Latest news with #DaraÓBriain
The Irish Sun
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
‘A hill I would die on' – Irritated Dara O Briain suggests change to GAA's Hawk-Eye system after watching All-Ireland
IRISH comedian Dara Ó Briain has called for the GAA to change a major flaw in Hawk-Eye following All-Ireland hurling final. 3 The 53-year-old is not happy with Hawk-Eye displaying the word 'TÁ' 3 The former Wicklow minor hurler is also not happy with the use of 'NÍL' 3 Dara Ó Briain joined BBC 2's coverage of the All-Ireland Final back in 2023 The use of Hawk-Eye in Hawk-Eye is a ball-tracking technology used to verify scores in both hurling and Gaelic football. When the system shows that the ball or sliotar was between the posts it displays the message 'TÁ', where as when the shot has gone wide it displays 'NÍL'. The fluent Irish speaker has hit out at 'TÁ' and 'NÍL' being displayed as he believes there are more grammar appropriate messages that could be used instead. Read more on GAA The Bray native said: "The Hill I would Die On: it should be 'Sea/Ní Shea' on Hawkeye in Croke Park, not 'Tá/Níl'. In the Irish language 'Tá' generally translates to 'is' or 'are' as it comes from the very 'to be' where as 'Sea' is more of an affirmation but closer to a direct translation for 'yes'. Likewise, 'Níl' would be the negative version of 'Tá' so 'Ní Shea' may be a more appropriate substitute. The former Most read in GAA Hurling "After a VERY passionate debate on this, I am now doubling down and demanding it be 'Cuilín' or 'Ar Foraíol.' "Both of which terms I love and should be in common usage. I feel this is the compromise solution we can all get behind and that's the end of the matter." Henry Shefflin picks RTE Sunday Game Hurler of the Year but wants no blame for selection for best 15 picks With 'Cuilín' being the word adopted in the Irish language for 'point' and 'Ar Foraíol' translating to 'wide', it could be the ideal compromise with no direct translations of 'yes' or 'no' in the Irish language. Despite this topic being heavily debated, it is unlikely that the 'TÁ' and 'NÍL' messages will change as they've been in place since Hawk-Eye's inception in May 2013 and have been criticised ever since.
Irish Examiner
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Dara Ó Briain review: Master comedian entertains Cork with conclusion to adoption story
Comedian Dara Ó Briain returned to Cork's Live at the Marquee on Sunday night, literally tripping over his feet in his eagerness to get centre stage. There was rapturous applause from an audience happy to see the Bray funnyman return to the city. He too was thrilled to be 'back in the tent' which was now slightly repositioned so it's 'the new Marquee, like the old Marquee but closer to a cement factory". This is exclusive subscriber content. Already a subscriber? Sign in Take us with you this summer. Annual €130€65 Best value Monthly €12€6 / month
Irish Times
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Angela Scanlon: ‘I was the class clown ... Now I don't feel like I have anything to prove any more'
'My fiery seven-year-old is driving me crazy.' These are some of the first words out of Angela Scanlon's mouth when she jumps on to our Zoom call. She's running late, striding home from the school run, headphones on, hair an afterthought, looking more like a student than the sophisticate we're used to seeing on our television screens. You could never accuse Scanlon of not showing up as her real self. I'm immediately disarmed and laugh out loud, having expected an immaculately styled Scanlon to appear in a meticulously curated corner of her home; she is, after all, a former stylist and host of a home makeover TV show. But cool, calm and collected isn't Scanlon's vibe. Instead, the 41-year-old fizzes – with ideas, opinions, advice, gratitude and, most of all, good humour. Scanlon is a chatterbox, speaking as if she has a word count to hit by midday. To say she has great energy is an understatement. She comes across as irrepressible and it's not for nothing that the Meath native is following in the footsteps of some of Ireland's most revered broadcasters, from Terry Wogan and Dara Ó Briain to Graham Norton . Scanlon is currently a regular fixture on British TV and radio. She presents prime time shows including Your Home Made Perfect and she took over Norton's highly coveted Saturday and Sunday morning slot on Virgin Radio UK when the Corkonian decided to reclaim his weekends last year. [ Angela Scanlon to take over Graham Norton's weekend Virgin Radio UK show Opens in new window ] She is quick to make clear that she's not trying to replicate Norton's style. 'The truth is that I sit in that chair, but I'm not trying to be Graham Norton. Good luck to you if you are. It's an honour to have been given the opportunity to step into those shoes, but mine are definitely a different shade.' Shoes aside, Scanlon's feet are now firmly under that table, with the station's content director Mike Cass remarking on the amount of great listener feedback the Irishwoman has received since taking over Norton's headset in April 2024. READ MORE Ireland's best-known redhead is veering towards national treasure status, not just here, but across the water, helped by her dazzling turn on one of the BBC's most-watched shows, Strictly Come Dancing, in 2023. Scanlon finished sixth, proving herself to be a terrific dancer – her Charleston was declared by judge Anton du Beke to be 'the best dance of the series' – and winning over audiences with her lively, no-nonsense personality. In a season that boasted the usual line-up of big names (Krishnan Guru-Murthy), big personalities (Layton Williams) and big talents (Angela Rippon), her wicked sense of humour and self-deprecating charm cut through, rivalling Strictly co-host Claudia Winkleman's relatability and natural rapport. All of this alongside being mum to 'fiery' seven-year-old Ruby and three-year-old Marnie. 'Raising girls to be independent, confident women has its challenges,' she remarks wryly. 'You want them to be spirited and feisty until you're dealing with a furious kid at the school gate who's got big ideas and big emotions, and you're late for the train.' In the next breath, Scanlon confirms that both of her daughters are 'quite extra' and I instantly think, like mother, like daughter. Scanlon is pretty extra herself. A quick scroll through her Instagram feed and you'll see Scanlon in full comedic form, giving a tongue-and-cheek cooking demo in a strapless feathered top, performing outrageous dance moves in the middle of her livingroom or sliding out of her bedroom door down a staircase, headfirst in the grip of Monday morning malaise. Angela Scanlon. Photograph: Sarah Brick It's surprising to learn she studied business at TU Dublin rather than drama when she finished secondary school in Dunshaughlin. 'It never dawned on me as a kid,' she explains. 'I love the performance side of what I do now, but it almost happened accidentally, to be honest. My dad was a builder and he started a company and my mother worked alongside him. They were from the west of Ireland. I didn't know anyone in RTÉ; the whole media world just wasn't on my radar.' She admits that, looking back, there were signs of a performative side. 'There are certainly plenty of photographs of me dressed as a clown,' she says laughing. 'I suppose I was the class clown, though I don't think I was always comfortable in that role. But I think I've made peace with that side of me now. I just don't feel like I have anything to prove any more.' There's a side of me that's always pushing and sometimes not in a healthy way. But I've learned to kind of enjoy that, as long as I can tell myself to sit the f**k down every so often — Angela Scanlon She describes herself as 'really content', attributing it to a newfound confidence. 'Or maybe it's just because I've taken up gardening,' she interjects with characteristic playfulness. 'I feel really energised and confident in a way that maybe I faked before. I really know what I'm doing. I've hosted plenty of shows, so I feel like I've got the credentials and the experience. 'A lot of it always felt natural to me, but I think maybe I was fudging the craft and the technical side before. But now, I feel like, no, I know how to do this. I'm not faking it any more.' She adds quickly: 'It's not a very Irish thing, though, is it? To be like, I deserve this.' Scanlon has worked hard for it. Her CV is lengthy, spanning more than a decade of prime-time presenting slots on TV and radio, and guest appearances on television favourites such as Richard Osman's House of Games and The Great British Bake Off's spin-off, An Extra Slice. Her presenting gigs reflect her range: RTÉ's travel show Getaways and Saturday night chatshow Ask me Anything, Channel 4's Sunday Brunch and BBC's Robot Wars, World's Oldest Family, Your Garden made Perfect and The Noughties. She's also reported from the Baftas red carpet and hosted London Fashion Weekend. Fashion, interiors, comedy, documentary – Scanlon has done them all. Besides the TV and radio credits, Scanlon also has her own jewellery label, frkl , which she launched three years ago (she's wearing a frkl necklace in this photo shoot, along with pink platform Crocs by Simone Rocha). 'There's a side of me that's always pushing and sometimes not in a healthy way,' she admits. 'But I've learned to kind of enjoy that, as long as I can tell myself to sit the f**k down every so often.' It's fortunate then that her latest project involves a comfortable sofa. Get a Grip is Scanlon's new podcast, which she hosts with ex-MTV Geordie Shore reality TV star and winner of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, Vicky Pattison. The pair met on a panel show seven years ago and Scanlon says she was struck by Pattison's wit and intelligence. 'There've been a lot of judgments made about Vicky – about how she started out and where she's come from – but I just remember being so impressed by her and thinking, she's a bit of me. I loved her from the start.' 'Natural chemistry': Get A Grip co-hosts Angela Scanlon (right) and Vicky Pattison. Photograph: Amanda Akokhia Pattison was a guest on Scanlon's previous podcast, Thanks A Million, in 2022 and the Irish broadcaster appeared on Pattison's, The Secret To, a year later. 'They felt like standout episodes for both of us,' explains Scanlon, 'because we had a very natural chemistry. That, and the fact that I'd been wanting to do something along with someone else as opposed to solo, just made me think that it would work.' The podcast is described as 'the ultimate group chat' where 'speaking up, standing your ground and taking up space are non-negotiable' and explores everything from 'motherhood and navigating newly-wed life to pop culture, internet drama and much more'. Although only six episodes in, Scanlon says it's already evolving. 'From the off, it's gone from being solely about pop culture to really personal topics and serious issues. I mean, we definitely talk about Kris Jenner's face – or her new face, at least – and the Beckham family feud, or whatever's on people's minds, but we also chat about issues that are especially pertinent to women on any given day, like caring for elderly parents or talking down your seven-year-old.' Get A Grip: Vicky Pattison and Angela Scanlon's podcast has ranked ahead of the wildly successful How To Fail by Elizabeth Day and The Blindboy Podcast. Photograph: Amanda Akokhia Scanlon has spoken emotionally on the podcast about her own experience of having an eating disorder, Pattison has revealed the trauma caused by years of misdiagnosis of PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) and the pair have railed against social media algorithms targeting vulnerable teenagers. But to give you the full 360, they've also talked about something called the 'boob gooch' (episode 3), soggy Spanx and kebab-scented perfume. The show continually flips from light to dark and Scanlon believes this key change is where the podcast's power lies. 'I think Irish people have that ability to go really close to the flame and then just do a little U-turn before it gets too much,' she says. 'I've shied away from that open vulnerability and sincerity sometimes, so I've been learning to let that out a bit more publicly.' Another motivation for joining forces with Pattison was a desire 'to have two heavily accented women on a podcast who are different in many ways but also have a commonality.' Representation is a theme that has influenced Scanlon's work from early on. In 2013, the documentary she wrote and presented, Oi Ginger!, examined prejudice and stereotypes around redheads and was an early indication of the broadcaster's deftness at tackling a serious subject with endearing cheekiness, while her follow-up documentary, Full Frontal, a year later tackled Irish people's nervousness of nudity. Last week, Get a Grip was ranked 56 on the Apple Ireland podcast chart, ahead of the wildly successful How To Fail by Elizabeth Day and The Blindboy Podcast. It's early days, but Get A Grip seems to be finding its niche and Scanlon believes the longform format really works for this kind of girls' chat set-up. 'It just allows for a bit more space and for the full picture of a person. It allows all the complexities we embody as women to spill out and I think that's really important and I also think that's what women are responding to.' It's easy to respond positively to Scanlon. She's generous with her time and self-effacing in her tone, easy to talk to and interesting to listen to. She seems like a genuinely nice person to be around. One of four girls growing up, Scanlon admits she was never acutely aware that there were differences between how, where and with whom boys and girls hung out. 'I wasn't familiar with the idea that boys can do this and girls can do that, or that girls should do this and boys shouldn't. Having three sisters and no brothers, I didn't have that frame of reference,' she says. [ If Angela Scanlon offers to take you to your forever home, do not get in the car. It's a Goodfellas situation Opens in new window ] 'I became aware of it much later than my friends so I remember being quite ballsy. When friends of mine would doubt whether they could do something, my response was always, 'Of course you can. What are you waiting for? You have this idea, go do it. How can I help?' I've always had a fire to push myself and others. That voice has become louder because I've realised more and more how women have been treated. For loads of different reasons, women have always had to hold back or shrink a little.' Scanlon's desire for others to just be themselves often gives her inspiration for her comedy skits. 'I do a series on Instagram called Things I Love That My Husband Hates. Clearly, it's a joke; I mean, I started off with pantaloons. But it seems to have caught fire and people are really responding to it. It's firing up other people to think, 'F**ck it. I'm going to wear whatever the hell I want.' 'Obviously, it has nothing really to do with husbands and what they like or don't like,' she adds, confessing that her own husband Rory is 'frankly unsurprised and slightly amused by whatever I wear.' After 11 years of marriage, Scanlon reveals drily, 'he's used to me'. 'It's more about giving women permission to just do their own thing and saying, 'Don't ask permission because nobody's gonna give it to you. You've got to save yourself. Do the thing. Stop waiting to feel empowered enough to create. It might be s**t, you might fall flat on your face, it might be embarrassing. But what's the alternative? Sitting around, wishing and waiting?' Last year Scanlon got another project off the ground. Called Hot Messers, it's a community that meets up in person to walk and talk and engage in open and honest conversations. 'Last year, I travelled to The Himalayas with the breast cancer charity CoppaFeel!,' says Scanlon. 'Women in treatment, post-treatment and with stage four cancer were sharing the most amazing, heartbreaking, empowering stories with virtual strangers. It was as if they felt a freedom to share openly because they were walking alongside each other rather than sitting opposite someone. I love a bit of therapy, but I think sometimes that scenario can make people feel self-conscious.' The name riffs on the stereotype of the woman who's a hot mess or a car crash. 'She's messy and chaotic and that's fine. It's about taking control of that,' says Scanlon, because despite having 'a brilliant [online] community of like-minded women who are rowdy cheerleaders of each other', Scanlon admits social media can sometimes make her feel 'really disconnected from reality, isolated and quite weird, truthfully'. 'There's such massive value in getting people together in real life and hanging out in a group where you can skulk in the background or you can talk something out.' [ Anorexia, My Family & Me review: Heartbreak and hope as Angela Scanlon narrates stories of Irish families hijacked by eating disorders Opens in new window ] Although she might 'present as an extrovert', Scanlon says her personality isn't that cut and dried. 'When I'm on, I'm on, but I can be very antisocial, shy and awkward – if I have a baseball cap on, don't come near me. Sometimes I want to just hide behind my husband, but then the next minute I'm cracking out the jazz hands and everything's fine. There are two very different sides to me.'
Irish Times
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Dara Ó Briain: ‘I always felt like the dumbest, ugliest person in the class'
Dara Ó Briain arrives into the west London restaurant he's chosen for our meeting a few minutes late and full of apologies. He was on the language app Duolingo and was doing quite well so didn't want to stop because he was getting extra points. The comedian is learning Spanish. It's one of his latest 'little passions'. Another of these endeavours is the quest to improve his swimming kick. He's a regular at his local pool in Chiswick. He's also struggling with his spin turn. 'The water goes in my mouth,' he says. 'I can't do it, so I'm hoping I can get on a late night show with Daniel Wiffen and get a consultation, ask him for tips.' We're here to talk about his latest stand-up show Re: Creation , which he's been touring in his beloved Vicar Street in Dublin and more recently across UK venues. He can't talk too much about a key aspect of the show – the search for his birth father – because it would spoil the story for audiences. His last show, So Where Were We?, was a sold-out post-pandemic chortlefest that also included a gripping final section about his search for his birth mother. Ó Briain first spoke about his adoption to this publication in 2021, during The Irish Times online Winter Nights Festival. Growing up in a stable, supportive family in Bray , Co Wicklow , he had always been told he was adopted but had somehow 'forgotten' about it until he was in his late 30s, when he became curious. It wasn't until he watched Philomena , Steve Coogan's movie about one woman's search for her adopted baby, that he decided to try to trace his biological roots. READ MORE So the last show was 'my version of Philomena, a young, scared woman makes a difficult decision in the 1970s and then there's a long arc to redemption, 50 years later, when the story resolves itself. The show had a lot of anger and some shocks about the way the Irish government treated women. There were revelations about the trafficking of babies. It brought the audience on a journey.' His search for his mother was driven not by an identity crisis but by a sense that 'there was a woman out there who was wondering how I turned out'. He says now that apart from some frustrating bureaucracy involving a tortuous search for his birth cert, his experience of tracing and eventually meeting his birth mother and three stepsiblings was as positive an experience as he could have hoped for. When he began the search for his genetic father, it took a while for his birth mother to provide the name of the man in question – understandably she was worried about dredging up a part of her past she had left behind. 'It was hard,' says Ó Briain. 'She had closed that chapter ... Her fear was that she was going to have to be involved. And when I told her, 'No, you don't have to deal with this at all', then it was easier.' The story of what happened next is, as one reviewer put it, 'gripping and gasp inducing ... it must have taken a full half minute for my jaw dropping to end'. But no, Ó Briain won't provide any more details. All he'll say is that if the last show was his Philomena, this show is his Elf, by which he means 'a broadly comic story about a man of a certain age and of some professional standing who opens the door one day to find a giant in a clown outfit, going 'Hello, Daddy'. To be clear, at 6ft 4in, Ó Briain is the giant clown in this equation. [ Dara Ó Briain reveals his quest for his birth mother: 'She said there was no choice in this' Opens in new window ] 'So it's just a great yarn, and it's quite different in tone to the last show. And part of it is the fact that he [his biological father] didn't know all of this had occurred and we're back to the way it was in Ireland at the time ... it's me basically contacting him and the story of what happened.' As you'd expect, he has reflected a lot on the experience of being adopted. He still doesn't know where he got his 'insanely mathsy' brain from – he studied maths and theoretical science at UCD – but nobody in either his adoptive or genetic family is that way inclined. He's thought a lot about nature versus nurture through the process and he believes nurture wins, giving credit for most of who he is 'to the people who put in the hard yards, the ones who did the parenting, no disrespect to my genetic family'. Dara Ó Briain: Since contacting his birth mother and father, he went from having one sibling to having seven. Photograph: Nicola Tree We take a break to order some food. Ó Briain orders a cheeseburger. 'I knew you were going to order that,' says the waitress. The comedian is not offended by the waitress thinking he looked like a man in need of a cheeseburger. He's been intermittent fasting for a while now, more conscious of his health in his 50s. 'I got too chunky in the last while, I need to watch it,' he says. He has lost 2½ stones. 'The thing is people don't notice when I've lost two stone, they start to notice at around 2½, three stone and then if I get down by 3½ they start telling me I don't look well.' At one point he lost three stones and his agent took one look at him and said 'No, no, no, no, no'. The swimming and fasting are both a way of life for him now. He tells me he doesn't talk to skinny people about this stuff, 'they can f**k off,' he laughs. As a nonskinny person, I'm honoured. In fairness, he doesn't talk to 'people with hair' about having none either. For 17 years, as presenter of Mock the Week on BBC, the show that made his name in Britain, he was slagged mercilessly by panellists for being 'big and bald'. He's as comfortable talking about his weight – to nonskinny people anyway – as he is about discussing the fact that he only has one testicle, which formed a fascinating part of the last show. Ó Briain is a busy man and not just with touring and TV appearances. Since contacting his birth mother and father, he went from having one sibling to having seven. 'I'm a man, I can't manage family at the best of times,' he says. 'Now I have willingly taken on a 600 per cent increase in family members and an almost uncountable number of cousins.' He says as with many adoption stories there's a 'mad flurry' at the start and then it settles into something else where he's found himself explaining to random cousins: 'Just so you know, even the woman I actually call Mammy doesn't hear from me as much as she'd like to'. 'I have had such a positive experience ... I wasn't invested emotionally the way that other people are. My own family basically carries that weight. So I stress a lot more about how often I talk to my daughter than I do about how often I talk to any of these people ... so that's more my focus. But this is just a nice extra thing.' Ó Briain has three teenagers with his wife, Susan, a surgeon. They feature in the latest show when he describes how his children are used to his nostalgic walking tours of Dublin. These tours are mostly him saying 'well, that's gone' about some landmark of his youth that's now disappeared. 'This is based on me driving past the old Jurys Hotel in Ballsbridge with a 13-year-old boy in the car going to see the family in Bray. We drove past Jurys and I was like, 'Oh my god, it's gone'. And he's looking at this space, this void wondering, 'How am I supposed to feel about this? I don't have memories of the Coffee Dock, of the aftermath of your debs, when you were sitting there in a tuxedo at half five in the morning trying to look sophisticated.' ' Dara Ó Briain: 'I'm a man, I can't manage family at the best of times.' Photograph: Nicola Tree It's not off the ground he licked these 'oh, that's gone' tours. His mother, when she first moved to Bray, lived in a house on the Boghall Road. The house was flattened and turned into a small parade of shops. A butcher's and a chemist and a chip shop. 'We'd occasionally drive up to the spot and she'd go, 'This is where I lived when I moved out of home and now it's all gone'. Then there'd be a long respectful pause until enough time had elapsed and we could ask, 'Can we have chips now?'' Ó Briain still insists on doing two-hour shows, sometimes longer, when he could actually get away with only doing an hour. 'I'm old school,' he says. 'I see younger comics do an hour, but I don't want to, I am not quite Springsteen with the 3½ hours but venues have an interval, people spend money in the interval, it's good for everyone.' I hated being 15, I didn't know how to talk to people, I'm still not brilliant at small talk — Dara Ó Briain After a string of 19 shows in Vicar Street, lately he's been transitioning the show from Ireland to the UK. 'I left Vicar thinking what a beautiful thing, how glorious, this show is a work of art. 'Were you not there? You missed something special' – then I bring it to somewhere like Cheltenham, which is a Presbyterian hall with a massive pipe organ, it's a different thing. 'It's an awkward one anyway, because in England you have to strip away certain familiar details you really enjoy telling, and then it becomes a slightly more polished product. But the process of the polishing removes maybe some of the sweet, little shared moments that you'd have with a gig in Ireland. Then they get a chance to drop back in again when you go back.' It's different in Dublin. 'It's more familiar ... it feels most like I'm just telling you the story and you're all on board.' This 'polishing' process is necessary though. He might lose anecdotes about Micheál Martin meeting Trump, but the show is tighter and becomes more universal. It becomes something that can play 'in Auckland or in Oslo … so ...t's a good process'. He goes deeper into this, describing his career as going from – he adopts an insecure voice – 'I was funny in UCD to, oh no, now I'm talking to people who weren't in UCD but they're from Dublin. Oh no! Now I'm talking to people from Cork. They're not from Dublin or from UCD, oh no, this is really difficult now. The whole point of your career is you trying to get to a universal place.' The photographer arrives and Ó Briain is extremely obliging when she asks him to peek around a curtain and lean his head on the table. He chats all the while, talking so fast that it's sometimes hard to keep up. He's generous with his time, an endlessly obliging interviewee full of decency and good humour. At one point he mentions that he had his 40th birthday in this restaurant. He loves parties but they also bring up deep-rooted insecurities. One friend, journalist and broadcaster Tony Parsons, was aware of this and texted him five minutes before the event started to say, 'Nobody is going to show up to your party'. Top table: Dara Ó Briain. Photograph: Nicola Tree Parsons knew the old wound he was poking. Part of Ó Briain has never got past being a 'dorky' 15-year-old, full of insecurities and fear of being unpopular. 'I hated being 15, I didn't know how to talk to people, I'm still not brilliant at small talk ... I always felt like the dumbest, ugliest person in the class. All of that stuff. A test case.' He remembers going to Coláiste Eoin on the 84 bus from Bray and being in conversations that would just dry up. 'I'd sit there thinking, You are so bad at this, you are useless.' That fell away in UCD when he discovered with 'glee' that he could not just talk to people but in front of people, that he was a whizz on the debating team and, even better, could make people laugh. 'I remember the relief of not having that any more ... that sense of not being beholden to your own insecurities.' His fear of returning to those dark, dorky days has clearly been a driving force, but it may be losing its potency as a motivator. 'At some point I'll just go, 'I mean Jesus, Dara, how long have you spent wanting to be liked? How long have you spent wanting these people's approval?' To be clear, he doesn't mean the Vicar Street residencies, the people who come to see him because they love what he does, a long-standing relationship he deeply values. He's talking more about 'the fight, the hustle to get on panel shows where you are in front of an audience who aren't necessarily your crowd and you're saying 'hey! Here's my stuff' and there is a point where you're saying to yourself, why are you doing this? You're 53. You don't need to be impressing the audience on Blankety Blank, which is actually something I did three weeks ago.' He's laughing now but there's a seriousness to his point. 'I've been blessedly lucky ... I was given this platform for 17 years by the BBC [Mock the Week] that gave me my crowd and my crowd continued to come ... but then every so often you think, you should do these things, you should go on Blankety Blank, you should go and be funny in front of a mainstream audience who are really just there for the host not for you.' When he went on that show recently one of the participants was showbiz veteran Maureen Lipman. 'I said 'Maureen, you've done this before and she goes 'I've done it with them all, I've done it with Terry [Wogan], I've done it with Les [Dawson], I've done it with Lily [Savage] and now with Bradley [Walsh]'.' Lipman was 'an absolute delight' by the way, despite persistent diva stories. I have an asteroid named after me. That's the coolest thing that's ever happened. It's called 4910 Ó Briain — Dara Ó Briain He is not tempted by shows with 'celebrity' in the title. You won't, for example, find him in the jungle with Ant and Dec eating kangaroo scrotum. 'I don't watch that. I never have, I don't find that sort of thing entertaining,' he says. So no Strictly Come Dancing? 'God no, even if it was offered,' he says referencing a long-standing joint issue. 'I've a shitty knee. I like a dance but no, I have a hole in my knee and it's hilarious because people go, 'There are people who have lost their legs who do that show', and yes, that's true, but I can't do any impact stuff, I'm not allowed to run ... I'm staving off having my entire knee joint replaced with a robotic joint, so Strictly would be an awful thing to do.' Stargazing Live: Prof Brian Cox and Dara Ó Briain. Photograph: Andrew Hayes-Watkins/BBC Anyway, he always has his science gigs, another enjoyable side hustle for the comedian. He appears regularly on Curious Cases on BBC Radio 4, and has presented a series of BBC-produced documentaries shows on the moon, the sun and more recently volcanoes for Channel 5. So while some people in his position have stories about partying with famous types his biggest claim to fame 'is I have an asteroid named after me. That's the coolest thing that's ever happened. It's called 4910 Ó Briain'. It happened when he was doing the show Stargazing with Prof Brian Cox. 'He has one too. Mine is a double asteroid, excitingly, somewhere between Mars and Jupiter.' Our time in nearly up, so I ask how long more does he think he'll carry on with these huge tours? He's definitely conscious that 'at one point it will all end', that he might even be the one to pull the plug, perhaps deciding to pack it in one day to stay at home listening to opera – he's a recent convert, loves a bit of Carmen – and spend more time with his family, 'who I quite like'. 'That's a genuine puzzle for me at the moment,' he says. 'If I had to start again, like, if you dropped me in the middle of say America, and said, right, work your way up to the clubs ... I don't think I'd have the energy to do that hustle again.' On the other hand 'it's just talking and it's a very fun job. So whether or not I'll do that many more big tours, I don't know. I mean at some point there'll be the ending tour, a greatest hits of all the shows and I just say to audiences 'look you don't remember these anyway,' so I'm just going to go through them all. And these are lovely routines to do. I'll just enjoy myself doing killer routines to finish it off and say goodbye at the end.' [ 'We've all done it': Dara Ó Briain offers support to actor after only one person attends her show Opens in new window ] The adoption stories have taken up the last two shows and he's clearly relishing bringing them, with all their gobsmacking twists and turns, to audiences. 'There's been a heart to them; it's very enjoyable.' Before he leaves, he jokes about the possibility of a third show, one that would turn his adoption saga into a trilogy. He describes a sequence of events in an imagined future where one day a man or woman will track Ó Briain down, knocks on his door in leafy Chiswick and greets him with 'hello Daddy!' 'Now, that would make a great show,' he declares. Re: Creation with Dara Ó Briain is in Vicar Street on July 3rd, 4th, 5th and 10th, 11th and 12th, and Live at the Marquee in Cork on June 29th
Irish Daily Mirror
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Daily Mirror
WIN TICKETS TO SEE DARA O'BRIAIN LATM, CORK, SUNDAY JUNE 29, 2025!
Dara O'Briain came to prominence as host of the topical panel show Don't Feed the Gondolas. On TV he is also known for hosting Mock The Week, Robot Wars, Three Men in a Boat, Dara and Ed's Great Big Adventure, Stargazing Live, Dara Ó Briain's Science Club, and the documentary Dara Ó Briain Meets Stephen Hawking, all on BBC Television. As well as winning Channel 4's Taskmaster! Thanks to our friends at Live At The Marquee we have a pair of tickets to giveaway to one lucky winner to see Dara O'Briain Live at the Marquee, Sunday June 29, 2025 PLUS overnight B&B stay for two sharing at the 4* Clayton Hotel Cork! To be in with a chance of winning simply fill out the form below. If you can't see the form above, CLICK HERE Terms and Conditions apply, see entry form for details.
