Dictators are ludicrous characters, and, you know, in my career and in my life, I've always enjoyed sort of inhabiting these ludicrous, larger-than-life characters that somehow exist in the real world.

Of his former pupil Gaulier says: "He was a good clown full of spirit". On 11 December 2006 a Los Angeles judge denied the pair a restraining order to remove them from the film. The lawsuit was dismissed in February 2007.

At the 2012 British Comedy Awards Baron Cohen received the Outstanding Achievement Award. After the release of Borat Baron Cohen stated that because the public had become too familiar with the characters he would retire Borat and Ali G.