An Offaly big adventure

This has been a hugely successful year for Neil Delamere, whose appearances on The Panel have elevated him to the top tier of Irish stand-up comedy. The transition he has made is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the release of his fine No Message DVD, which was recorded on one of no less than six consecutive nights at Vicar St. earlier this year.

“The shows were great,” enthuses Neil in his distinctive Offaly accent. “It was the first time I played Vicar St., and it was everything I always wanted it to be. You always dream about doing that particular venue, ’cos it seems to be the one that’s most popular at the moment. I actually did nine nights in total throughout the year, and they were brilliant. But obviously the first night was probably the most fun.”
Delamere acknowledges that “the reason I can do Vicar St. is definitely down to The Panel.” What have been the highlights of the show for him lately?
“I think interviewing Paul Costello, the fashion designer,” says Neil. “He was just really good, very funny and charming.”
Is Neil a fashion man himself?
“Clearly you’ve never seen me on the television, ’cos the answer to that question is obvious,” he laughs. “I am what I call a man who just about gets by with the help of the women in his life. But yeah, Paul Costello was really charming, and I’d say women do love him. He’s just an immensely affable sort of a fellow. James Cromwell was another person who was fantastic. He is the bar by which we will measure all the other A-list Hollywood celebrities who come on the show from now on. He’s an unusual man. He’s six foot seven, and he kind of really became successful later on in his life. I mean, he’s in his sixties now. But there’s stuff that he did in his earlier life that’s very interesting. He was involved in the civil rights movement, and he’s an animal rights campaigner.”
Like most stand-up comedians, Neil lives a fairly peripatetic existence. Where have his travels taken him in recent times?
“I’ve been here in Ireland a lot recently, ’cos I’m doing a tour at the moment. In terms of going abroad, the last place I visited before the Edinburgh Fringe was Johannesburg. I travelled over for Paddy’s Day. It was great fun, I’ve been there a couple of times. Because of the whole Paddy’s Day aspect, we got to have this lunch with the ambassador to South Africa.
“Tom Parlon was there too, and we kind of heckled him during his speech. He kind of started it, so we had to get our own back. He had to be polite, ’cos I’m one of his constituents. Well I used to be, he’s not there anymore. Maybe I brought him down!”
Which stand-up performers have really impressed Neil this year?
“I saw Dara O'Briain’s recent show in Vicar St. That was the first show I’d been to in a while as a comedy fan, rather than checking out performances by people I’m gigging with or whatever. It was brilliant, really impressive, as Dara always is. I quite liked Simon Amstel’s show in Edinburgh as well. And Dutch comics, actually. One of the funniest things I’ve seen this year was a Dutch comedian who put on a sock puppet on his hand at the end of his set.
“He said, ’Now I’m going to demonstrate how this puppet eats a Mars bar’. Then he took the Mars bar and rammed it into his hand. It was one of the funniest and most ridiculous things I’ve seen this year. It’s brilliant, ’cos you sit down and try and write an amazing joke, and this guy rams a Mars bar into his hand. There was wool and nougat everywhere, but it was absolutely hilarious.
“I should mention Jason Byrne as well, who’s like the king of Edinburgh. Jason’s done it for years, and he’s plays the biggest venues, and they’re sold out every night. Seeing him drag a fella around the stage in a cardboard box whilst getting him to make car noises was immensely funny, I have to say.”
I remember Byrne telling me that at one of his Edinburgh shows a few years ago, he wrestled David O’Doherty whilst swathed in bubble-wrap.
“I was at that gig,” remembers Neil. “That was Late And Live. It looked good, but it sounded even better.”
Did Neil see much TV comedy this year?
“Not really, because I’m gigging so much. I caught a few of the repeats of Naked Camera. Just the other day, I saw the one where PJ Gallagher, as the taxi driver, drives Bill O’Herlihy around. That was fantastic. But generally, I wouldn’t see much ’cos I’d be out working. And Monday nights is sacrosanct anyway, ’cos I go and play indoor football. I only barely get home for about ten, and sometimes I watch The Panel, and that’d be about it.”
What are Neil’s plans for the start of 2008?
“In the springtime, I want to go to the southern hemisphere. I’m going to try and go to New Zealand, and maybe to Melbourne, I don’t know yet. Obviously, The Panel runs until January, and then I’m going to try and get into the mode of writing a new show. Maybe I’ll take some smaller gigs and start working up some fresh material. I might take another look at Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedian DVD, which is brilliant. He just dumps everything he’s ever done and the film is about him working up new material. It’s really interesting.”
Seinfeld’s I’m Telling You For The Last Time is one of the best stand-up albums I’ve ever heard.
“Yeah, I think Comedian was just after that. He wasn’t going to do any of that material again, which is amazing. The other fascinating comedy performance I saw this year was in Montreal, I think it’s called The Green Room. The idea is that these comics are sitting on this couch as if it’s a green room, just before they go onstage. I was sitting in the audience watching this, and it’s a small room, so I was maybe 20 feet away from the stage.
“I was watching Louie CK, a brilliant American comic, chat to Eddie Izzard and Billy Connolly. They were winging it, talking about anything, and it was brilliant. A couple of nights later, I watched Billy Connolly do two-and-a-quarter hours. He’s 64, and he still has it. Jimmy Carr’s show over there was excellent too, he did an hour-and-a-half of the one-liners and stuff. He and Billy Connolly are both on top of their game, and they’re both doing slightly different styles.”
What was Neil’s highlight of 2007?
“The funniest thing I saw was in Montreal. The production crew of Just For Laughs went to see a read-through of Family Guy. In front of us, there was a father who had his kids with him, they were about 14 or 15. The characters came out and they started to sing that song, “You don’t bring me flowers…” But they had changed the words, the girl sang, “You don’t lick my…”, and I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. Not only did we laugh, we then saw the father try to block three sets of ears. It was the funniest thing I’d seen in years.”
Apparently Fox are currently finishing episodes of Family Guy without the involvement of creator Seth McFarlane, who is participating in the writers’ strike.
“I didn’t know that. McFarlane is incredible, I didn’t know that he did the voices of the dog, and Peter, and the baby. He did one scene where he did all three voices, it was unbelievable. It was brilliant to see, ’cos it’s the sort of thing that only really happens at a big comedy festival.”

A couple of days after interviewing Delamere Hot Press visits a recording of The Panel at Tripod in Dublin. This is the first time the show, which is filmed at different locations, is to be recorded at the venue. We find Delamere seated at a table in a makeshift production room upstairs, alongside host Colin Murphy and another of the guests, former Rose of Tralee Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain. It’s 6 o’clock in the evening and, having eaten dinner, the various panellists are going through the subjects which will be up for discussion on the show.
Producer Adam Whelan wanders over to your correspondent with the list of topics that will be covered.
“We email everyone during the week with stories that might be of interest,” he explains. “Then on recording day, we finalise the list and everyone goes off to really familiarise themselves with the details of each story.”
A researcher sits at a laptop in the corner, printing out information. In addition to news stories, this also includes background details on the show’s guests, who tonight are performance poet Murray Lachlan Young and former GAA president Sean Kelly. Undoubtedly, though, the greater volume of paperwork is devoted to the news items to be discussed on the programme.
Top of the agenda tonight is the loss of personal details of some 25 million British citizens on two data discs (during the show, Murphy will express a thought that has been troubling many of us, when he wonders where CDs with such huge storage capacity can actually be purchased).
Also on the news-list, among other items, are the approval of the Poolbeg incinerator, the shredding of mail at the Four Courts, and quirkier items about a man who headbutted someone with titanium teeth and an innovative go-getter who broke his girlfriend’s leg for the insurance payout.
Seated in a quiet spot by himself, surrounded by print-outs and writing notes, is Dermot Whelan, stand-up comedian and presenter of The Strawberry Alarm Clock on FM104. Dermot has become a regular on the show in recent times.
“I find that the best approach is to say as much as you possibly can during the two-and-a-half hour recording,” he says. “Tonight, we’re going from half eight until eleven. Unless you’ve made a sustained contribution over the course of the show, you get a bit lost in the edit. Even if you think what you’re saying isn’t absolute comedic gold, you’re probably best advised to just throw it in there and see how it goes. Occasionally, making a quick point about something can lead to someone else coming up with a very funny line.”
Hot Press then grabs a word with Murphy, also intensely studying research. Are there certain lines he wants to get in or does he take a more off-the-cuff approach?
“You might have an idea about something, cos we’ve been watching the news,” he replies. “You might come up with something at a gig during the week, but whether you get to throw the line in is another thing, ’cos sometimes it just doesn’t lend itself to what’s going on. I don’t like throwing it in just for the sake of it.”
Following the departure of Dara O’Briain, Murphy has alternated presenting duties with Delamere. How has he found the transition?
“Hosting, you’re the daddy, the sensible one. You have to be a bit of a straight man and sort of keep everybody under control. There’s a producer talking in your ear, and they want to move it on, and there’s technical things. You have to set up stories too, so yeah, it’s a bit more of a straight man role.”
What does the producer say to Murphy during the show, I wonder. “Be funny”, no doubt.
“Yeah, be funny, stop them talking, that’s illegal (laughs). And tell Maxwell to shut the fuck up! (Andrew Maxwell has just loudly entered the room). Apart from that, it’s just time things, like ‘That’s plenty, if you want to move on to the next thing’.”
We leave Murphy to finish his research and wander into the venue. Appearing on The Panel involves a lot of hanging around, and it’s quickly apparent why. There are lighting and sound checks, costumes are inspected for potential colour clashes, Young has to pre-record a poem, and on and on. Eventually, the panellists appear and do a loose rehearsal, before heading off to make final preparations while the audience file into the venue.

Showtime. Murphy does a brief introduction and introduces the panel, then the familiar notes of The Stones Roses’ ‘Waterfall’ ring out and we’re underway. It’s quickly obvious why The Panel has been such a big success and is currently on its seventh series. Murphy, Delamere and Maxwell, in particular, have a very strong chemistry and bounce comedic ideas off each other in the easy manner of old friends. After a sustained period of banter, Murphy introduces Young, who was once signed to EMI in a million-pound deal, but ultimately dropped when the masses failed to embrace his John Cooper Clarke style of poetry.
Young tells a very funny story about once supporting Shaun Ryder’s post-Happy Mondays group Black Grape (perhaps unsurprisingly, the audience were decidedly hostile, and he was almost run over by The Prodigy’s Keith Flint in a giant beach ball), before concluding with an excellent poem about Keith Richards’ fall from a coconut tree in Fiji. The show then takes a quick break before recommencing (Murphy takes the opportunity to congratulate Dermot on the recent birth of his son, a picture of whom is shown on the screens).
During this segment of the show, Sean Kelly takes a seat down from your correspondent on the balcony. I can’t help wondering what the ex-GAA president makes of the proceedings. For instance, just as he sits down, Delamere is off on a comedic sally concerning a documentary he saw a while back, about two disabled men visiting a Spanish brothel – a topic unlikely to have been on the agenda at the last Central Council meeting.
When Kelly is finally called to make his way to the side of the stage, Maxwell is in the middle of a rant about spray-on condoms. As it happens, Kelly – on the show to promote his new autobiography – acquits himself very well and, inspired by the general ribaldry, even concludes with a lengthy gag that, frankly, is about a woman who cuts the penises off intruders to her garden with a pair of shears.
At that, Murphy thanks Kelly, requests a round of applause for the panellists and brings the evening to a close. It’s been another highly entertaining evening of sharp humour, surreal digressions and occasional silliness. Exactly what we’ve come to expect from The Panel.