JOE’s Eric Lalor caught up with stand-up comedian, broadcaster and award-winning documentary presenter Neil Delamere to talk comedy tours, TV, radio and Irish woman pirates from Connacht.
JOE: So then Neil, you always seem to be busy. You are on yet another national tour, this one called the Smartbomb tour. How long have you been on the road and when will you finish?
Neil : I started back on Dec 27th. People often ask me why I would gig so soon after Christmas to which I would reply, ‘Have you ever seen Irish people after they’ve been force to spend Christmas in the company of people they are related to and have to put in time with? You can put anything on after Christmas and they’ll come just to escape the home. You could shave two sheep and force them into a fight to the death in a ring in Roscommon and people would travel in their droves! Not to denigrate the quality of my own show obviously! It’ll run all the way to April.
JOE: What’s after the tour?
Neil: Hopefully some more radio and TV.
JOE: Is that a conscious decision to tour at the start of every year and then move on to other projects?
Neil: Normally Edinburgh in August is when you have to have your new show ready. So you then tour with that from September right through to March or so, but I’ve slightly shifted it this year as I was away for a bit.
JOE: Are there plans to release a DVD for the Smartbomb tour?
Neil: No plans for a DVD, but I am toying with the option of throwing an audio version up on to iTunes. Things are a little crazy right now with the tour and obviously, the TV panel show, Next Week’s News, is coming to an end this week for now and then I head up north for a new radio series of The Blame Game for BBC NI which is coming back to the television in the Autumn. After that, I go straight into shooting four more documentaries.
JOE: Pardon? Four more documentaries?!
Neil: Yeah, four more history documentaries.
JOE: Cool! The one thing that has impressed us, amongst other things, is this fountain of knowledge you seem to possess about all things regarding Irish history. When you went to DCU, you studied computer applications. Has history always been something you’ve been interested in, was it one of your strongest subjects in school?
Neil: Believe it or not, I dropped it after my Junior Cert, but I’ve always had an interest. When I was in DCU we were brought in for a chat by this dude who said ‘DCU is very much geared towards making you employable, good employees and educated well rounded people, however this module is going to make you more interesting in a pub conversation’. I think it was called Science and Society. I was well impressed by the pitch. In fact the facilitator had me at hello! I just want to make documentaries which get people at hello. I’m interested in history, archaeology, anthropology and any ‘ologies’ I guess.
JOE: Even gynaecology?!
Neil: (laughs) Well listen, there are gaps in my knowledge and that would be a significant one let me tell you. Seriously though, anything that I find interesting is good and at the moment it’s history because everything comes around and is repeated over and over again and you know that old adage, those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. I’d certainly love to do more science stuff. And particularly something on Irish people’s influence on science throughout the ages.
For example there’s a great story about an Irish mathematician who solved a problem and carved the formula into the stone on Broombridge in Dublin. It was William Rowan Hamilton who had discovered the mathematical notion of quaternions. Mathematicians to this stay still visit it as some sort of pilgrimage. There are lots of interesting stories like that which I would like to explore. I find QI to be the best show on television. Great snippets of information and facts. It’s like when I step in for John Murray or Derek Mooney on RTE Radio 1. You get to speak to people who are experts in their field and who teach you things. I guess I’m naturally curious and like to learn new things.
JOE: Are they going to be one off documentaries?
Neil: Yeah, part of a series on Irish heroes. I’m hopefully going to do episodes on Granuaile, the sea queen of Connacht, who many viewed as a pirate, Cuchulainn, Red Hugh O’Donnell and Fionn mac Cumhaill.
JOE: Superb! Already we’re interested! The thing we loved about the documentary you did, ‘The Only Viking In The Village’, which won an IFTA, was the tone it was made in. It wasn’t ramming a message down your throat. It’s the perfect way to educate people using a mixture of facts and entertainment. It’s not preachy, it’s take what you want from it.
Neil: Thanks very much. We tried to do it that way. It’s the television equivalent of foreplay. We wanted people to enjoy the experience and not have to force ourselves on people. We aimed to get the balance right between getting things factually right and a bit of craic as well. I think people were able to differentiate between what an expert would say and me slightly exaggerating it for comedic purposes. I’d love for someone to be in a pub two weeks, two months or two years after they’ve seen it and to talk about what they had learned. An academic who watched the Viking show described it as a wonderful piece of ‘stealth learning’. I love that notion. Like some sort of educational ninja.
JOE: Subliminal messaging?
Neil: Yeah exactly, whisper something in someone’s ear and they can regurgitate it a year later. Initially, experts were a bit reluctant to go along with the idea of a factual programme interspersed with comedy bits, but once they saw the first one and then saw the St Patrick documentary, they realised what we are doing and are now more likely to come on board for future projects.
JOE: It was very obvious through your enthusiasm that you were not there just to take the piss. Although there was humour, I think at the heart of it was a message and education there. I hear the St Patrick’s documentary has been nominated for a Celtic Media award. Congrats!
Neil: Thanks! Yeah, I think audiences are really intuitive, really bright in a way that they can tell if someone is faking it or not. That’s why I think Des Bishop has been so successful with his TV shows. You can tell he has an interest and is emotionally invested in the show. If your heart isn’t in it, you lose any connection you might have had with the audience.
JOE: Ok, something to look forward to so. Ok, we want to bring you back to where it all began. How did you get into comedy? What made you decide that this was the job for you?
Neil: I didn’t really see comedy until I was about 19 or 20 and was in DCU. It just wasn’t available in most small rural towns. I remember going to a college gig in DCU which featured Dara O’Briain, Deirdre O’Kane and Eddie Bannon. I sat on the floor with the rest of the students and thought ‘Wow! This is amazing!’ So myself and a friend decided that we would do our first gig. I did it and got the bug.
I was working in a company and the dot com bubble had just burst, I had friends who were let go, I had just won a comedy competition with a little bit of prize money and I thought to myself ‘Feck it, I’ll give this a go’. I always think I should lie and make this a more interesting anecdote. Maybe something like, I had a car accident, a near death experience, I actually died on the operating table and the ghost of Richard Pryor came to me to tell me that we had so much in common. He grew up in a crack house in America and I grew up in a rural town in Ireland. The parallels are uncanny. He felt we were kindred spirits and needed me to carry on his work.
JOE: That’s certainly more interesting alright, but perhaps a bit hard to believe!
Neil: Put both stories in and let people decide which one they think is true!
JOE: Who makes you laugh? You mentioned Richard Pryor there. Was he one of your idols?
Neil: When you see him do those early shows and think to yourself that this was the first time anything like that had ever been done, you realise how special it is. That’s what I love. I love the comedians where you can’t see the strings so to speak. You know yourself in comedy, that after a while you see the little tricks, the patterns, the techniques, the commonalities and all the rest. When you go see someone who is the complete opposite, the antithesis of everything you do, but still gets the desired result, that’s hugely impressive. The likes of Daniel Kitson, a once in a generation kind of comedian, or Tommy Tiernan, who makes you proud to be Irish. He’s as good as anyone else in the world.
We may not have the strength in depth due to our small population, but our best guys are as good as anyone else in the world. They actually remind me of the Offaly hurling team in the 1990s. We didn’t have many great players, but our great players were as good as any in the country. Another comic I admire is the Dutch comic, Hans Teeuwen (pic below), who I saw in Edinburgh and also in Kilkenny at the Cat Laughs.
JOE: Hans Teeuwen? Sounds like someone we need to check out. Are there any other hidden gems out there who people should wake up to?
Neil: Well Hans is massive in Holland, so I suppose Gary Delaney is someone I’d recommend people should check out. He’s slowly coming to the attention of people in the UK, but I think he’s been great for a long time now. A lot of the time it’s just about matching the comic with the right vehicle to showcase his talents. Stuart Francis has always been a great comic, but it was only when he went on Mock The Week did we see the acclaim go his way.
Another example closer to home was PJ Gallagher in Naked Camera. It was a marriage made in heaven. It shot PJ through the stratosphere and deservedly so. It’s difficult for comics to get that elusive break. Particularly here in Ireland, you need the break to be good, the show to be a success for, ideally, one or two years at least. A lot of it is luck. You hope you fluke it. You just hope that when the opportunity comes your way that you can take it
JOE: It’s mad how people perceive success. I featured on two episodes of Newt Week’s News and some people are saying ‘Wow man, you are on the pig’s back! You have it made!’ I know and you know that this is a ridiculous notion and that it would take at least another two or three series with me featuring heavily for it to have any impact on my career.
Neil: Even now, the goalposts have moved since I did The Panel. The spread of options for people to watch as entertainment has grown significantly meaning less people are watching standard television shows. Gay Byrne is the most famous person in Ireland because he was the face of the biggest TV show in this country when a lot of people only had RTE. You look at some of the big American shows with Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien and even their viewing figures are not actually that big. This is a reflection on people having so many other options to watch.
JOE: Ok then. Before we let you go, we want to ask you about radio. You’ve had some high profile radio slots filling in for the likes of John Murray and Derek Mooney. Is radio an option you’d like to explore more of?
Neil: I’d love to do it at some point alright, but at the moment, my first love is stand-up. I just love the immediate feel of feedback from an audience at a live gig. It always does it for me. It’s just the craic, the interactive nature of it. I did enjoy doing the radio because of the interesting people you get to talk to on it, the topics, the issues and all sorts of new stuff to explore. I think it’s something I’d like to explore down the line, but not for a while yet.
JOE: Neil Delamere it’s been an absolute pleasure, thanks for talking to us.
Neil: No problem at all, any time
Neil’s ‘Smartbomb’ tour comes to Vicar St on March 21st and 22nd plus the Cork Opera House on March 29th. Full tour details can be seen here
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