Features

Dara O’Brian - Magners Comedy Festival: Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

Emma Jackson 01/04/2008

"Dara O Briain's rise from cult comedy circuit hero to hugely popular household name, capable of selling-out 75-venue nation-wide tours, has been meteoric.

Beginning his career in kids TV, his affable charm now endears him to millions of adult viewers. Getting his big UK break as host of BBC's The Live Floor Show, Dara rapidly became the chairman of choice, taking the reins on BBC2's Mock The Week and RTE's The Panel, making him one of the few performers to host successful comedy shows simultaneously in the UK and Ireland." Emma Jackson reviews his turn at the Royal Glasgow Concert Hall on Wednesday the 12th of March.

The Magners comedy festival was certainly under way when the big man Dara O'Brian came to town. Having played all over Ireland, England and some of Scotland: O'Brian was ready for the ways of the Glaswegians.

As soon as he came on stage, O'Brian's declaration that he was going to talk to many members of the audience, made people look on with fear, but placating them, but the jovial Irishman assured the crowd that it would simply be light banter". His first victim was a fourteen-year-old boy sat in the front row, with his dad “pick a number” he said “four” O'Brian counted along the row and got his next victim, a park ranger! This amused not only O'Brian but the crowd immensely. He managed to get his long-winded story without giving hardly any secrets away.

Jokes where fired here and there, but it was his stories that stole the show. One in particular about a member of his crew running about naked, a hotel, a broken DVD player and a very confused hotel assistant, but as O'Brian said “you had to be there” to get the gist of the story.

Back to interrogating the crowd, "who has ever intervened on a crime?" he asked, A manly shout came from above, "I stopped a man from stealing my bag in the shop I worked in" O'Brian simply joined in with the crowd and the enjoyment of the story, another wasn't as exciting as the first but together he had enough to run with.

The tears were running down my face, I was laughing that hard. You could see people rubbing their jaws because they had grinned all night. His simple, funny humour appeals to all ages as you can see from the crowd, he has the audience gripped from the moment he came on to the moment he left. It's not hard to see why this man can sell out every night of his tour.