THE LONG READ PART TWO: Offaly comedian reflects on living in interesting times

NEIL DELAMERE returns to Tullamore on February 21 for what is always one of the most anticipated nights of the year in the midlands. The Edenderry man brings his brand new Achilles Neil Tour back home to Offaly on February 21st.

I remember chatting to Neil ahead of another sold-out show in the Tullamore Court Hotel some years back when Donald Trump was still in the early stages of his first term in office as President of the United States. Back then, most people of a sound and reasonable mindset were thinking, “Well, as bad as it might get, at least it’s just going to be four years...!” However, as of last Monday, he’s back for four more. What did Neil make of that fact, and what does he think lies ahead for the States, and, indeed, for the rest of us, in the years to come?

“Jesus, I have no idea what lies ahead. I mean, I think the only thing that you can say there is that if you’re of the persuasion that doesn’t want him back, is that in two years the circus will have moved on. Because in two years, they’re already looking for the next president, ya know. So, if you’re of the non-Trump supporting bent, then you’d have to hope that he doesn’t do too much damage in the next two years. But I have no idea. But I listen to a lot of political podcasts, and I heard someone recently saying that the one thing that the media learned from Trump the first time around is watch what he does, not what he says. Because he says an aaaawful lot of stuff! Do I really think that he’s going to take over Greenland? No, I don’t. Do I really think that he’s going to take over the Panama Canal? No, I don’t. But I don’t think anybody knows what he’s going to do. I suppose, what people said about 2016, was that it was very haphazard, that he didn’t think that he was going to win. So the danger would be now, in this circumstance, that he has said, ‘I’m going to be a dictator from day-one’. The danger is that he actually gets people in place [to do that], and is a bit more prepared to carry out his agenda this time. I don’t know. And I think anybody who would tell you that they do know what he’s going to do would be wrong! Do you know that curse, the Chinese one, ‘May you live in interesting times’? We’re about to live in interesting times!!!”

I’m reading Bob Mortimer’s autobiography at the moment, ‘And Away...’, which is easily one of the funniest and most well-written books I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting down with. As Neil has also led such an interesting life already, I wondered if the possibility of him sitting down to work on an autobiography of any kind had ever arisen?

“Well, I have been asked. But I would disagree with you, I don’t think that my life is any way interesting enough for an autobiography, to be honest with ya! I’ve had book offers mentioned in the past, ya know, tour diary, or me presenting a subject that I was interested in. It’s one of those things because it’s such a lottery in terms of will people be interested in the same kind of thing that you’re interested in when you write. It would have to be a labour of love. I think you would have to write a book because you have a book in you, and it’s a story that you want to tell. I think people who approach writing books as a commercial kind of money-making scheme are mad because it’s such a competitive market. In some ways it’s like the podcast. Dave [Moore] and I do the podcast because we love doing the podcast. And if people listen to it, that’s brilliant. And if we can do some live dates or whatever, that’s brilliant. But we do it because we love it. And that’s the only way you can approach it. Because for the first few months, or the first year of anything like that, it is a labour of love. You’re working for free really, most of the time. And I think a book is the same.

My next big project wouldn’t be a book, I think it would probably be a script. I have a couple of things that I would like to do. I’ve always wanted to do a heist show, a heist film. I absolutely love them. I love ‘Ocean’s 11’, I love ‘Ocean’s 12’, the original ‘Oceans’, I love ‘Inside Man’, any sort of heist book or heist film, I just adore. I love ‘Rififi’, which is the quintessential French, black and white, noir one from years ago. So if I was looking for a project that wasn’t stand-up, that would be the next thing I’d do before writing a book.

But I do have to say on Bob Mortimer, whenever I’m just annoyed by something, or having one of those days where you’re just frustrated, if I ever catch myself looking at Bob Mortimer, if he appears on my feed on my social media, I’ll just watch him on ‘Would I Lie To You?’, and it is genius. Genius! I’d love to do ‘Would I Lie To You?’, I’ve done a few bits and pieces with David Mitchell, and I think he’s brilliant, and I’ve done gigs with Lee Mack, who I think is brilliant as well. There’s part of me that would like to be on with Bob Mortimer, just to sit and watch Bob do it. But another part of me goes, ‘Yeah, but you’re on with Bob Mortimer, nobody else is going to be telling those stories as well as Bob Mortimer will be!’ But that’s one of those bucket-list ones. I only really had two or three things on the bucket-list, so I’ll have to change it now. I had ‘Live at The Apollo’ and I had ‘QI’, and I got to do both of those in the last year, so I’ll have to update it now at this point!”

At forty-five, Neil – no more than some of the rest of us, too! - has one of those milestone birthdays moving ever closer into view with each trip around the sun! Is he the kind of person who has an awareness of that fact making itself known in the back of his mind somewhere? And career-wise, and life-wise, are there certain things that he might like to have tried or to get done by the time the big 5-0 rolls around?

“Ah Jesus, sure it’s millions of years away yet! I like to just be progressing, ya know? What I like about the UK, for example, is that there’s so many different variants of things because it’s such a huge market. You could do ‘Would I Lie To You?’, for example, and the radio over there, or you could do ‘Taskmaster’, there’s just so many different things to try over there. So I still have loads of things to try, and enjoy, and enjoy for their own sake. I mean, it’s a weird job really, isn’t it, comedy. It’s a very odd job being a stand-up. Those milestones that might be superimposed on any normal job – ‘normal’ – like being in the civil service, or being in RTE and having to retire at a certain age, or those kind of graded milestones that you might meet after X years of service, they’re out of the way in stand-up. What’s nice is that the audience decides when you’re done. And the audience decides who’s popular. And the audience decides whether you do two Tullamore Court Hotels, or five Vicker Streets this year, or six next year, or four next year. We judge ourselves in a different way, and the audience judges in a different way. I’ll tell ya, do you know when you’ll know when to move on to something else? Or to give it a break? It’s when you think of an idea and you’re not excited about explaining it on-stage. When you think of something funny, or when something funny happens to you, and you’re not immediately excited enough to go, ‘Jesus, I can’t wait to go and tell an audience this’! If that doesn’t immediately happen, then it’s time to take a break.

But I’m doing this twenty years now, and I still get hugely excited when I think of something. And I can’t wait to tell the audience. And I can’t wait to hone it into a kind of a showstopper. And I can’t wait until I see the light in peoples’ eyes when they react or don’t react to it. Yeah, as long as I keep getting excited by that kind of stuff, I don’t think any milestones have to be considered just yet!”

Is America, or has America, ever been something on Neil’s radar?

“Ah, no, ya know, I’ve never really thought about it. I mean, a lot of the comedy that I’d watch on TV, like ‘Blackadder’, ‘The Young Ones’, and that sort of stuff – I mean I do watch ‘Cheers’ and all the rest too – but I think I was probably more influenced by, and watched more of ‘The Two Ronnies’, and Ben Elton, and Alexi Sale. So I was probably more influenced at the very start by English comedy, British comedy. I never really considered America. But it’s weird because a podcast can go absolutely anywhere, and ten or fifteen per-cent of our podcast listeners would be from the US. To go and play New York, or wherever, it would have to be right, it would have to make sense. But at the moment, I’m just doing Ireland and the UK, and I’m doing more in the UK than I did before. I did a tour there last year, and I’m doing a little tour there next year. I’m doing a Leicester Square theatre, a five-hundred seat theatre in London, off Leicester Square, in February, and it’s sold-out. And we’ve put another one on next November, and it’s nearly sold-out as well. Listen, if Spielberg rings me, if he rings me, I’ll take the call! But it’s not something that I’ve considered really. I’ve never gigged there, believe it or not. I’ve presented TV from there, but I’ve never even done one gig there. And I had a visa to present television from there for a few years. I’ve gigged in Montreal obviously, loads of times, and Australia and New Zealand and all the rest. If something came knocking, listen, I wouldn’t say no, but it’s not on the radar really.”

Meta have recently announced that they’re about to stop fact-checking posts on their platforms, Facebook and Instagram. Now that would seem like a strange move were it not for the times that we live in. What, I wondered, were Neil’s thoughts on how this development might change the social media landscape?

“It’s weird. I mean, it’s one way to get audiences to come to see you, we all do a lot more on social media than we used to. But the worry about that sort of stuff is misinformation. That’s a massive worry. Because, what happens is – and it’s been fairly well documented down through the years – you deliberately destroy trust in institutions, and then you get a populace that goes everybody is the same! And they feel disenfranchised. And then, people who are dangerous get into power. I’d be fairly worried about that sort of stuff. You can see it with the recent wildfires in the US. It’s dry, the winds pick up, there hasn’t been any rain for a long time... it’s a natural disaster. At any other time in the last one-hundred years, people would have gone, ‘It’s a natural disaster’. And yet, this has been politicised by people who said it was because of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) hires in the Californian and LA Fire Departments. And you’re thinking... Jesus Christ! This is where we are now? That you’re politicising a tragic fire? That sort of stuff really worries me. But I hope it’s a swing. And that what goes around comes around, and maybe in three or four years it goes the other way again, and I hope that there’s an increase in fact-checking. And less of an atomisation of the population, and there’s more trust in institutions. And not everybody has to be cast as being on one side or the other, ya know. Because a lot of people are not online. You meet a lot of people and they’re not insistent that you pick a side. Because there’s grey in the world. It’s just online...! And whatever about people above kind of thirty-five, I think it’s very hard for those who grew up with social media, and they’ve only known this. It’ll be very interesting to see if it’s all even more atomised in ten years. Because we have another generation coming of age now who are digital natives.

Yeah, I’d be a little bit worried about it. But if a new administration comes in in the US, I mean... that Meta stuff is in response to Donald Trump getting elected. If the Republicans get defeated at the next election, well then maybe lads like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg – who were Democrats – might swing back. Because I think, if anything, those boys are complete pragmatists. I don’t necessarily think they’re immoral, I think they might be amoral. We’ll see!”

~ Neil Delamere returns to the Tullamore Court Hotel on February 21 as part of his Achilles Neil. Tickets are on-sale now, available from www.neildelamere.com, and/or ticketstop.ie, and/or via the venue box-office.

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