-mortem on the skeleton. I mean – they rammed a sword up his backside!”
In the show, they turn the clock back to August 22, 1485, when Welsh King Henry Tudor brought a small rebel army to face the much larger Royal army of his cousin King Richard lll in the last major battle of the Wars of the Roses - the civil war that divided England.
It took place near Albion Hill, Market Bosworth in Leicestershire, which is where the TV show’s psychic picks up powerful energies and performs a ritual healing of the land.
As well as the revelation about King Richard’s grisly end, Battlefield Healers reveals that the two hour plus battle between 16,000 odd soldiers, in an age long before television, provided entertainment for villagers. They enjoyed picnics on the edge of the field where 1,000 men were brutally killed.
Omid says: “Historians have always worked with psychics at an official level to get to the truth. It came as a surprise to me too, but when they found the remains of Richard III, it was because of a medium saying, ‘I’m getting messages that it's here’, and the council found his skeleton under a car park.”
But, he admits of the show: “This will be really controversial when it comes out – there will be many skeptics.
“I am spiritually minded, but when Konstantin was saying, ‘I'm feeling something,’ while we were filming, it was funny to me. “
READ MORE: Much-loved BBC sitcom legend you won't recognise – and what he's up to nowAnd when he was approached to take part in the show, he says: “I asked.‘Why me?’ And they said, “Because you are open-minded.’”
Psychic or not, the battlefield is an “eerie” place, according to Omid. He says: “When you go to the site, you don't have to be a medium to think, ‘My God, something bad happened here’. There are bits in the ground that feel like bones. There’s a swamp, it’s eerie, horrible.
“Then Konstantin did this whole healing ceremony and, afterwards, it felt like there was some kind of closure.”
Born in Kensington, West London, in 1965 to Iranian parents who had fled their native country, Omid says his faith made it easier to comprehend the spiritual world.
He says: “I also come from the Baha'i faith, which believes in the harmony of science and religion. I was raised with quotes like, ‘You are not a puny form. The universe is folded within you.’ Our particles are from the universe. We are literally stardust.”
And while the whole venture into mediumship and battlefields may seem like a far cry from his stand-up persona, his CV paints him as a hard man to pigeonhole. As well as being an award-winning comic, he’s appeared in Hollywood movies like Gladiator and The Mummy, and brought the house down on stage playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.
But he feared it was all over, careerwise during Covid, when he had to downsize and leave London for Ipswich in Suffolk. Seeing life at 59 as his “second chance,” he says: “The mortgage in London was too high. And I didn't think I was going to work again after Covid. I realised how non-essential stand up comics are!”
Now with his own successful production company, he’s concentrating more on films and documentaries, saying: “It’s my children’s production company.” Of his three adult offspring, he adds: “It was made clear to me, ‘This is not YOUR production company. You are the face of it, but we are equals’.
“We often have arguments on Zoom – one lives in Sicily, one’s in London, and I’m in Ipswich. Even today I mentioned something and they were pushing back. And I said, ‘I can't work with you lot.’ And they said, ‘Look, you're not funny.’ So I told them, ‘Okay, why don't you suggest something? Why don't you go win a few comedy awards?’”
He’s also tickled to be getting a new generation of fans to his gigs. “My audience is usually aged 40-75,” he says. “And so when I talk, we're on board. But more people in their 20s are coming. A friend said when they came to my Chichester gig, they heard a young woman in the bathroom saying, ‘He’s really funny. Yeah, he’s my granddad's favorite comic!”
Omid hopes the one-off show Battlefields Healers will, in time, become a series and investigate other battle sites in Europe. Turning his attention to other troubled areas, like Iran, this is another subject on which he finds himself surprisingly aligned with Donald Trump.
He says: “He is very well informed about Iran. His new secretary of state Marco Rubio gave a speech about Iran, which was so on point and brilliant. I think the Iranian regime is very scared of him, so I think it may be willing to play ball. We’re just watching it very keenly.”
Again, full of surprises, not only has Omid’s move to Ipswich been a resounding success, but it has inspired his latest venture. Joking about other unlikely additions to his CV, like going to university in Northern Ireland, he says: “It was the only one that accepted me!”
Omid also spent five years doing experimental theatre in the former Czechoslovakia. And Ipswich is now the jumping off point for a very exciting sitcom he has written involving a gallery of star talent.
Based around the University of Suffolk, it has an A-list cast and he is planning to ask local Suffolk lad and Ipswich Town supporter Ed Sheeran to do the theme tune.
"I think he probably will do it, but we're not going to officially approach him until we have the green light that we've got the series,” he explains. “We shot the pilot ourselves and we’ve got Tom Goodman-Hill who plays Darrien in Baby Reindeer, and it's directed by Matt Lipsey, who directed Ted Lasso – the biggest show on the planet.
“It's a really good sitcom, but we're keeping tight-lipped until we pitch for it in February and it gets picked up “I think we can have a fabulous second act in our lives. The world does not belong to 17 and 27-year-olds. And I think that I'm living it now – things are just kicking off for me.”
Which us brings is neatly to football Omid's first love – he's a Chelsea F.C. fan but Ipswich Town a close second, however he’s keen to stress that’s not because it’s his adopted home. “I remember speaking to a writer who said he was a football fan which surprised me,” says Omid, adopting a posh English accent.
“‘Oh yes I support Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur,’ he told me. And I said, ‘Well you’re not a football fan then, because that’s like saying you support Celtic and Rangers.’
“I've always been a Chelsea fan, but as any footie fan from the 70s and 80s will remember, Ipswich Town F.C. was everybody's second team. I’ve always had an affection for them.
“When I go, I want them to win. Then once when Ipswich played Chelsea, I was watching my favourite comic Bill Bailey at the Haymarket Theatre and alerts were coming up that Ipswich scored two goals. I was going, ‘Oh God.’ But part of me was thinking, ‘Well, good for Ipswich because they might stay up now!”
• Battlefield Healers premiers on Sky History on February 2. at 9pm. More info at www.history.co.uk
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