ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, imagine what would have happened if Saddam Hussein had turned up on your doorstep and announced he was staying for dinner, if you lived in Iraq.  That’s the premise of a new play, Dinner with Saddam, set on the eve of the invasion in March 2003.  The man tasked with bringing the Iraqi dictator back to life is our own Steven Berkoff, he’s with me now.  A very good morning to you Steven, an honour to see you.  Now tell us, I gave a brief outline but this is based on real events and it’s the day that shock and awe, as it was called, broke out.  

STEVEN BERKOFF: Yes, it’s a strange piece, it’s a very inventive play, it’s something that very few people know about but he was the number one target for the CIA, he was called the Ace of Spades.  So he felt that he couldn’t stay in one of his palaces, that he would be targeted too easily so what he did was he got his minders and his soldiers to go round the town, go round Baghdad, find a suitable house with a very normal type of family, knock on the door and say “We’d like to have Saddam Hussein stay with you in your house tonight, you have a good bedroom, clean sheets, good food.”  And they look around, test it and if it’s all right he stays, so he was to stay nearly every night at a different house. So that’s the premise of the play in which a demon suddenly invades your house and is in it and it’s a fascinating piece by …

DM: But you don’t have a lot of choice though do you, when Saddam turns up at the doorstep.  Of course Iraq at the time had been through 12 or 13 years of sanctions and he turned up there presumably with his own food and booze.

STEVEN BERKOFF: Oh yes, that’s what he used to do, carry his own food with him because he didn’t want to impose on the people and it’s a fascinating story, the way he expresses himself and tell us, through Tony Horowitz who is the writer, of how he saved the Iraqi nation and he’s proud and he feels he has done a great deal and then through the play we learn a lot of things that I was completely unaware of.  The fact that he was a very secular leader, that he introduced women to universities, they should be free to study and the fact that the Americans were supplying him with all sorts of germ warfare – anthrax, bubonic plague, all these things come out in the play.  

DM: All the things that went on in the Iran Iraq war.  Do you feel some sympathy for him then?  

STEVEN BERKOFF: You cannot help but feel sympathy because although he was reckless in the end, demonic, he is a psychotic at the same time you feel sympathy for a villain because they think what they are doing is right and they think what they are doing is for the benefit of the Iraqi people and there is something about him resisting influence, resisting the Americans or the British trying to tell him what to do and the more they tried to do that, the more he becomes belligerent.  

DM: We should say this is a comedy though, you are playing all that – it all sounds quite deep so far but you’re playing that for laughs.  

STEVEN BERKOFF: Well it’s in two sections, it’s very unique.  The set is divided into two, you see the Iraqi family, beautifully played by the actors and they are in a situation of tremendous stress because they’re expecting him which has all sorts of comic repercussions because the more you are frightened of something happening, the more things go belly upwards.  Then finally he comes and then the play changes and we see him express himself, tell us what he believes, what he feels and it’s fascinating and you can see it today in the Middle East today, there are these kind of dictators continually evolving, it’s frightening.  

DM: Are you firmly in the camp of the devil having the best tunes then?  You have been drawn to a few villains in the past, playing them.  

STEVEN BERKOFF: Well yes, the devil has the best tunes because the devil is the only person who resists any form of authority.  We all listen to authority, we obey the law, we obey our parents, we go to church and we obey the Bible and the Ten Commandments.  The devil completely refutes all of that, he obeys his instinct and that’s why we find gangsters fascinating.  Yes, the devil does have the best tunes, in the Middle East today this is going on all the time.  

DM: I know you are a keen observer of the political situation, this has made you think much more about Iraq I suppose.  Which camp are you in when it comes to the argument that Iraq is better off without Saddam or that it would have been better if he had stayed?

STEVEN BERKOFF: It is in a shocking state now because there is no law and order.  What Saddam Hussein gave it was he gave it law and he gave it a structure and he gave it an Establishment and people were free and they were unafraid.  Today people cannot walk down the street, they are full of fear until we have a new society.  But talking about that, also what worries me is the Middle East is a powder keg ready to go up and also in Israel which I love Israel, I think it is one of the greatest races in the world but under the present Prime Minister Netanyahu they are in a very, very precarious spot.  So it reminds me a little bit of Saddam Hussein.  Of course it is very different, it is a democracy but there is the same mindless self-obsession which is really frightening.  

DM: Steven Berkoff, great to see you as ever. Best of luck with the play, and let me tell you Dinner With Saddam is on now at the Menier Chocolate Factory.