COMEDY REVIEW: Dara O’Briain, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Mar 17 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

Irish comedian, Dara O'Briain _320

LIGHTNING-WITTED comic Dara O’Briain said he toyed with calling his new unlabelled tour You Had To Be There, and he couldn’t have been more right.

Certainly comedy lovers of all ages across Liverpool thought so, because Saturday’s one-night only show at was a fast sell-out.

The garrulous Wicklow-born comic, recently on our TV screens with satirical improvisation show Mock The Week, was initially a little fazed by the dimensions of the Phil and the show also began 30 mins late – a couple had spotted him hurrying up Hope Street just 15 minutes before it was due to start – and he was breathlessly wiping away beads of sweat at the start to get the audience up to his breakneck speed.

But it didn’t take long. His mathematician’s brain seems to be able to bend any situation into comedy gold, testing it this way and that then sprinting away at a surreal tangent with a funny idea. He described a Miami celeb-spotting boat tour from the home-owner’s viewpoint – US corporate billionaires looking out of their kitchen windows to see a raft of English tourists’ mouths forming a mew of disappointment 15 times a day – while a playful Gloria Estefan, he dreamily recounted, swam alongside the boat, and some touched her smooth leathery skin while one small boy actually swam with her, describing it as a magical experience.

Married now and settled down in London, the wealth of material he’s gathered from daily life is as inexhaustible and as richly observed as ever.

He found mileage in Sky News discussions where, for the sake of “balance” professors of dentistry were wheeled out to argue passionately against people who preferred to pull their own teeth out; and in non-fast forwardable DVD warnings against piracy – is it really the same as stealing a car, he mused, and if piracy funds drug gangs they must be pretty rubbish heroin dealers. Yes, you just had to be there I guess.

My face was still aching the next day from laughing so much at Dara O’Briain’s performance. He’s a prodigious tourer so if you didn’t catch him this time, book early on his next visit.