Biography 3: Dara Ó Briain

As promised last week, today’s biography focuses on Dara Ó Briain.

Dara is relatively new to the UK comedy scene. Only in the last 4 years has he broken out of Irish television and the comedy clubs onto UK television.

Born February 4th 1972, Dara started his career as a children's presenter on RTÉ (an Irish broadcaster) whilst performing his first stand-up gigs on the Irish comedy circuit. He spent three years as a presenter on a bilingual (Irish and English) children's programme Echo Island which he looks back on with amusement (he put children’s presenters into Room 101). He came to prominence as a team captain on the topical panel show Don't Feed The Gondolas, an RTÉ similar programme to Have I Got News For You.

From 2002, with his profile rising in the UK due to his one man shows at the Edinburgh fringe festival, Dara began to start making appearances on UK television shows such Never Mind The Buzzcocks. His big break in UK television came in 2003 when he made an appearance as guest and, ultimately, four appearances as guest host of the popular news quiz, Have I Got News For You.

In "Three Men in a Boat", Dara rowed up the Thames with Griff Rhys-Jones and Rory McGrath to produce a two-part documentary following the route in the book of the same name. He has also performed stand-up in front of fantasy role-players as part of the ITV1 series Tough Gig.

Dara is now hosting the panel show Mock the Week on BBC television. The show attempts to blend the TV and radio panel show formats with features that would not look out of place on Have I Got News For You or Whose Line Is It Anyway?

In the last 4 series of QI (including series E) Dara has made 6 appearances. Dara has won on all but one occasion (not including series E) making him one of the most successful guests on QI. In episode C12 he lost a game because viewers had complained that he had been awarded points for saying that 0 degree Celsius is the triple point of water in his first time on the show. The correct answer is 0.1 degrees Celsius so Dara was given a klaxon and a ten-point penalty. Dara’s memorable response was “How many people sat at home, watching that, and thought ‘It’s just a comedy show, but I’m not letting that fecker get away with that!”