Comedian and Mock the Week host Dara O'Briain brings his crowd-tickling new show to Oxford

It has been three years since Dara O’Briain, one of our finest live comedians, last hit the road. So it is with great delight that we welcome this much-loved comic back to Oxford’s New Theatre tomorrow night.

After a spell away in the TV studio making such successful shows as Mock the Week, The Apprentice: You’re Fired! and Star Gazing Live, Dara returns to his first love: live comedy. And he couldn’t be happier about it.

In fact Dara cannot contain his excitement. Dubbed “the king of audience interaction”, he excels at rapid-fire exchanges with his fans and his dazzling mixture of witty, daring, thought-provoking and hilarious anecdotes.

Dara, who grew up in Dublin, says he couldn’t resist returning to touring because live comedy is quite simply addictive.

“When you arrive at an empty theatre, the potential is immense. You think, ‘This is going to be magical’,” he beams. “Then, when the show starts and you hear those waves of laughter in the auditorium, it’s just so enjoyable. It’s a huge rush.”

The other element of stand-up that Dara relishes is its sheer spontaneity. “I love the fact that you can shape the entire evening by thinking on your feet. If Plan A doesn’t work, you have to come up with Plan B immediately.”

42-year-old Dara, who is married with two young children, adds that his improvised riffing with the audience creates “a tremendous frisson.” He adds: It’s like walking a tightrope. The audience love it because they can see you’ve got nothing up your sleeve and that things could very easily go wrong. They realise that this could go anywhere. You’re not given any easy ride.

“When I’m questioning the audience, my stance is not, ‘How can I mock this person?’ It’s, ‘I am an eight-year-old meeting this person for the first time. What aspects of them do I want to talk and enthuse about?’”

The comic, a graduate from University College Dublin in mathematics and theoretical physics, who presented TV shows such as Dara O’Briain: School of Hard Sums and Dara O’Briain’s Science Club, insists his audience never lets him down.

So what can we expect from his new show Crowd Tickler? “I’ll be talking about the awkward conversations we will have about grandchildren about all the resources we’ve used up and all the wonderful advances we’ve casually wasted, like Concorde and the Space Shuttle.”

“I always enjoy demolishing idiotic arguments. It suits comedy. If you take it to its logical conclusion, it’s madness. It’s a reductio ad absurdum.”

But despite his wonderfully clever routines, the comedian underscores that the show is first and foremost about jokes. “I have this dread that people will go, ‘Oh Dara’s show – there’ll be some bit where he bores us with some science thing’.

“Instead I hope they’re unable to talk because I beat them over the head with so much humour and punched them repeatedly in the face with jokes – that’s my aim,” he laughs. “I want them spent. I want them silently driving back home absorbing it all, while I’m left in the empty theatre quietly wiping the make-up off my face in a mirror surrounded by light bulbs.”

He concludes that: “I make points here and there, but that’s secondary. I hope that it’s a great night’s entertainment. I hope people walk out and say, ‘Dara’s still got it. I hope he doesn’t leave it another three years!’ If they do that, then I will be delighted.”

ON STAGE
Dara O’Briain’s Crowd Tickler show is on tomorrow night at the New Theatre in George Street, Oxford.
Call 0844 8713020 or go to atgtickets.com/oxford