A few hours after talking to Dara O’Briain, I spot the comedian hanging with Hector (on, naturally enough, Hanging With Hector) on RTE.
He had told me that he’s very busy these days, and watching him dash – at least as much as his crutches would allow – from venue to venue in Edinburgh, with the carrot-haired Navan man and his crew in tow, I could see that he wasn’t exaggerating. He did four separate shows in one night.
Of course, that was in the middle of a major comedy festival, and you’d expect him to be busy. Even now, though, in the middle of freezing February, O’Briain is up to his eyeballs.
Amongst other things, he’s just finishing filming the satirical media show Mock The Week, he’s preparing for a new series of The Panel, and is also gearing up for a stand-up tour which will see him playing 55 dates across Ireland and the UK. Even this Hoot Press phone interview is his sixth of the day (“It’s the only Irish one, though, so I’ll make a special effort”).
Perhaps most importantly, though, he’s really enjoying himself. “I can’t complain,” he says. “It’s been a really good year for me. Just the last 12 months in particular. All going according to plan. I’ve been having a whale of a time.”
At this stage in his career, O’Briain can generally afford to pick and choose his gigs. For example, he’s just turned down an offer to appear on Davina – at least until he knows that it’s worth doing.
“I haven’t seen it yet,” he admits. “I was actually invited on, but I decided to turn it down because I wanted to see it first – which is always a good idea in these situations. You know, is it a car crash or not? But I actually missed it. I’ll have to check out the reviews at the weekend. She’s very good, but it’s a case of what she actually brings to it. She does a superb job of interviewing people when they come out of the Big Brother house. That’s not an easy thing to do and she hits it every time. So whether or not that technique will work with celebrities plugging things, I’m not sure.”
You’ve appeared on everything from Parkinson to Jonathan Ross. Any ambition to present that kind of TV chat show yourself?
“That kind of thing, no. If I’m doing a chat show I’d sooner be chatting with comedians. I mean, we do a bit of that on The Panel but we’re much more in control of it than we would be on a more traditional chat show.”
You’ve done a lot of television work, but always as yourself. Any interest in acting?
“Nah. People occasionally ask me to read things, but I’m like a giant ham. Or a tree. Or a brick. There’s nothing there. I have completely no emotional range. It’d be pointless trying to get me to do it, so I think I’ll stick to who I am and to what I’m doing.”
How about writing the inevitable novel?
“I don’t know if it’s all that inevitable,” he muses. “Ardal [O’Hanlon] is the only one of my circle who’s written one. Oh – and Pauline [McGlynn].”
I think Tommy Tiernan has something in a drawer somewhere...
“Ah, Tommy’s been talking about a novel for years,” he laughs. “I think he got a development deal when he won the Perrier back in 1998. But Tommy’s now gone to America to do stand-up – just for the fun of cracking a completely new country. So I wouldn’t be holding my breath waiting for the first installment of a Tommy novel. I think he’s too busy being really, really good at this. But if I ever wound up writing something, it’d be more like humorous travel pieces – which is kind of what I do anyway, except that it’s spoken.”
London-based for the last few years, there’s no sign of O’Briain making a permanent return to these shores anytime soon.
“I really love London,” he enthuses. “At the moment, I enjoy it a lot. I think I’ll be staying for a while. Mainly because it’s just a big playground if you’re a comedian. You get to work with incredible people. Plus I can go back to Ireland and work. You know, I can work in Ireland from England much easier than I can work in England from Ireland.”
He was there for the tube bombings last July, but maintains that it hasn’t made all that much difference to the city.
“There’s not much difference. You’d expect it to have become a really paranoid place like New York, but Londoners – no more than ourselves – frankly have had quite enough terrorism over the years to be fairly functional when it comes to these things. Everything was back open the next night.
“I mean when New York happened it was an enormous shock to New Yorkers – both in the scale of it and the also fact that it was the first attack on their land. But there was nothing like that here. I did a joke about the bombs going off in the club two days later. I said ‘London reacted in a tremendously London way. The entire city went, ‘Oh my God – there’s a bomb on the Piccadilly Line. Still, I can get the Victoria line.’ And essentially that was the most London joke I had. All everybody did was what they do every day that there’s a delay. They re-routed their travels. London was fine. So I’ll be staying.”
He will be making a brief return to Ireland next month when he plays three nights in Vicar Street. What can audiences expect?
“It’s essentially the show that I did in Edinburgh last year – but an expanded version. In fact, it’s the same show that I did for four nights in Vicar Street in December, so it’ll be that show again. At the heart of it is a long section about... Em, I did Room 101 this year and the show is basically all the things I didn’t get to put into Room 101. A long list of things I hate – and me roaring about them. Plus copious amounts of audience interaction. And Irish audiences are always the best for that.”