O Briain About The Gills

Chatting to Hot Press from a hotel somewhere in the depths of the UK, Dara O Briain is a little confused, at least initially. But that's probably to be expected. He's just started a major tour, including several dates at Vicar Street and a very special appearance in the big top during this year's superbly appointed Live at the Marquee festival.

"This is my first time," he says of the latter. "I'm naturally wary of giant tents, but Des Bishop had a fantastic time there and Tommy Tiernan does as well and speaks very highly of it. But the last giant tent I did… at the start of it you can see every face in the room, because it's a tent and it doesn't block out light, but by the end of it it's completely dark, so it's really weird – and quite atmospheric."
For the festival O Briain is planning to take a slightly different approach.
"It's the biggest room on the tour, so I may do a lot less audience chat than I usually do," he says, before turning inquisitive. "I don't think people who've bought tickets for me will necessarily have bought tickets for some of the other shows. Who else is on?"
Well, there's Megadeth, for one.
"Megadeth! If there was a Venn diagram where you draw an intersection of my fans and Megadeth's, the grey area between the two is pretty small, I suspect. Oh wow! I have to compete with Megadeth! Who else?"
JLS.
"Okay, I can take JLS!"
Snoop Dogg.
"Snoop! When's Snoop there? The fifth of July? Ah, I'll be well gone by then. We're all on different nights, so it's not like there'd be a green room with me, Megadeth and Snoop. Jesus, I'd love to hang out with Snoop! How great would that be? Snoop's entourage, I can only imagine, is so much better than mine."
Excuse us, you have an entourage. Really?
"Er, no. I think I have a couple of cousins coming along to the gig," he confesses. "Oh my God, Snoop's entourage, ah man! What'll happen is, I'll go there and the hot tub will be set up for Snoop, and it'll just be me in the hot tub on my own. Me with a bottle of Cristal going, 'This is not as much fun as when Snoop is here'."
In addition to his appearance at the Live at the Marquee, O Briain will be touring around Ireland and the UK, during which the superstar stand-up will play to 200,000 people.
"This is the fifth major tour that I've done," he tells us. "Myself and my tour manager are like a little married couple now, we're beyond the point where we even have to talk. We just listen to the radio quietly as we go from town to town.
"I wrote a book about touring [Tickling the English] and I read a review of it on Amazon, which you shouldn't do but I did, and there was somebody going, 'How can you live like this? Who can go from town to town like this?' But it's just what you do."
So what can we expect from the new show?
"Oh God, I'm always a little wary of listing off topics in case people go, 'Hmm, I'm not sure I want to see a show about that'. It's generally whimsy and misadventure. It's my usual messing around with the audience and things I've got wrong and fucked up over the year."
Talking of getting things wrong – or at least getting into hot water – Dara has recently been in the papers defending his friend and fellow comedian, Frankie Boyle, who has annoyed the BBC, yet again, this time by describing Palestine as a cake being "punched to pieces by a very angry Jew". Are there any topics that O Briain thinks comics should stay away from?
"I think it depends how you do it. There are bad jokes, subjects which are handled clumsily and insensitively and crassly. Don't get me wrong – I'm not saying all bets are off. There is taste and decency, but how you approach a subject is a different thing.
"To me comedy is speech and you wouldn't dream of telling people 'You can't discuss this topic, you're not even allowed to address this'. That applies as much to comedians as it does to people in conversations. Comedy is basically a conversation performed. Oh I'm just going to write that down – I'll have it put on a tee shirt."
The three topics most likely to cause offence are of course, sex, religion and politics. So what's O Briain's take on the UK election result?
"What was intriguing more than anything else was the level of conniption fit that the media were having, as if this was the craziest election result ever delivered. All of the western world, bar America, does coalitions semi-regularly. Over here it was, 'How can this possibly be? How can they even talk to each other? They've debated against each other! These are amazing times!' And you're going, 'Lads, lads, across Europe and in almost every country in the world they can handle coalitions'. It shows a certain immaturity in the British political system that they found it so weird."