I was talking to my therapist yesterday - not that kind of therapist, this was one for a bad finger – and she said she liked comedy. Who is your favourite? I inevitably asked. "Dara Ó Briain," she said, quick as a flash. She had been at the same Hammersmith gig on his Crowd Tickler tour as me and just like me was blown away by his wit, intelligence and sheer speed of thought. In fact she was clearly a committed fan. She chatted about his previous shows and said that this was his best one yet. So don't take it from me, take it from my therapist. The tour continues into 2016 including continental dates, details here. And if you can't make it there will be a live DVD out in November. This review first appeared in the Evening Standard.
Almost four thousand fans squeezed into the Apollo to see Dara Ó Briain, but I doubt any were thinking as quickly as the man on stage. Dara Ó Briain has risen to comedy’s top table thanks to a superfit mind that is so fast you have to wear your best trainers to keep up with it.
The effort is worth it. In Crowd Tickler, he opens with his trademark tic of gently picking on the front row. On this occasion, a man from Orpington was teased for claiming to come from New York, while on encountering a bookmaker the imposing Irishman responded immediately with, “What were the chances of that?” It was when he moved on to his scripted material, however, that the fun really started. Whether discussing living in nearby Chiswick, the nuances of what length of stockings men find sexy or the inexorable rise of pulled pork, Ó Briain hit successive bullseyes.
As a regular science programme presenter, it was unsurprising that he combined boffin and populism. One highlight found him musing on anthropomorphism and prompting moist eyes over the fate of a tunnelling machine called “Chuggy”. Elsewhere, he blamed the helium shortage on children demanding SpongeBob SquarePants balloons.
At the start, he explained that the show was being filmed for DVD and that people who laugh on the inside were of little use. The comment was superfluous. This was a night of laughs loud enough to wake Ó Briain’s family in Chiswick.
