Dara o briain autobiography featuring

Irish comedian and television presenter

For the politician, see Darragh O'Brien.

Dara Ó Briain (DAR(R)-ə oh BREE-ən, Irish:[ˈd̪ˠaɾˠəoːˈbʲɾʲiənʲ]; born 4 February )^[1] is an Irish comedian and television presenter based in the United Kingdom.^[2][3][4][5] He is noted for performing stand-up comedy shows all over the society and for hosting topical panel shows such as Mock the Week, The Panel, and The Apprentice: You're Fired!.

In , the Irish Independent described Ó Briain as "Terry Wogan's heir apparent as Britain's 'favourite Irishman'".^[6]

In , he was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for Best Entertainment Performance for his work on Mock the Week.

He has also been a newspaper columnist and written books for both adults and children. His first children's book, Beyond the Sky, was nominated for a Blue Peter Book Award in

Early life

Ó Briain was born in in Bray, County Wicklow,^[7] and adopted into what he described as "a solid home" where he enjoyed a happy childhood with his "supportive" parents.^[8] He attended Coláiste Eoin secondary school, a Gaelcholáiste (Irish-speaking medium school) on Dublin's southside.

He attended University College Dublin (UCD), where he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. In , he remarked: "I haven't written it into my act, but it occasionally comes through. I could come on with a chalkboard and say: 'Now you're all going to pay attention.'"^[9]

While a student at UCD, he was both the auditor (chairperson) of the Literary and Historical Society (the university's oldest debating society) and the co-founder and co-editor of The University Observer college newspaper.

In , he won the Irish Times National Debating Championship and The Irish Times/Gael Linn National Irish language debating championship; he is a fluent Irish speaker, and speaks to his father only in that language.^[10]

He played both Gaelic football and hurling for Bray Emmets^[11] and hurling for the Wicklow County minor team.^[12]

After university

After graduating in , Ó Briain began working at RTÉ as a children's TV presenter.

At this time, he also began performing his first stand-up gigs on the Irish comedy circuit.^[13] He admitted, "I did the trip from Dublin to Donegal to play to six people; then I turned round and drove home again. I did about three or four years playing to a lot of bad rooms, but learning as I went.

It's not lousy when someone gives you £40 for standing up and telling jokes. I remember thinking: 'This is the life.'"^[9] Ó Briain spent three years as a presenter on the bilingual (Irish and English) children's programme Echo Island but came to prominence as a team captain on the topical panel showDon't Feed the Gondolas (–) hosted by Seán Moncrieff.

All All. Write In. Dobby Penis Sausage. He has been married to Susan since

Ó Briain also hosted RTÉ family entertainment gameshow It's a Family Affair.^[14]

Stand-up comedy

Ó Briain's stand up international career took off around this time as he began to tour heavily, performing across Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, with gigs in Dubai, Paris, Adelaide, Shanghai and New York City.

He was a regular at the Kilkenny Cat Laughs and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as successfully as making one notable appearance at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal in , where he was offered a prestigious gala show because of his performances at the Irish showcase.

Around this time, Ó Briain presented the weekend game show It's a Family Affair on RTÉ Television. It was the first time he worked with former Channel 4 commissioning editor Séamus Cassidy. They later set up the production business Happy Endings Productions, and together they produced (and Ó Briain presented) the chat show Buried Alive () and most famously in Ireland The Panel (–).

In , Ó Briain's eighth show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was the biggest-selling solo comedy show of the festival.^[15]

In early , Ó Briain conducted his third tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

This included shows at the Theatre Royal, in London as adv as nine nights in Dublin at Vicar Street. His second night in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in London was recorded for his first dwell DVD. His fourth multinational tour followed in late , which as he says in his routine has "no title" but was almost entitled "You Had to Be There".

He performed new tours across the UK and Ireland in , , , and His tour played for dates, to over , people, including 37 nights in Vicar St. in Dublin, nine nights at the Hammersmith Apollo in London and a first date in Dubai. Each of those three tours were recorded for DVD, and the tour, entitled 'Craic Dealer', was similarly recorded during his shows at the Edinburgh Playhouse in May "Craic Dealer" ran for over shows, as did his tour "Crowd Tickler", this time with dates in Scandinavia, Northern Europe and Australia added to the tour.

The tour was recorded for a DVD release.

On 12 March , Ó Briain, Jack Whitehall and Jon Richardson set a new Guinness Society Records title for hosting the 'highest stand-up comedy gig in the world', on a British Airways flight in support of Comic Relief.^[16][17]

In , Ó Briain took part in two shows of the date Uncaged Monkeys tour with Professor Brian Cox, Robin Ince, Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh and Chris Addison.

In October , he started touring his show "Voice of Reason". As well as another 37 nights in Vicar St Theatre in Dublin (to bring his total there to shows), "Voice of Reason" was performed more than times, in 20 countries, including debut shows in Reykjavík, Saint Petersburg, Malta, Germany and New Zealand.

It was recorded as a BBC special at the Hammersmith Apollo, for air in He had originally planned to perform the show on debut tours to the Combined States and Canada in , but this was postponed after the first four US dates, in early March, due to the COVID pandemic.

The Canadian part of the tour resumed in August ^[18]

In September , he announced a new demonstrate , named "So Where Were We?", with a tour starting in November ^[19] Due to the ongoing COVID pandemic, a portion of the tour in Ireland that was originally planned for January was pushed back to March through June ^[20] He has been touring since and extended the tour.^[21]

Television career

The Panel was hosted by Ó Briain.

Three times nominated for the Best Entertainment show IFTA (Irish Film and Television Awards), the show has a rotating cast of panellists, usually drawn from the world of Irish comedy, discussing the events of the week and interviewing guests.

The most regular panellists have been Colin Murphy, Ed Byrne, Neil Delamere, Andrew Maxwell and Mairéad Farrell.

Around , with his profile rising in the UK due to his one-man shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Ó Briain began making appearances on UK television shows such as Bring Me the Brain of Light Entertainment (a Channel 5 production) and Never Consciousness the Buzzcocks.

In early , he hosted the second series of BBC Scotland's Live Floor Show.^[22] His big break in UK television came in , when he appeared as a guest panellist on news interrogate, Have I Got News for You, subsequently making several appearances as guest host of the show.^[23]

In , Ó Briain was nominated at the Chortle Comedy Awards for Live Comedy in the categories Best Compère and Best Headline Act (which he would go on to win).

In , he won the Best Headliner award again, as well as being nominated for Best Full-length Show. From to , he was the host of the comedy panel illustrate Mock the Week on BBC Two, a blend between Have I Got News for You and Whose Line Is It Anyway? The show reached its th episode during its 19th series in

On 14 September , Ó Briain appeared as a guest on Room , where he got rid of children's television presenters (following his work as a presenter on Echo Island) and once-in-a-lifetime experiences (he was given a once-in-a-lifetime experience on the show by being the second guest to pull the lever that opens the chute to Room – the first had been former host Nick Hancock).

He also got rid of banter, Gillian McKeith and magicians.^[24]

Since , Ó Briain has starred in the BBC's Three Men in a Boat series, with Griff Rhys Jones and Rory McGrath. The series has included the trio rowing the River Thames, as in the novel of the same name, sailing from London to the Isle of Wight for a sail boat race, borrowing numerous vessels to construct their way from Plymouth to the Isles of Scilly.

In , the three took to the Irish canals and rivers on a trip from Dublin to Limerick. In , they explored the Isles of Scotland. In , two more series were made; one travelling from Montenegro to Venice, the other travelling down the New England coast in the US to New York.

In total seven series were made.

Ó Briain has also been an extensive newspaper columnist, with pieces published in many national papers in both the UK and Ireland, from The Sunday Times to The Daily Telegraph. On 9 August he hosted the first edition of his chat demonstrate Turn Back Time,^[13] which only ran for one series.

He is a relatively frequent panellist on QI and wrote about Ireland in the QI series E annual, and appears occasionally on Just a Minute on BBC Radio 4.^{[citation needed]}

He also holds the record for greatest number of appearances on the BBC stand-up showcase Live at the Apollo, where he appeared seven times.^{[citation needed]}

On 1 October , Ó Briain released his first book entitled Tickling the English, about what he considers it means to be English.

He has also been a newspaper columnist and written books for both adults and children. Inhe remarked: "I haven't written it into my act, but it occasionally comes through. I could come on with a chalkboard and say: 'Now you're all going to pay attention. While a student at UCD, he was both the auditor chairperson of the Literary and Historical Society the university's oldest debating society and the co-founder and co-editor of The University Observer college newspaper.

As part of its promotion, he has stated that he is enthusiastic about English culture and a student of English history, his favourite events being the Gin Craze and the civil war.^[25] In a review of Tickling the English, Ó Briain was described as Sir Terry Wogan's heir apparent as Britain's "favourite Irishman".^[6]

Ó Briain has appeared several times in the BBC Radio science / comedy show The Infinite Monkey Cage which premiered on 30 November on Radio 4.^[26]

In , Ó Briain replaced Adrian Chiles as the presenter of The Apprentice: You're Fired!.

After five years, he quit following the series.^[27]

Ó Briain has hosted the British Academy Video Games Awards 9 times between and , including , when highlights were also shown on Challenge.^[28][29] In he hosted the Bafta Television awards, the similar year he was nominated for a Best Entertainment Performance Award.

From 3 to 5 January , Ó Briain and Brian Cox presented Stargazing Live on BBC Two, three programmes based at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, scheduled to coincide with the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus, a partial solar eclipse, and the Quadrantid meteor shower.^[30] The two presenters hosted a second series of three-hour-long programmes, plus follow-up minute shows called Stargazing Live: Back to Earth, from 16 to 18 January From 8 to 10 January , they presented the third series, again accompanied by Back to Earth.^[31]

Stargazing Live has continued to run intermittently throughout the decade, including live coverage of the Partial solar eclipse over the Uk in , Astronaut Tim Peake's journey to the ISS in , and a 50th anniversary celebration of the Apollo missions in Stargazing Live was nominated for a Bafta for Best Live Television Event in

From 16 April , Ó Briain presented an eight-episode series of School of Hard Sums with co-host Marcus du Sautoy on Dave.

Each episode was themed and Ó Briain along with a guest attempted to solve various conundrums posted by du Sautoy. Series 2 began on 1 May On 6 November , Ó Briain began presenting a series called Dara Ó Briain's Science Club, in which he and other celebrities discuss science issues.

The first edition of this programme features Ed Byrne talking about how closely related he is to the Neanderthals. Each episode in the series includes a compact animated history that has been created by the UK animation and illustration agency 12Foot6.^[32]

In , Ó Briain joined Jack Dee, Chelsee Healey, Greg James, Melanie C and Philips Idowu in Through Hell and High Water, a Comic Relief challenge which involved British celebrities canoeing the most difficult rapids of the Zambezi River.

They raised over £1 million for the help.

Dara and Ed's Great Vast Adventure, a three-part fly-on-the-wall television series, followed Ó Briain and Ed Byrne on their journey by car down the Pan-American Highway.^[33]

In June , Dara Ó Briain Meets Stephen Hawking, in which Ó Briain travels to Cambridge for a series of interviews with theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, aired on BBC One.

From January to March , Ó Briain presented Tomorrow's Food, a three-episode series alongside Angela Hartnett, Chris Bavin and Dr Shini Somara. The BBC One show looked at the technologies and produce in farms, supermarkets, kitchens and restaurants around the world.^[34]

In , Ó Briain began hosting a panel show about video games called Dara O Briain's Go 8 Bit.^[35]

Ó Briain presented the reboot of Robot Wars starting on 24 July, as well as the subsequent two series in

He hosted a revival of the classic quiz show Blockbusters, which began airing on Comedy Central on 21 March until 5 December

In , Ó Briain appeared as a guest on Hypothetical.

In June , he was the host of The Family Brain Games. He co-hosted this with Hannah Critchlow, who was responsible for the psychological study and supported by Adam Hampshire.^[36] This programme was won by the Smith Family of Newmilns, Ayrshire.^[37]

Ó Briain also presents C4 quiz show One & Six Zeros.^[38]

On 23 June , Ó Briain was confirmed to luminary as a contestant in series 14 of C4 comedy game show Taskmaster.

He won the second episode of the series with 30 points, becoming the first person in the show's history to win the maximum possible number of points on offer in a single episode, and later went on to win the series with the highest-ever total score (later eclipsed by John Robins in series 17).

In he returned to compete in the third Taskmaster: Champion of Champions special, against Sarah Kendall, Morgana Robinson, Sophie Duker and Kiell Smith-Bynoe (who was substituting in for Series 15 champion Mae Martin). Once again Ó Briain was victorious.

In August , Ó Briain presented Wonders of the Celestial with Dara Ó Briain; a two-part series that aired on Channel 5.^[39]

In May , Ó Briain presented a two-part series on Channel 5 called Mysteries of the Pyramids with Dara O Briain.^[40]

In July , Wonders of the Sun with Dara Ó Briain; a two-part series presented by Ó Briain aired on Channel 5.^[41]

Film work

Ó Briain had a cameo role as a generalised alternative comedian in the British film The Watch of Love directed by Michael Winterbottom.

Personal life

Ó Briain married his wife Susan, a surgeon, in ;^[42] they live in West London with their three children, one daughter (born ) and two sons (born and ).^[43] He was best male at his best friend Ed Byrne's wedding in after Byrne had previously been Ó Briain's best man.^[44] He describes himself as looking like "one of Tony Soprano's henchmen, on a bad day", and said that in , "living in London I probably only get recognised about once a day.

And that's okay by me. I'm not a celebrity. And I certainly don't see myself as one".^[45]

Ó Briain is an atheist, but has said that he also sees himself as "ethnically Catholic": "I'm staunchly atheist, I simply don't believe in God, even if he believes in me.

But I'm still Catholic, of course. Catholicism has a much broader reach than just the religion. I'm technically Catholic, it's the box you contain to tick on the census form: 'Don't believe in God, but I do still abhor Rangers.'"^[46]

His surname is the first Irish form of O'Brien.

He said, "My dad was emotionally attached in the Irish language movement and changed it. Even Irish people are now confused by it".^[45]

Ó Briain is a fan of English football club Arsenal,^[47] and of Gaelic games, having played for Wicklow county football team at minor level.^[48] When his tweet congratulating London on knocking Sligo out of the Football Championship was read out on The Sunday Game, Ó Briain expressed amazement and vowed to try to have one read out every week.^[49][50] Ó Briain has also expressed an interest in Irish cricket, and has written about the subject for The Guardian newspaper.^[51]

Ó Briain was one of fifteen members of a racing greyhound syndicate for several years.

The December transmission of Three Men Travel to Ireland featured their mutt Snip Nua who, by the time of transmission, had been put down following injuries sustained in a race.

Follow Dara O Briain and explore their bibliography from 's Dara O Briain Author Page.

Ó Briain was so upset about the death that he and his fellow syndicate members immediately disbanded the syndicate permanently.^{[citation needed]} In early , a series of small demonstrations were held outside some of Ó Briain's tour venues, urging him to publicly denounce the sport of greyhound racing due to the dog's death.

In , Ó Briain tweeted that an asteroid had been named after him: Ó Briain.^[52][53]

In , having known that he was adopted, he successfully sought out his birth family.^[8]

In , Ó Briain became one of the Patrons for the Plaza Cinema, Stockport.^[54]

Stand-up DVDs

See also

References

External links