Dara Ó Briain

I only know of Dara O'Briain from his appearances on QI and a few other UK panel shows, but I thought that this would be a funny book about an Irish man's view of the English. It's actually more like a tour diary. There were some pretty funny moments but overall, not really what I was looking for. It had a lot of references and jokes that you definitely have to be from the UK, Ireland, or a fan of football to understand and since I'm none of these things, there were more than a few moments I wanted to skip ahead. If you're a fan of Dara's stand-up you'll of course love this book, but for the casual observer, it was just a quick diversion.… (mer)

Ó Briain is an Irish comedian—I grew up watching him on Echo Island—who, for the past several years, has been living and working in the UK. Tickling the English is an account of a comedy tour he undertook a couple of years back, largely around England but also with excursions to Dublin and Jersey, interspersed with accounts of how he conceives of a stand-up act, his interactions with people he met, the history of the places he travels to, and the experience of being an Irish person living in England. I can't speak to the truth of a lot of his observations, not having travelled to those particular parts of England (a friend of mine didn't really recognise his account of Sheffielders), but thought that what he had to say about Ireland, and the Irish abroad, was quite (though not completely) true.

(Do Irish people identify themselves by parish and county? Yes! I can tell you where the boundary lines of mine run, and it's huge by Irish standards. Do we have an unerring ability to find one another abroad and strike up in-depth conversations based solely on the familiarity of the accent? Yes! See: me in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which is about as far from Ireland as you can get.)

I enjoyed Ó Briain's sometimes wry observations on the surreality of life. If you enjoy his stand-up, I think you'll also enjoy this.… (mer)

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1946309.html

another in the sub-genre of books about the English and Englishness also pursued by Jeremy Paxman and Bill Bryson (and to an extent Stuart Maconie). It struck home particularly for me because Ó Briain is an Irish man married to a very intelligent Englishwoman, a situation with which I am not unacquainted, and because I like Ó Briain's sense of humour and occasional bafflement at the surrealism of life in general. (We also have a vague personal connection via the Byrne family.)

The framework of the book is Ó Briain's tour around England (with short excursions elsewhere, particularly to Dublin but memorably also to Jersey), with anecdotes of his interactions with the crowd on each show and reflections on local history and various aspects of Englishness, including race and diversity . There is also a rather moving conversation with Ken Dodd (the inventor of the tickling stick referenced in the title). His main conclusion is that the English actually rather like being gloomy; that England / the UK is fairly consistently about fifth in everything, but mourns not being top. Tho that he adds that the English have a peculiar paranoia about their young people (ASBOs, etc), and some very trenchant observations about the differences between England and Ireland (the contrast between St George's Day and St Patrick's Day is particularly telling).

Looking at on-line reviews I see several who are baffled because they don't get the Irish bit (some of whom are even more baffled because they don't know much about England and had hoped in vain to learn the basics here). I see others who know Ó Briain's work too well and are disappointed that the book reflects his stage show too closely. Fortunately I am in neither category and thoroughly enjoyed it. Paxman's book is probably better (and Bryson's certainly worse) but this is the most fun.… (mer)