Ireland: Taking a quantum leap

On the face of it, such an awkward moment seems like an aberration for a comedian who makes a point of not hectoring his audience with right-on opinions or outré humour. “I wouldn’t necessarily be the king of edge,” says O Briain.

Indeed, throughout his career the customer has tended to be king. For a long time the Bray-born comedian has altered his live act to suit different audiences, removing Irish references for British venues from early on. His television shtick has been similarly tailored to the cut of whatever show he is hosting, be it a freewheeling and fast-talking style appropriate for The Panel, RTE 2’s self-consciously irreverent discussion programme, or a more wryly empathetic manner on Buried Alive, RTE 1’s mock obituary show from last year.

But if O Briain’s uneasily silent confrontation in Cork was a rare occurrence, it was still something of a turning point for him. For the first time since moving to London over two years ago O Briain says he felt out of sync with the sensibilities of an Irish audience. Far from being worried, though, the 33-year-old seems excited. When it comes to his career O Briain sees himself as a comedian first and Irish second.

Since leaving Ireland to build on a career he felt had reached optimum point at home, O Briain has steadily expanded his appeal in Britain, playing to larger houses on the back of prized television spots such as guest host on Have I Got News For You, the BBC’s satirical quiz. For O Briain the broad canvas of Britain has thrown the parochialism and self-satisfaction of Ireland into sharp relief.

“London is so international that you can’t slip into any frame of reference,” he says. “I don’t play the green card. I find it very limiting: I don’t want to be playing that role for them. Anyway, we’re not hot like we used to be. If I was Muslim I’d be doing even better than I am. They’re the hot minority at the moment, very sexy. The novelty has so worn off us now — we’ve slipped so far into the middle class.”

He continues: “But then you are talking about a fabulous multicultural country. People here run down England a lot in a knee-jerk kind of way but they are 40 years ahead of us when it comes to multiculturalism. I make the point that a lot of Irish people move back here because they feel they couldn’t raise their children in England, which is hideously insulting to a lot of really good people.

“It’s not that stunning an education system here: it takes us 14 years to teach us a language that none of us can speak a word of. We tend to reassure ourselves a lot about stuff over here and I find that needs to be headbutted.”

O Briain — who happens to be a fluent Irish speaker and whose late grandmother was in the IRA during the war of independence — has embraced the opportunity London offered to broaden his horizons. “Did I used to sit in the pub saying, ‘They’re all bastards, they stole our land?’ Yes. But the whole show I did last year was basically me going through that baggage and excising it,” he says.

More pertinently, the fact that his new, less specifically Irish persona is good for the bottom line will not have been lost on him. It is telling that he refers to comedy as a “trade” rather than an art: O Briain’s aesthetic displays little of the perfectionist intensity of fellow countrymen such as Dylan Moran or Tommy Tiernan.

When it comes to the lucrative, image-enhancing world of television O Briain is certainly driven by graft as much as craft, as he lists off his forthcoming small-screen projects in a business-like manner. Having gradually raised his profile on British comedy programmes such as the Live Floor Show and Never Mind the Buzzcocks, O Briain is hoping to make the leap to being an established television personality. He is about to embark on a hectic summer schedule that sees him hosting forthcoming shows such as Mock the Week, a satirical panel show for BBC2, and The Last Laugh, a sitcom writing challenge programme for BBC3.

As yet, though, O Briain is not in a position where he can afford to pass up work in Ireland, hence his continued presence on The Panel. However, while he enthuses about the creative freedom the programme offers and defends the show against critics, it is clear that what drives him now is the prospect of making it in Britain.

“I have a hunger to do what I’m doing on a bigger scale,” he says. “I am ambitious in that regard. And I also don’t think that’s a bad thing. There is a tendency to regard ambition in comedy as being some sort of sin, that it should be about something else.

“I am very aware that the next 24 months in particular could be fairly defining. I’m at the stage where my name is popping up on documents in England, which is hopefully the stage just before my face starts popping up on shows. I would welcome the chance to exhale and find the thing that — unbeknownst to myself — I’ve been working up to.”

Not that O Briain set out with such career plans. Growing up in Bray, Co Wicklow, he was never, he says, the funny guy at school and it was only while studying mathematical physics at University College Dublin that he was drawn to debating and anchoring student events. Even after doing his first comedy routine at a friend’s cafe, stand-up was a sideline to his job on RTE’s children’s show Echo Island.

His stand-up career gradually advanced, as his RTE television work — on everything from Don’t Feed the Gondolas to the game show Family Affairs — boosted his popularity on the circuit. “It lures you in as a trade and you find yourself doing slightly larger gigs: it was only about seven years into it that I thought, ‘Okay, I can do this’,” he says. But if his broader ambition was slow in forming, O Briain is candid about the attractions stand-up had for his ego.

“To tell a joke in front of a crowd and get a round of applause is almost carnal. Any possible need you have to be loved, it’s all there. I think we are driven by the basest of things. The finest work is always driven by the worst reasons. And driving a career like this is obviously the fact that a load of strangers clap at you.”

O Briain seems loath to paint himself as a mere crowdpleaser though. His personable style may lend itself to mainstream television but, he says, he still aspires to make the odd point. Clearly he bristles at the notion of being called a traditional comic.

“Hang on, what’s traditional? Traditional in my head is jokes, which I don’t do. My voice isn’t particularly surreal, nor is it character-based, but I don’t make jokes about the Englishman, the Scotsman and the Irishman.”

For the moment, he occupies a netherworld between local celebrity and international success, and while he is happy to appear on The Panel, which finishes its current run tonight, he admits to frustration that he is still occasionally obliged to look to Irish television for work.

“In this country, because there’s only about 10 jobs, people are always fighting each other,” he says. “Also you’re competing with (British) shows that have eight times the budget. And it’s not just that salaries are higher and people raise their game — more stuff is in the mix, so you can pick the better ideas. That’s where RTE will always lose out.”

With his various British projects in the pipeline, RTE’s loss may be the BBC’s gain. Yet O Briain is aware that his success is far from assured. As the Cork episode reminded him, he has to keep his audience happy.

“There’s still an element of ‘What am I doing here?’” he says. “I’m just jumping rock to rock and seeing where it goes. Currently it’s in a really nice place but I make one inappropriate tsunami joke and that’s the end of my career. Even though I’ve spread myself across a couple of countries and a couple of careers, it could all go hideously wrong.”

The Panel is on RTE 2 tonight. O Briain appears at UCH, Limerick tonight, and Vicar Street, Dublin, on April 9