Omid Djalili is in the record books for helping to raise 11 million dollars in under an hour at a charity event in Doha in 2006.

The British Iranian comic had been invited to provide some entertainment to a room of dignitaries including Bill Clinton, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the ruling Arab sheikhs.

He says the secret was knob jokes.

“The emir kept saying, ‘We love the d**k joke. More d**k joke.’ I went back on to do another five minutes and they were absolutely p***ing themselves.”

He was also invited back a year later by royal appointment to do another set. “They said, ‘Last time one joke in five minutes. This time whole 20 minutes d**k joke. No more politics rubbish, just d**k joke.’”

The emirs are not exposed to much stand-up comedy. Most public speaking is stiff and from behind a lectern – not a man comparing his parts to a question mark and thus the difficulty of peeing.

“For me to talk about my private parts was the most ludicrous and hilarious thing I could do.

“But a couple of million for charity for a knob joke isn’t bad.”

Before he tackles a month-long run of shows in May at the Leicester Square theatre in Soho, he will be in Brighton to do a one-off show with Jo Brand in aid of the Burma Campaign.

As well as supporting charity, he says such events are a good opportunity to flex one’s creative muscles and to look back at the things that mean something.

“I’m trying to look at stuff that is meaningful to me because stand-up comedy has to be authentic. It is a real challenge. I have this thing in May and Brighton will be a great place to start this process of reinventing myself.”

Part of the reason is he’s been doing a lot of TV work, and writing gags to fit a show means having to compromise.

For The Omid Djalili Show, which ran for two series on the BBC in 2007 and 2009, he had to write to brief.

Then there is the fact that once you’ve had a few winners it’s hard to move on.

“People get p***ed off if I don’t include Godzilla impression or some routine with a Nigerian voice, so I pepper it in to keep people happy.

“I feel like I’m one of those bands that goes around and plays one of the songs people have heard – Careless Whisper or Club Tropicana – and then do a whole bunch of other s*** that is not funny and they’ve not heard.”

Rubbing people up the wrong way is something Djalili and Brand have both done recently. They appeared together on ITV’s diving reality show Splash! – whose expert mentor Tom Daley was not the only one to face criticism.

“I felt it was a brilliant trick to have her [Brand] on there. What does she know about diving? I know more about diving than she does.

“But that’s the hook. People have been reeled in to watch, so they are all sat there shaking their heads, thinking, ‘I can do it better than her. I can talk about diving better than them.’ Well, that’s the trick to get you watching.”

Djalili’s TV credits are extensive. They range from Jack Dee’s Lead Balloon to joining Dylan Moran in Black Books to Have I Got News For You. He even starred in a run of ads for Moneysupermarket.com, which made a tasty angle for the tabloids when he was banned from driving last year).

He has worked on American TV, too, in part thanks to his long list of cinema credits which includes roles in Gladiator, The Mummy, Notting Hill and Pirates Of The Caribbean.

He believes his US TV work is his best.

The Paul Reiser show was a sitcom starring Reiser, Helen Hunt, who directed it, and Larry David. Despite the cast, the show was soon pulled.

“It was good fun. It was like a paid holiday for nine weeks. We did seven episodes of a show but only two got shown. I had an absolute ball doing them but it is work that no one is ever going to see. The sad thing is it was good and probably some of the funniest stuff I have ever done.”

Another show that never made it across the Atlantic is Whoopi. Djalili starred as Nasim, an Iranian aide to producer and star Whoopi Goldberg’s hard-drinking, chain-smoking, one-hit wonder turned mouthy hotelier, Mavis Rae.

“Whoopi is a real force of nature and very funny. I’ll talk about that experience in Brighton. There is some material I want to revisit about that show because the whole Hollywood experience is fascinating.”

He remembers Robert Redford as a man with a presidential air and was not surprised on hearing Bill Clinton was given tapes of Redford to watch to copy his public speaking.

“Redford is a real old-school Hollywood star. When he walks into a room everyone stands up. It’s rare someone has that kind of charisma. It’s the aspects in people you feel you don’t have that make you starstruck.”

Clinton, on the other hand, nicked one of Djalili’s jokes to raise money for the tsunami disaster victims – and ruined it.

“There was a particular circumcision joke, which was so personal I don’t know how he thought he could make that his own really.

“It’s a bog-standard joke that I’m circumcised and I don’t think it’s good that I speak to my therapist about that, because all of my psychological problems stem from the fact I have a third of my penis removed.

“The guy says all Iranians have a third removed. And I say I know, but not the third in the middle.”

  • Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Church Street, Wednesday, March 6. Starts 8pm, tickets £18. Call 01273 709709