Soyib Khojayev

Soyib (Saib) Khojayev was born on 5 December 1910 in the village of Khonobod (now a town) in the Andijan region. He began his stage career in 1927 at the Hamza Theatre in Kokand and in 1928–1939 worked at the Andijan theatre, where he played Truffaldino in Gozzi's Turandot, Bobchinsky in Gogol's The Government Inspector and Kholmat in Hamza's Boy ila xizmatchi.

In 1939 he was named People's Artist of the Uzbek SSR and moved that year to Tashkent, to the Muqimiy Uzbek Musical Drama and Comedy Theatre, where he worked for the rest of his life. His roles there included Mulladust in Hamza's Maysaraning ishi, Huzurkhoja in Nurkhan, Mikola in Natalka Poltavka, Sir Toby in Twelfth Night and the butcher Vakil in Ajab savdolar.

His defining part was Toshbolta in Hamid Gulom and Manas Liyev's Toshbolta oshiq, which by the sources' account he played about 1,500 times. A comic actor in the tradition of the folk qiziqchi, he used satire, mimicry, wordplay and the Andijan dialect in his roles.

In cinema he mostly played episodic and supporting parts, occasionally leads. He is remembered as Ahmadjon in the 1964 comedy Yor-yor (Russian title Where Are You, My Zulfiya?), with Bakhtiyor Ikhtiyorov as his son, as Zukhurov in Plus One (1967) and as the Khan in the TV film The Seventh Jinn (1976). He was a regular on Tashkent television programmes and the radio magazine Tabassum.

He died on 3 May 1982 and was buried at the Chigatay cemetery in Tashkent. He held the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and, posthumously in 2003, the Order «Buyuk xizmatlari uchun». A stamp marking the centenary of his birth appeared in 2010, and the play «Soyibxoja operatsiyasi» (1999) is dedicated to him.