Crowd Tickler Live Dara O Briain

This programme contains strong language

-ANNOUNCER:

-Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Hammersmith Apollo.

Please, put your hands together and welcome on stage Dara O Briain.

CHEERING

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Are you in good form?

CHEERING Of course you are.

You're here, you're here, for God's sake.

It is a delight to be back. Three years since I've done this room,

and that's kind of the way the tour goes. Not that I tour every...

Like, I wait three years. I'm not Kate Bush.

Tours are now so long, there's two years between different gigs,

and so it's kind of like, you come back to a place,

and you do get fidgety, because performers, you get neurotic,

"Oh, my God, will it have changed? Will it have moved on?

"Will they be expecting something different?

This all got rammed home for me last year at the Edinburgh Festival.

I went up to preview some new material,

and to see some other comics doing shows.

And at lunchtime one day, I went into a restaurant and said,

"I just want to get some lunch." And there is a young woman there,

about 20 years old, and she said, "Of course, no problem. Here."

Sat me down, gave me a menu, and then walked away.

And then turned back and went, "I'm sorry, are you Dara O Briain?"

And I said, "Yes, yes, I am."

And she said, "Oh, my God,

"I was such a huge fan of your comedy when I was a child."

LAUGHTER

Thanks, pet. I feel a fucking million dollars now!

I feel like the Chuckle Brothers, is what I feel like now, right?

But at least she remembered my name.

There was a bloke who came across me recently in London, in Chiswick,

where I live. And the bloke walks past me

and does that whole recognition thing, that whole, "Ah," thing.

And then, in a really loud voice, went, "Hello, Al Murray."

And I'm quite narky as well, and I went, "No."

And your man brilliantly, instantly, went, "Sorry.

"Hello, Pub Landlord."

Well done, you get that.

Some crowds don't get that, don't get how great that is,

because I walked off at that point, which means to this day,

that man is walking around going, "Yeah, I've met Al Murray.

"He's a dick. He won't even talk to you unless you address him in

"character. I don't know what the hell's wrong with him.

"Who does he think he is, Dame Edna Everage or something?"

Because I'm quite gregarious. You meet me out and about,

I will talk to you, right? I didn't get into this job because I'm shy.

I like meeting people.

However, the camera phone thing, that does get a bit dull,

because people don't talk to you, they just go, click,

stand beside you and click.

And I didn't work this hard to get to this place in my life to be one

of those things at the beach.

You know, like a picture of a cowboy with the face cut out of it.

That's essentially... Click.

And then they walk away, and you go, "What am I?"

Or they give you this speech. I love the speech, Jesus,

I love the speech. "Oh, I've got to get a photograph."

You don't got to get a photograph.

"My friends won't believe me."

Your friends... If one more fucker comes up to me and goes,

"My friends won't believe me," I'm there going, "I am not a unicorn."

It is not so mind-blowing to have seen me that your friends will go,

"What?" "I met Dara O Briain."

"Where?" "In the wild.

"In the wild, where he is most beautiful.

"He was on a mountaintop.

"It was midnight, and the moonlight was shafting through his fetlocks,

"and he was ululating."

HE ULULATES It was beautiful to see.

People say that to me when I'm walking into a theatre in which I'm

performing that night.

They won't believe me. I'm fucking here. My name's written.

Where else would I be at this exact moment in space and time?

Weird, people are very strange.

So, I've been travelling around going, "What has changed?

"What has changed in the three years since I last toured this tour?"

Obviously, older than I was. I'm 43 now,

which means I'm a full generation older than people in the audience

18, 20, whatever. Any young men in the audience,

-particularly in the front row? What age are you, champ?

-22.

-22.

Different generation, man.

Different generation to me.

And your attitudes towards things that I've had to live through that

you've simply grown up with, absorbing, like digital technology,

all that kind of stuff, you are, like, from a different world.

I'm thrilled that you can get something out of this

and you're enjoying it. That's fantastic to me.

Can I use you as an ambassador for all young men, though? Is that OK?

Grand. I'm going to give a tiny piece of advice to you,

from an older man to a younger man. I've seen what you guys

do and all that. Just a tiny...

Just a little smidgen of advice just to bear with on the great

journey through life. Could you, for five minutes, just for five minutes,

stop sending photos of your cock to people?

Would that be all right? Five minutes, that's all we ask.

Like, a tiny moratorium on the dick pics,

just from the rest of us going, "Oh, Jeez,

"I have no need to see that. I wasn't looking for this,

"I was looking for your contact details for the job you've just

"interviewed for. Could you, please?

"Do you have them? Oh, certainly do.

Click, click, "They are on the back of that."

It is just too much, right. Just generally...

And filming yourselves.

What is with filming yourselves doing naughty things?

For God's sake, I get it, it's tempting.

"Oh, let's capture the moment,

"let's capture the beautiful act of congress as we create it.

"Oh, you and I, so beautiful,

"let's make a record of it with our phone or our iPad."

Are you mad? Stop filming yourself doing filthy things with digital

technology, because it will go onto the cloud,

and if somebody knows the name of your first pet,

they will break in and steal your pornography, right?

If you're going to film yourself doing naughty things,

don't go digital. Do what I do - use an old cine camera.

There's nothing sexier than the...

HE IMITATES CAMERA WHIRRING

..as you're watching it back.

It's classy, it's elegant, it's timeless, it's silent,

it's black and white.

I've got a little moustache,

she's tied to the railway lines. I mean, it's just...

Classy sexy. There is... Because people...

Privacy is a thing that your own generation have dumped.

To a greater or lesser extent, everything goes on Facebook,

everything is known about everyone,

and it's all out there for everyone to view. That is not the way I live.

I think it's a ridiculous thing to give up.

You know me, right? But you don't know my family.

I don't appear in Hello magazine in my home, all this kind of rubbish.

I don't do any of that. The BBC have repeatedly asked me to do that show,

Who Do You Think You Are? Do you know the one I mean?

Yeah, yeah. For those who don't, it's a genealogy show

where they track through the earlier generations of your family,

you know, to find out what stories created your family history.

No way am I ever going on that.

Partly in the kind of, "Oh, Jesus, no."

But also in a kind of, "There is no way..."

Half the time they go to people and ask them to do this,

they come back to them three weeks later and go,

"Listen, we've just done some preliminary research into your

"family, and can we just say, oh, you..."

HE GASPS "..you, oh, what a life you have led,

"but your family, Jesus, nothing.

"Nothing has happened in your family for seven generations.

"We have gone back to the 1801 census,

"and it is dung farmers the entire way down the line."

And I suspect that would happen to me.

The O Briains are just very ordinary stock from a place called Bray,

County Wicklow in Ireland.

CHEERING Good stuff, very good.

Go back a couple of generations, we're just like, you know,

we're working on the railways, nothing particularly exotic there.

My mother's family, the Himmlers, again...

Nothing really exceptional, no.

No stories, no papers, no photographs, really.

A surprising lack of any documentation at all.

I remember saying this to my grandmother once,

"Grossmutti Himmler, warum are there no papers or documents?"

She would just look at me and go, "Vot is vith all ze questions?

"Ve are simple farming people from County Mayo.

"Why can't you simply accept that?

"Oh, cabaret. Oh, cabaret. Oh, cabaret."

The other reason I could never do that show is because you have to cry

at some stage. You've never seen me crying on the telly, lads.

It's not my thing to cry on the telly.

I find it just... This is why I do shows at ten o'clock on BBC Two,

or science shows, these kinds of things.

You'll never see me hosting the X Factor or

something, standing next to the 15-year-old

who's just been eliminated. You know, I'm just not built for it.

This is not in me. I'd be there going, "Oh, you're very sad."

"Oh!

"Oh, there you go, boo-hoo, now, boo-hoo."

"Oh, Mammy, you're crying. Why are you crying?

"It can't be a surprise to you.

"Come on, you can hear her, for Christ's sake.

"Did she sound like the official soundtrack album to Frozen?

("No, she didn't.)

"Let it go, pet. There's a message.

"Oh, the granny is dead?

"The granny is dead. Oh...

"Was it your singing that killed her in the end, was it?

"It was no comfort, anyway."

People always get a bit, like, I'm being mean to this completely

fictitious, imaginary...

There is no-one here, lads, right?

That was just the power of the mind.

There was nobody there with feelings to be hurt.

I cannot do that. I cannot do that kind of sentimentality.

I cannot do sincerity. This must be lacking in a person,

particularly as a broadcaster. I can't do sincerity, lads.

You'll never see me be sincere. And I can't do sincerity,

because of the film Return Of The Jedi. There's a bit in the film

Return Of The Jedi which killed sincerity.

You've all seen Return Of The Jedi at some stage,

but there's a bit in Return Of The Jedi, this scene where this woman,

this space princess woman walks out to present the rebel forces with the

information about how to blow up the Death Star.

She walks in and goes, "But here's the plans for the Death Star."

She should have walked off at that point, job done, right?

But she didn't, she had another line to deliver.

About the high cost of the plans to the Death Star.

And to add some shade to the scene, you know,

to add some darkness to it. And then she did sad acting.

So, this woman walks out and goes,

"These are the plans of the Death Star."

And then for no good reason goes, "Many Bothans died

"to bring us this information," and then genuinely went...

HE IMITATES DRAMATIC SIGH

And even as a 12-year-old, I'm in the cinema going,

"Get that fucking ham off the stage.

"That is the most overacting, insincere, shite I've ever seen.

"That has shattered my sense of disbelief,"

and I was struggling to hold on at this point,

but I went with it, Lucas, I went with the teddy bears winning

the laser battle against a robot army.

I let that slide, right?

I went with it when Mr Bronson from Grange Hill suddenly appeared as one

of the major figures in the Imperial forces.

I let that slide, but this...

HE IMITATES DRAMATIC SIGH ..has ruined it for me.

And I can't do sincere.

Know this, if you ever see me being sincere on the telly,

know that this scene runs in my head constantly.

If I'm ever there going - "If you simply text 75005,

"you'll donate £5.

"£5 to a community like this will keep them in mosquito nets

"or malaria tablets for six months.

"Many Bothans died...

"to bring us this information."

I cannot shift it.

It is in there and nothing is getting...

This is why I'll never host Crimewatch.

"The attack was brutal and unprovoked.

"We have CCTV footage to show you, but I must warn you,

"some of the images in this report are distressing."

"Many Bothans died to bring us this information, right?"

This is the reason, by the way, not to put a limit on my own

creativity... This is the reason why...

One of the reasons why the BBC will... I'm not the person the BBC

will call on to front their coverage when,

you know, like, the Queen dies or something.

AUDIENCE MEMBER GASPS

Don't make that noise. Please, don't make that noise.

I've checked - she's fine. I don't think I would ever walk out

and do this on a night... This isn't a topical joke, right?

By the way, I'm not the last person they'd asked to do this.

I moved up one when they fucked Clarkson out.

We all shunted up one.

But they literally couldn't risk me going, "The Queen is dead.

"The Queen has passed away after 75 years on the throne.

"She'll be mourned, not only in the United Kingdom,

"but throughout the Commonwealth.

"Many Bothans died to bring us this information."

The culmination of all my general discomfort with this kind of

saccharine, sentimental public emotion thing that I just can't do

was about two years ago, I did a thing for Comic Relief,

one of these challenges they do. Let me undercut this immediately.

Not one of the heroic ones,

not David Walliams swimming for two weeks down the Thames,

not John Bishop running a load of marathons

and then rowing or whatever the hell he did, these heroic ones.

Six of us in a boat down the Zambezi -

about as difficult as somebody in your office doing a sponsored

bike ride, so worth a fiver of somebody's money,

but let's not get carried away here. Which presumably is what you say to

somebody in your office when they ask you to sponsor them on a

bike ride, you go, "Yeah, John, you're never off the fucking bike.

"All right, I'll give you the tenner.

"And would you put some clothes on? In the Lycra in an office.

"Would you let it go, for God's sake."

So, there was a few of us doing this,

but they sent a documentary crew with us

in order to capture the moment, in order to capture the tantrums,

the blisters, or the difficult moments

when we visited projects that affected us emotionally,

and then we could emote about that, and you would see this and empathise

and donate more money.

And that's the way it works, and they do wonderful work.

Good for them. It turns out,

I am of fuck all use to Comic Relief,

because I can't deliver the thing they need people to deliver in these

little films. Because they would ask questions,

questions you know the answer to, questions that are quite leading...

They would ask questions like,

"Has this journey opened your eyes to the situation in Africa?"

And I would give the only answer you can give as a then 41-year-old man,

which is, of course -

no.

Don't be ridiculous.

What kind of fucking eejit would I have to be to have got

to 41 years old, landed in Africa and gone, "Jesus!

"They've got nothing here!

"Why was I not informed of this?

"I can't even get 3G."

And then they would really twist the knife and try to bump up the

emotional power. They would say things like, "Has this week

"changed the way you feel about your own children?"

And I said, "No."

How weird would it be if it took a week in the jungle with Mel C

and some bird off Waterloo Road

for me to go, "Do you know what?

"When I get home, I'm going to give my kids another go."

"Because I was beginning to find them quite whiny and needy,

"but you spend a week in a tent with Jack Dee,

"you learn what whiny neediness really is."

But the reason... By the way, I'm not a monster.

We weren't going to cholera hospitals or famine-relief sites

or whatever, we were going to long-term developmental projects.

This is where this kind of culture of the emotive breaks down for me,

you see, because these kinds of things,

it was building schools across Zambia, and so this makes sense.

This would be a good thing to do, because the kids wouldn't have to

walk two hours to school, because girls will get an education,

which is rare in that part of the world, because, you know,

you will create the skills-base in part of the world

which is developing. All of these are good things to do,

and we get them. We get it here. We don't have to get it here.

You don't have to make some sort of emotive thing to get me,

because they'll get it right here.

So, you try selling that in a cheap, emotive way.

I'm standing in a village with kid who's about eight years old.

I think his name was Joshua, a lovely little boy.

A little, gorgeous kid, a little football under his arm.

And I say to Joshua, "Joshua, your sister walked the two hours to

"school, but you're here today, so what did you do today?"

And Joshua looked at me and said, "Well, I'm too young to walk all the

"way to the school, so I stayed in the village today

"and I played football with my friends in the morning,

"and then I sat on my mother's lap as she did the arts and crafts.

"And then, and then we fed the goats and the other animals,

"and then I played football with my friends for the rest of the day."

And I looked a little Joshua and I said, "Well, Joshua,

"we're building a school here."

"So, all that's going to come to an end."

IMITATES BAWLING

"You had a good fucking innings, Joshua.

"Don't act like you didn't."

Fucking monstrous.

One thing I want to talk to you about,

I want to talk about the brain.

And I am aware, by the way, that when I talk about the brain,

I am by no means the most qualified person in a vast room of people,

to discuss this as an issue.

There'll be somebody in this room who'll be a neuroscientist or a

neurologist, or a psychiatrist or a psychologist.

Is there anyone here who works properly in that field, with the brain?

PEOPLE SHOUT

OK, first woman who shouted there, what do you do?

-Meningitis.

-You research meningitis, but in what field?

Are you a biochemist or are you a neuroscientist?

-What are you?

-I'm a doctor.

-You're a doctor, OK.

You don't count for this.

You get enough love.

-Who shouted over here? WOMAN:

-I'm a neuroscientist.

There we go, fantastic. Good to have you here. Well done.

Congratulations, you. The brain is an incredible thing, isn't it?

-Yes!

-Thank you very much. That's all I needed.

That is literally almost all I need off you.

Yes, it is, isn't it, though? It's an amazing thing.

It's unlike other organs of the body, you know.

I mean, the lungs, you can feel them expanding,

you can feel the heart beating.

You don't have to open up the knee to see what the knee does, right?

But the brain is really intractable.

It's very difficult to see the brain functioning,

to image it as it does what it does.

Even historically, we didn't know what different regions of the brain

did unless shit went hideously wrong.

There is a very famous story in the psychological sciences about a man

-called Phineas Gage. Have you heard of Phineas Gage? ALL:

-Yes!

Loads of you have heard of him. Phineas Gage worked on the railways

in America in the 1840s, 1850s. His job was to pin down the railway

lines using metal spikes that he'd fire into the ground using explosive

bolts, right? One day, Phineas is doing this job

and he's arranging all of his spikes,

when one of the bolts went off, shot the spike up,

the spike entered Phineas behind his chin, travelled through his head

and partially came out of the top of his head.

So, the spike travelled through his head.

Doctors managed to remove it and Phineas survived.

But doctors noted that after the accident,

he was noticeably more hostile.

And they said that the reason for this is because he'd damaged the

frontal lobes of his brain and maybe this was the region of his brain

that served to damp down violent mood swings.

And they're going, "Oh, maybe."

Or maybe it's because a fucking spike..

..just got shot up the back of his face

and now he can't eat steak.

I mean, there's many competing views.

And even things that we take for granted, or that we use all the

time, like our memory. We don't have a full working theory

of how memories are laid down.

Or if different memories are stored in different ways.

And by different memories, I'll illustrate.

I was recently going to the shops.

I had a list of things to buy and was at the door when my wife goes,

"We need bread." And I'm going,

"I don't have a pen on me to put bread onto the list,

"but don't you worry, it's in there, I have put it in here.

"I have put bread into my head.

"Don't you worry, honey, it is in there."

Now, obviously I made an arse of it, right?

I fecked it up, right?

I didn't put bread into the short-term task-solving part of

my memory. I put bread into a different region of my memory,

a region known as the wank bank.

So, I came back without any bread.

But more disturbingly...

..later that evening...

I had a very strange dream about a sandwich.

"Oh, 50-50,

"You're naughty bread, aren't you, 50-50? What are you,

"are you brown bread or white bread?

"I can't tell. You're a dirty, teasing bread.

"A dirty, dirty bread."

Sorry.

See, you become like an amateur psychologist, anyway,

if you have children, because you can see their brains develop,

as I'm sure my experts will back me up on.

A child's brain is very similar to a human brain.

But it must be beaten into shape.

I'm not going to give you some sentimental guff here about if we

can only see the world as children see the world,

then we'd truly be happy.

If only we could hold on to our childlike innocence and world view,

then we'd truly... My hole, right?

If we still walked around thinking like children,

nothing would get done and stop hitting your sister!

There are only two situations in the world where children have got

the right idea and we as grown-ups have lost something beautiful.

Two. One of them is swimming pools.

Jesus, we have ruined swimming pools as adults, right?

Kids have the right idea about a swimming pool - you enter at any

point, and then, when you're in there, you go in whatever direction

you want. Up down, left right, you float, you fart,

you do whatever you dreamed of doing in a zero-gravity frictionless

environment. We grown-ups, in our lanes,

slowly advancing on the wall.

Touching the wall, turning around, going to the other wall.

The prison yard of the swimming pool experience.

The worst thing about swimming in a lane is when you're in a lane and...

Like a hotel, and the other side, the row of coasters,

there is a family of kids going apeshit with delight,

and you're there going, "No, you're using it wrong!"

I say that's the worst thing,

that's not the worst thing with swimming in a lane.

The worst thing with swimming in a lane

is when somebody else joins your lane.

Because people don't swim at the same speed,

because otherwise it wouldn't be a fucking sport.

So, now you're either slowly catching up with them or they're

slowly catching up with you and, Jesus, the tension is unbearable.

I only came in for 30 minutes of cardio

and now I'm in the fucking Hunger Games.

I have never been on an exercise bike

and sensed another exercise bike slowly overtaking

me on the outside.

Two situations in which kids do it right - swimming pools and stairs.

Jesus, what I wouldn't give to use the stairs the way a child uses the

stairs. Particularly in some really grown-up context,

like a business meeting.

To walk out of a business meeting going, "Well,

"I'm very unhappy with the results of that particular business meeting.

"Those quarterly reports you presented are unsatisfactory

"and you shall be hearing from my legal team."

And then step backwards onto the stairs.

And then...

HE IMITATES THUDDING DOWN STAIRS

Good day.

CHEERING

But no, we make them grow up, we teach them things.

And I've got a problem with what we teach kids.

Not the syllabus in school,

but the stuff we teach them before they even get to school.

The stuff you're supposed to teach kids from nought to three.

The preschool syllabus.

The stuff that presumably we regard as the bedrock of information,

the most important stuff we can drill into kids' heads.

Jesus, that syllabus is unevolved.

The amount of effort I've spent in trying to teach animal noises and

pairing the correct farm animal to the correct farm animal noise to

two children who live in the middle of London.

At no stage is a cow going to wander randomly into their house.

"Jesus, a cow."

HE BLEATS

"We've been training for exactly this situation for years now."

Animal noises and ABCs.

For those of you who are beyond this or have yet to come to this,

ABCs are these big,

thick-paged books with one word per page in alphabetical order.

And they're grand at the start of the book.

Ah, sure, they're magical at the start of the book.

But when you get to the back of the book,

when you get to the freak letters,

you are putting the same amount of effort into teaching words to your

children that you know you never use as an adult.

Xylophone.

The hours wasted teaching xylophone.

"Look at the xylophone, look at the xylophone."

Hardly a day goes by as an adult for somebody to go,

"Have you got your xylophone on you, Dara?"

"I left my xylophone on the bus.

"And I've a major xylophone-based event coming up this evening."

Someday, I'd like to meet a professional xylophone player,

just to go, "How did you get into the xylophone?"

In the hope that they'll go, "Well, in my house, when I was growing up,

"xylophone was just as important as apple, ball or cat."

And I'll go, "And is your sister a xylophone player?"

"No, she's an X-ray technician."

CHEERING

They are the only two words beginning with X you can use.

You cannot use the third word beginning with X.

What is the third word beginning with X?

-MAN:

-Xenophobia.

-Xenophobia. Spot on, chap.

Xenophobia, the irrational fear of foreigners.

I would love to have an ABC...

..in which the word for X was xenophobia.

Just to turn the page and go, "Look at those faces.

"They're different, aren't they, those faces?

"Different to your face. How does that make you feel inside?

"You're not sure how it makes you feel inside?

"You don't know what they want?

"They want your job."

I've an ABC at home in which Y is for yacht.

What fucking lifestyle are they preparing this child for?

Sitting on the yacht, I'll be playing the xylophone.

He'll be on the edge of the boat,

looking at the dark faces in the harbour.

And then there are the things we teach kids

and the only reason we teach them to kids is because our parents

taught it to us, right?

And I am calling bullshit on one of those tonight.

Specifically, elbows off the table.

What is the problem with an elbow on a table?

A table is elbow height,

it is sitting there waiting for an elbow to appear.

You can rest, you can swivel, you can do...

The only reason we say elbows off the table to our children is

because our parents said elbows off the table to us

and the only reason they said elbows off the table to us was

because their parents said elbows off the table to them.

And frankly, that's how religions get started.

So, enough.

Elbows on the table as much as you want from here on in.

There's no problem with it whatsoever.

I'd imagine anyway, if you went through the social history of it,

you'd probably find, with respect, lads, it was probably an English thing,

like a Victorian or Edwardian thing,

where it was regarded as inappropriate to show your elbows in

a kind of "Ah, Mr Darcy, thank you for joining us here at

"Cavendish Hall for our annual Christmas celebration.

"Join me in the drawing-room as I...

"Elizabeth!" "How are you, Mr Darcy?!

"Have a look at that, Mr Darcy, do you like what you see?"

"Elizabeth, don't bring shame upon this family."

"Fuck you, Mammy, I haven't got a husband.

"Plenty more where that came from, Mr Darcy."

"Elizabeth, why do you have a Dublin accent?

"Never fully been explained to me."

Then there are the mental traits you presume only children would have and

that we would grow out of and we don't.

One of those is a thing called anthropomorphism.

Our tendency to see human traits in things that just aren't human, right?

Every Disney movie with cars and planes is based on this.

A couple of head lamps and a radiator grille,

it looks like a face. You can see the way a child's imagination would

fill in those gaps. But of course, we still do that, right?

You'd think you'd grow out of it.

A very good example of this was last year.

Those stories that appeared here, you know,

about these mansions in London,

in Holland Park, these £50 million houses owned by billionaires.

And that's not enough space for them.

They want more space, but they can't buy the space and land around them,

because other billionaires own the land around them,

and the other houses. So, they have to dig down.

Remember all this? All these things about planning permission for

four-storey-deep basements, into which they put their swimming pools

and they put their theatre and they put their servants' quarters

and their third kitchen.

And when you get the planning permission to actually do it,

you just need to drive a digger into the house and dig.

Literally move 60 feet of soil out of this

and create this massive hole.

So, you get this massive hole underneath the house,

with a digger sitting at the bottom of it.

And it's really difficult, in places like Holland Park, to stop it all,

you know, to drive a crane into these narrow roads

and lean over and take the digger out.

So, what they make the digger do...

..they make the digger dig another hole...

..at the bottom of the big hole.

And they drive the digger into the hole

and they fill the hole with concrete.

LAUGHTER AND SYMPATHETIC GROANS

Loving your reaction. Loving your reaction, right?

I mean, it doesn't have googly eyes printed on the front of it,

right? It's just a mechanical shovel,

but people go, "Aw, the digger."

I'd understand being that upset if it was like immigrant labour that

they were talking about.

I mean, that would genuinely be scandalous,

if there is a bloke going, "Well done, lads, excellent digging."

"Could you dig another hole while you're down there, lads, could you?

"Saves us a fortune in ladders."

If you're upset about that, if you're upset in any way about

the digger and I could hear the pain in the crowd tonight,

I don't even want to tell you how they dug the Channel Tunnel.

It will kill you if I tell you how they dug it.

This is how they dug the Channel Tunnel, right?

They got these big chuggy machines,

which is like a mole machine that would dig and pull the soil behind,

dig and pull the soil behind itself. And they sent them from France

and sent them from to England. Chug, chug into the ground, creating the tunnel.

Chug, chug, chug into the ground they went, down under the English Channel.

Chug, chug. All the way down until they almost met in the middle.

Chug, chug. And when they were about to meet...

Chug, chug, chug. They turned them 90 degrees.

Off the line of the tunnel and they bricked them into the wall.

So, genuinely, if you get the train from London to Paris,

or Paris to London, you pass the last resting place

of the chuggy machine that dug the tunnel.

That kills me.

Just the thought of the guy on the last day, getting into the

chuggy machine and turning the key and going, "How are you, Chuggy?"

And Chuggy turning around and going, "Will we see France today, will we?"

"Any day now, Chuggy, any day now."

"Is Calais as beautiful as they say?"

"Oh, the supermarkets go on for miles, Chuggy, you'll love it."

"Can I practise on you?"

"Go on, Chuggy, you can practise on me."

"Je m'appelle Chuggy."

"Oh, Chuggy, that's very good."

"Will they like me in France?"

"They're going to love you in France, Chuggy.

"They're going to love you in France."

"Chuggy?" "Oui?"

"Do you mind turning 90 degrees to the right here just for a second?"

"Are we still going to France?"

"Oh, we're still going to France, Chuggy, don't you worry about that,

"we're still going to France. You just pull in here for a second.

"That's very good, Chuggy. You are a great little chugger.

"Well done, Chuggy, that's great. Stop here now for a second,

"Chuggy. Now I just... I have to get out and do something for a second,

"Chuggy, so I'm just going to leave you here.

"You have a little sleep for yourself,

"have a sleep for yourself and dream of chateaux and cheese

"and bicycle races and vineyards.

"You have a lovely dream for yourself.

"Night-night, Chuggy. Night-night.

"Night-night, Chuggy.

"Brick it up."

And on the other side of the tunnel there is a man walking

backwards with a beret on going,

"Couchez-vous, Chugons. Couchez-vous."

See, I think that's funny, right,

but an hour after every gig, I get hundreds of tweets going,

"Fuck you - #PoorOldChuggy."

CHEERING

So, we teach things to kids and we teach them because they can learn.

Oh, my God, if you hear this phrase once,

"Oh, "kids' brains are amazing, they're like sponges."

Have you ever tried to teach anything to a sponge?

It is impossible to get it...

"Jump through the hoop! Jump, jump through the hoop.

"You're the worst sponge I've ever trained."

This whole thing about... It's so easy for kids to learn,

because they're young minds and then you get older and

it's very difficult to learn.

Of course, it's easy for children to learn,

because everything is new when you're a child, and amazing.

When you're a kid, oh, mountains explode and lava pumps out.

Oh, there's a planet with a ring around it

or there's a horse in Africa with a really long neck.

Everything is fantastic.

Then you get old and nothing is new.

Just tiny variations of shite you've already heard of.

And by the way,

in the great eternal question of who's young and who's old,

is 40 the new 20 and all this guff, right, here's old.

Have you got a pension? You're old.

That is where we drawn the line, right?

Not just because you're planning for the future and it's not all just

about now, but mainly, if you've got a pension,

you once sat in a room with a bloke with a load of folders in front of

him who went, "I believe you want a pension," and you went,

"OK, I'll get a pension."

And he went, "What kind of pension do you want?"

And you went, "Jesus, there are KINDS of pension?"

And that is grown-up life in a nutshell.

Shit you didn't care of comes in a million different varieties.

I remember once a picture falling off a wall in my house and me going,

"Oh, God, I'd better get a nail." And going into a hardware store

and the guy going, "Great, what kind of nail?"

"There are KINDS of nail?"

And the guy says, "Of course there are kinds of nail,

"what kind of wall is it?"

"There are KINDS of wall?"

He said, "Of course there are kinds of wall.

"What does the wall do in your house?"

"It stops people from seeing me have a poo."

"Do you have a nail for that kind of wall?"

"I think we can stretch to that."

Grown-up life is either tiny variations of stuff you don't care

about or stuff you wish you didn't have to know,

but now you're a grown-up, so you have to know it.

Like the first time any of us learned that trainers,

runners, sneakers, whatever you want to call them,

are stitched by eight-year-old children in Indonesia.

And you hear this and you go home...

LAUGHTER This is not funny.

I cannot believe you laughed at the build-up in that particular joke.

The heart-wrenching story of child labour in another part...

I'm going to do that again and you'd better have a long think,

you'd better have a long think about what you want.

The first time you ever hear that trainers, runners, sneakers,

are stitched by eight-year-old children in Indonesia.

And you go home and look at your own eight-year-old and go,

"Look at the quality of work that these children..."

"..compared to the shit that you're bringing back from that school.

"The money I'm spending on your education.

"For what? A rocket made out of tubes.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?

"I can run in these.

"You see that, do you?

"Make me a shoe and I will put it on the fridge, do you understand?"

Everything is a downer, everything is a buzzkill,

because we know too much. Even stuff that used to be fun.

Remember when booking a holiday... This will blow young people's minds.

..booking a holiday used to involve going into a shop on the high street

with a brochure and pointing to something

and then they'd sell it to you.

Man, how crazy does that sound now,

when booking a holiday involves sitting at your computer at home and

opening nine separate windows and trying to coordinate the travel and

accommodation and the cheap flight and the drop-down menus and the

passport details and the Esta forms and the temporary visas, and it takes

ages to do, and every family here has drawer near the computer

that has all of the passports for the family

and all the dregs of currency for the last eight years.

And every time I open that drawer and look in,

just for a second, I'm Jason Bourne.

Just for one tiny shining moment I am going, "I could escape.

"I could take these and I could be gone."

That would be magical, right?

Oh, sure, there would be an awkward moment on a frontier post, with

a man going, "You do not look like a six-year-old girl."

And I'm going, "Well, Sergei, it was a long flight.

"Here's 13 Canadian dollars.

"Buy yourself something sexy."

But you do it, you do the hours of filling in all the different things,

coordinating all the different windows.

You do it for the little face. Ah, the little face.

Not your children,

your wife's little face as the air hostess explains to her,

"No, this is definitely seat 14F

"and when the booking was made you specifically requested the halal,

"kosher, vegetarian, lactose-intolerant children's meal.

"It's an incredibly specific request.

"Nobody has ticked all five boxes before.

"Do you not remember making such an incredibly specific meal request?"

"I... I don't. Maybe we should check with my husband.

"Darling, is there any chance...?" "Oh, fuck, there is.

"Yes. If I'm staying up till one in the morning filling out passport

"details, you, my darling, are eating the halal, kosher,

"vegetarian, lactose-intolerant children's meal.

"I just wanted to see what they'd bring you.

"Enjoy your apple."

Tiny victories, people, tiny victories.

By the way, I'm going to say a thing in a minute and when I've finished

saying the thing I'm going to say in a minute, watch out for this,

I'm going to say these words - "Thank you very much, goodnight."

Ignore it. Then I'll walk off, ignore that, as well.

It is not the end of the show.

If I hear one chair go fah-dunk, I'll be furious, right?

Furious! You'll have not understood the rules in this at all.

All right? I'll have to walk off. I won't even disappear from view.

I'll leave one hand. One hand just dangling. You'll see it just there.

Just as a sign of life. I'll put a mirror and breathe on it.

You will see it steaming up. You'll know I'm just behind there,

behind that big head. Just behind there. Big head.

Me and the big head, great. This is difficult enough to shift,

along with the Megabus. Anyway, so...

CHEERING Stop it!

Oh, ha-h-ha.

Oh, I can take a joke.

My entire life!

Anyway, I'm not going to go anywhere.

I will be back. It's a dance you have to do.

I'll walk off. Oh. Then back on again. Right. Watch it happen.

This is the thing I want to talk to you about.

Where are my psychology people, where are you?

-Where's my neuroscientist? Good to have you here.

-Whoo!

-Are you familiar with the debate about the gendered brain?

-Yeah.

Good for you. That's all I needed... Yes, there is...

There's a discussion at the moment about the gendered brain.

The gendered brain is the academic title for are male and female brains...?

Or on that continuum anyway...

Are they chemically or structurally different, or is there...?

Is it a societal thing? It's the eternal question, in some ways,

about the difference between the different genders, right?

But I am not an academic. I can't offer anything really,

other than a data point, a small observation about the male brain.

And this is not meant as a strength or weakness of the male brain.

It is just a thing that it does.

The male brain has a special state it goes into chemically, right?

After a particular event.

An event occurs and the chemistry of the male brain changes dramatically.

The previous balance of hormones shifts violently away.

What the male brain would be like before the event and the male brain

after the event are really, really different.

Most men probably can guess now what event I'm talking about at the moment.

There's an event. Let's call it "the event".

The happy event. It's a good event.

The medical term in Ireland is "getting the ride".

The male brain is awash with hormones constantly going,

"Are you getting the ride, is there a ride here? Find the ride.

"There must be a ride somewhere. Is this going to lead to the ride?

"There's no ride here. Go over there, maybe there's a ride there."

Constantly find the ride, right. Until you get the ride

and then those hormones fuck off somewhere.

And suddenly it's like being released from a hijack situation

and you're walking around going "What the hell?"

And you can see the universe as it truly is,

including the hideous choices that you've made in the build-up to the

ride you've just had.

"Who the hell are you? What are we doing in this skip?

"what's the fuck was I thinking for the last...?"

It is like The Matrix being switched off.

You genuinely see the universe as it is.

If you want any truth from a man, ladies,

you have five minutes after an orgasm to get everything you want

out of him. Before the hormones come charging back in again

and the game begins again.

It is so pronounced, the chemical change,

that I think companies that sell luxury goods, impulse purchases,

should be required by law to take this into account.

In other words, like, a man walks into a Porsche garage and he goes,

"I want to buy a Porsche. Oh, I want to buy a Porsche."

HE IMITATES CAR ENGINE REVVING

The bloke in the garage should be obliged to go,

"Well, we're the leading Porsche garage in the area,

"I would love to sell you a Porsche.

"But unfortunately, under new legislation,

"I must first ask you to step into that little cubicle over there.

"Have a little wank for yourself.

Because guaranteed, three to five minutes later,

the man will walk out and go, "I don't want a Porsche.

"What was I thinking? I've no use of a Porsche.

"How can I bring the kids to school in a Porsche?

"It's a ridiculously impractical thing, to have a Porsche at my age,

"for God's sake. Who are you? Where am I? Please, take me home."

It gives clarity, a sudden burst of clarity.

Clarity's the last thing you need when it comes to sex,

or anything around sex.

Oh, my God, the ludicrous shite that we have put around sex.

Can I apologise to every woman in this room

for the ridiculous nonsense that you have had foisted upon you

in the name of what we find horny?

Some of which you must only do because

you think we like it on some ironic level.

Like all this, "boo-boop-ee-do," shit.

That they occasionally talk you into, because you think, "Ah,

"this is a joke, isn't it?"

And you're going, "Yeah, just keep fucking doing it."

"No, but you're enjoying it on an ironic level."

"Yeah, whatever. Just sing Santa Baby one more time."

I mean, lingerie as an industry, it's just that - ridiculous clothing.

Any time you're with the woman as she walks out in lingerie and goes,

"Is this what you like, is it? Is this what you like?"

You never feel more like an ape in a Simian research laboratory,

as a kindly scientist from a superior species tries to fathom how

your lower brain works.

"Is this what you like, is it?

"Show me on the flash cards, if this is what you like."

"Banana, banana.

"Tyre on rope. Tyre on rope. Banana, banana. Tyre on rope."

I mean, stockings, for fuck sakes.

An item of clothing both useless and incredibly specific.

This is where the sexy is.

This is where the sexy lives.

This exact height here is where the sex is.

Don't be going lower than that. Hang on, no, you've gone below the knee.

Fuck off. Pop socks. No, no.

Somewhere between this and this, it goes from, "Yes, yes, yes," to,

"No, the worst thing you could possibly wear."

"Oh, yummy, yummy, yuck, yuck, yuck!"

"Please, stop it. All I did was put on a pair of slippers

"and a housecoat and we'll call the whole thing off."

How ludicrously specific is this?

This is where the sexy lives.

"No, no, back over the knee, over the, over the knee.

"Oh, Japanese schoolgirl, loving it. Lovely.

"French maid. Saucy.

"No, you've gone too far, you've gone too far there now.

"I said lift it up."

"Is that not what you want me to do? I'm lifting it up."

"No, back down again, back down again.

"This is where the sexy lives.

"This exact specific location is where the sexy..."

What? What is it in men, communally, at some primal level,

that makes them go, "Do you know what I like?

"I like a woman who looks like she's been partially dipped in ink."

Oh, we love it in nylon.

Not so much in waders, it turns out.

Otherwise, men would constantly be at the river banks during angling

tournaments, going, "Look at them in the water.

"Dirty fisherman!" "Do you like my waders, boys?"

Entire industries based around being sexually attractive to men,

that miss the point entirely.

It must be a decade and a half since I've been in a pole-dancing club,

but I remember looking at the girl swinging off on the pole,

or clambering over the pole, or hanging upside down off the pole.

And you're going, "Well done, pet.

"That's very impressive.

"Who are you doing that for, exactly?

"I just want to look at you."

I could revolutionise the pole-dancing industry with one move.

Just stand next to the pole, take out one boob,

bang it against the pole.

That is all you need to do.

We would be thrilled with that.

Jesus, we could watch that all day.

These super clubs, where there's three stages

and Aurora's on one stage and Athena's on another stage

and in the middle, Mary's going,

"Why are you wasting your energy?

"I take out one tit, bang it against the pole.

"Look at that. Look at them, they're hypnotised.

"They can't get enough of it.

"I do that for one song. For the second song, put it in,

"take the other one out, bang it over the other side."

Ladies, you need to get your revenge.

You need to find a thing which is as ludicrous as the stuff

we've made you do, right? I know it won't be something you genuinely

find erotic, but just pick a thing, pick a ridiculous item of clothing.

Like a glove that goes up to mid arm.

And suddenly announce that this is the sexiest thing

you can see on a man.

At every Christmas and birthday, give us another box and we'll go,

"Hang on," and shake the box and open and go,

"Is this another pair of these, is it?"

And you'll go, "Put them on!

"Put on your gun shows and give me a look at you."

And then make us walk around the bedroom, going,

"Is this what you like, is it? Are you sure this is what you like?

"I'm not sure you find this sexy at all.

"Do you really find this sexy?"

"I love it! Now take something off the shelf over there."

"Ah, fuck off, you're taking the piss now, right?

"Are you sure this is what you want?"

"Yes. Do it. Walk around the room. It's Mammy's night.

"It's my turn. Do what I say, for once."

"Are you sure? Can I at least put on the black ones?

"The red ones make me feel slutty."

"Do it. Now do the dirty thing." "I will not do the dirty thing.

"This is enough for you now. You should be happy with this."

"Do the dirty thing."

"All right, I'll do the dirty thing, but don't tell anyone I did it.

"Look at my elbows!"

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Dara O Briain.

I walk to here, as if that's it, as if that's done.

That's surely the end of the show.

CHEERING

I'm back again!

CHEERING

Oh, the nonsense of it all.

And you're on again.

I'm sorry, you've got to do that dance, it's weird.

Did you see the hand just sitting there?

Anyway, where were we? Oh, yeah, I'm going to tell you a story.

I'm going to tell you a story and then you get on with your lives.

About the Comic Relief thing, right. Did the Comic Relief thing.

Was at pains to point out that at no stage was

this like, "Oh, we're pushed to the very limits of our endurance and who

"knows, we could have died at any stage. Oh, my God."

Except we could have died at one stage.

There was one day when they sent us down a section of river

which was too fast. It was too high,

it was just post the rains and it was technically difficult.

There are rapids that go round rocks and there are rapids that go through

trees. And through the trees ones are actually really dangerous,

because Jack Dee's boat, for example, got caught,

got punctured by the trees and he almost fell into the trees,

where he would have been trapped and drowned. And then they pulled him

out at the last minute. Right?

I was in another boat with another guy at the back and it was a...

Our safety boat disappeared off.

We smashed into a tree, both paddles were lost.

At one stage, I am in the water of the river,

pulling the boat along, because the bloke with me was a British Olympic

triple jumper who couldn't fucking swim.

So, that was helpful.

And then we found ourselves in this quiet spot,

surrounded by this thrashing water, all going this one way.

And we're going, "They can't come back up to us.

"What the hell are we going to do?"

And we brilliantly decided, "Well, do you know what,

"we'll just push ourselves off. We've no paddles or anything,

"but we'll push ourselves.

"We'll get carried down to the bottom, because, you know,

"It's a log flume. At some stage, halfway down,

"there will be a flash and at the bottom,

"we'll be able to buy a photograph of ourselves on a mouse mat,

"looking petrified to shit."

So, we go down, we hit every tree on the way down,

I get thrown from the boat again.

I end up having to swim over to a tree,

which is sticking out of the water, and grab on to it, this thin tree,

and hold on to it. For 40 minutes I'm holding on to this tree

as the rapids are coming past me. For 30 minutes at least of which

I'm trying to think of what the funny joke is I will say

when I'm rescued. Cos I felt I had a professional obligation

as a comedian to have a Bruce Willis quip ready.

So, then I get rescued, they pull you out of the water and I go,

"Come in number nine. Your time is up!"

Then I thought, "Maybe I shouldn't do that, just in case I do that

"and they immediately go, 'Jack Dee is dead.' "

(Sorry.)

I don't know. About after 40 minutes standing in the river,

a camera boat did eventually come past and I had to jump to it,

then I got saved and we're all gathered on the river bank

further down at a quiet point, just getting our breath back

after this ridiculous, unnecessary adventure.

When I'm sitting talking to the sound man and he said,

"You were gone for an hour. You were missing.

"The paddles are gone. At one stage,

"you have no boat for 40 minutes. Did you not panic?"

And I'm going, "Do you know what, weirdly, I didn't panic."

Clearly, this was a big deal, but my brain kind of went,

"The problem's this big, so let's just think about this.

"Let's just think about these 30 seconds.

"As long as you're alive for this bit,

"then it kind of doesn't matter how big the problem is.

"Let's just worry about this and as long as you stay alive in this bit,

"then the rest of it doesn't matter."

And the man looked at me and said, "Oh, that's very interesting, Dara,

"the way your mind works in a high-stress situation like that.

"The way you managed to keep a lid on panic or any of those kind of

"emotions, during what was clearly a very dangerous time,

"because there was a camera on your helmet and I'm the sound man.

"Would you like to hear a recording of yourself for the last hour?"

And it is just an hour of me going, "Fuck, fuck, fuck!

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!

"Bluh, bluh, bluh, bluh!

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!"

They took a picture of me at that point, holding on.

There was a camera, a long-lens shot of me doing this.

And they sent the picture back to the newspapers here,

in the hope that people would see this and go, "Ah,

"It's not just a jolly. They're genuinely doing some difficult,

"dangerous stuff. So, do you know what, we'll donate more.

"And that's the way it works. Good for them, they do great work."

However, they also sent the photo of me hanging onto this tree to the

newspapers in Ireland and they ran it big.

The front cover of the Irish Independent was a big picture of me

clinging to this tree, under the headline -

"The Brits Have Tried To Kill Dara."

LAUGHTER

"When will this nightmare end?"

My uncle in Limerick, the other side of Ireland,

my 85-year-old uncle walks into a newsagents,

sees this massive stack of papers with his nephew drowning in a river

in Africa, and freaks out.

Races home, rings his sister, my mother, my 83-year-old mother,

and goes, "Oh, my God, Edna, what's happened?"

Now, my mother's general attitude to peril and things I do on the

television is essentially, "Ah."

Which is to say, on some gut level,

my mother never thought I went to Africa, still probably doesn't,

thought I was in a studio in Shepherd's Bush and then computers.

Right.

So, she, liberated by this...

When he rings going, "Oh, my God, Edna, what's happened?"

My mother, on an instinct we had never noticed before,

decides to fuck with this head.

My 83-year-old mother decided to prank her 85-year-old brother,

you know, for mega-lols.

So, he goes, "Oh, my God, Edna, what's happened?"

Her response, genuinely, was, "Jesus, Frank,

"it's worse than you've heard."

So, now he is reeling.

My sister's in the hallway going, "What are you doing?"

And she's there going, "Hee-hee-hee!"

And she hits him with the killer line.

Now, I don't think in parts of the UK they get how great this line is.

If you're Irish, oh, you'll get this.

In Ireland, this is a line that has resonance and darkness at times.

He goes, "Oh!" And he's reeling.

And my mother hits him with, "We're flying out tomorrow."

Literally, isn't a darker thing you could say in Ireland.

Centuries of immigration, bodies being returned,

the tragic high cost of...

And he is now, "Oh!"

This poor image of his 83-year-old sister

being rushed to Dublin Airport to get an emergency flight.

The plane takes off and lands at Heathrow,

she's transferred to the first flight to Africa, that takes off,

it lands at Africa Airport, gets out...

..gets an internal flight from there to Zambia,

then she gets out and there's a twin-prop plane

that the flying doctors would use.

She's bundled into this and then flown low over the Serengeti,

buzzing along over the landscape.

Till she finds a flat patch of ground near a hut, a shack -

the medical centre.

And this little Irish woman, 83 years old, wearing the same coat,

holding the same bag that she's been travelling with for the last 36 hours,

is walked through this alien landscape

into this room where there's a large figure lying on a trolley.

And they peel back and they say, "Can you identify the body?"

And my mother looks and goes,

"Is that Al Murray?"

CHEERING

You're good people and it's nice to be able to just stand in front

of you and go, "Thank you." Thank you for the many years

you've come to gigs, to the shows you've watched on the television,

and continue to support both me and other live comedy.

But me, listen, I'm touched, I'm genuinely touched.

It's such a privilege to perform in front of you.

Genuinely, it is nice to be able to be sincere, just once.

To be sincere... LAUGHTER

Whoa, wait, whoa.

We're having a nice moment.

What happened there? It's like you all...

You pulled back. Please, no.

Ah! No, seriously, no, seriously.

You people...

No, seriously, no, I love you.

Is that too much? Is that too much to say?

No, you... How can I find...?

Oh, hm. Oh!

Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Dara O Briain, thank you very much.

Pleasure and a delight. Good luck, folks.

See you again. Goodnight!

CHEERING