THE LONG READ: Famous Offaly comedian returns to perform at venue in his native county

NEIL DELAMERE is deservingly regarded as one of Ireland's best-loved comedians, as well as being one of our most prominent figures in his field internationally. The Edenderry man returns to Tullamore on February 21st for one of the most anticipated nights of the year in the midlands, as he brings his Achilles Neil Tour back home to Offaly for what promises to be another sold-out night at the Tullamore Court Hotel.

I had the pleasure of catching up with Neil for a chat last weekend.

On tour again at the moment, Neil had been on stage in Ennis the night before we spoke. I asked if his famed audience interaction moments had seen any stand-out encounters or exchanges on this tour so far?

“I did a lovely gig on Thursday night, in a little venue in Dundalk, and there was a guy in the front row who was an electrician. I was chatting to him, and then I asked the guy behind him, ‘What do you do?’, and he said he was a fireman. And the electrician stood up and applauded wildly, ya know! And I said to him, ‘I think that kind of makes it look like you do a lot of faulty wiring, and that man behind you gets you out of an awful lot of trouble! That was a level of enthusiasm that suggests that maybe he has covered your ass on several occasions!’ So we had great craic with the two of them. As you know by this stage, it’s a thing that makes every gig individual and every show kind of unique. Anytime you get anything like that, it’s just a joy for me. And hopefully a joy for the audience as well!”

Neil likes nothing more than a bit of word-play and a good pun when it comes to naming his tours. Past examples include Neil By Mouth and Delamerium.

His current tour – Achilles - certainly keeps up that high standard. Was there anything in particular that inspired it? And, is there a central theme of any kind running through the show this time around?

“Yeah, well I mess with the audience for the first ten minutes usually, and then we kind of crack on with the show, there’s an hour of ‘the show’, ya know. No, there’s no central tenet to it, or one core theme running through the whole show. I called it ‘Achilles Neil’ because I love a silly pun for a show title. But also, I mean comedians tend to end up talking about their weaknesses and the things that annoy them, or get their goat. So I thought 'Achilles Neil’ is in a similar ballpark.

What I will be talking about – a lot – is one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had on tv, which was in Dublin Zoo. I did ‘Zoo Live’ and they asked me would I hold the tiger’s tail...while they withdrew blood from the tiger to check his medication levels! So that’s a core part of the show, yeah. I love the zoo. And that was just an epic experience. I’m a man who’s into trivia anyway, but the stuff that they were telling me... They told me, and I thought this was really interesting. So, they will get the droppings from all the animals, and most of it is turned into manure. I was working with macaque monkeys, and they – the zoo staff – told me that actually the monkey stuff is incinerated. And I asked why it wasn’t just used as manure like the other animals. And they said, no, it can’t be because they’re too close to us – to humans – you see. They’re too close to us, so they’d be scared of zoonotic diseases [an infectious disease of humans caused by a pathogen that can jump from a non-human vertebrate to a human]. So they’re so on top of things in the zoo, that they have to think about stuff like that.

And they said that all of the enclosures, the sliding gates, shall we say, into the lion or the tiger enclosure, they’re all like a portcullis – like on a castle – they all drop from the top down. And the reason they do that is because a tiger’s natural swipe is side-to-side! Whereas a chimp could open us vertically, like a Venetian blind, ya know! It’s that kind of insight that you’ll only get when you talk to people who do this every day. I was very excited to do that, and to have it included in the ‘live’ show as well.”

The fact that Neil confesses to loving a bit of trivia explains the success of his Why Would You Tell Me That? Podcast with Dave Moore. With the show having reached its 90th episode back in December, I was curious to know what Neil considered to be the most amazing fact that he has come across on the podcast so far?

“A couple stand out to me. That school map that was hanging on the wall when we were at school, is wrong. It’s called the Mercator Projection, and basically, all the sizes of the countries are not necessarily the right sizes. It was originally created in 1569 to make the world navigable. But it doesn’t actually make sense in terms of area size of countries. And that’s a map that we still use, mostly in schools today. So that kind of blew my mind.

And then we had a brilliant Yellowstone Ranger scientist, from Yellowstone National Park, and she told us that if there’s two wolf-packs that go up against each other in a fight, and they’re of similar size and similar age and all the rest of it, and in numbers, the one that is much more likely to win, and by a factor of two, is the one that is led by an older female wolf. So the repository of wolf knowledge is in the older females. You’ll see a similar thing in other mammals, like whales. I just thought those two were amazing.

But my favourite one recently was that Alaska has the northernmost point of the United States, it contains the easternmost point of the United States, and bizarrely, the westernmost point of the United States as well. The eastern-most point, and the western-most point, are only seventy miles apart. So it’s not actually in Maine – you might think it would be on that side – but because Alaska goes so far west it actually goes over the line between west and east. That kind of blew my mind as well. We’re always collecting these little bits and pieces. And I thought they’d never come in handy, but then I did 'QI', and Jesus,' QI' is the perfect show for that sort of stuff! And weirdly, something we had previously covered on the podcast did pop up on 'QI', I was very lucky, I sounded like I was very knowledgeable about the Roman Empire but it just so happened we had covered the Roman Empire about a week before. Sometimes you get lucky like that, ya know!”

Because Neil does interact so well and so often with his audiences, I wondered if that changed how he might have to rehearse his shows, in order to get the pace and timing of things just how he wants it?

“No, no, not really. Because I just chat to them for a few minutes at the start. It’s a movable feast. A show – most of the time – has bits that you can drop in and drop out. So, say you were talking to somebody in the front row and they were absolutely amazing, they have an amazing story, and so it takes a little bit longer than it would take in other shows. Well comedians can always and easily edit as they go. So you just go, well, I’ll drop two jokes in an hour’s time, and I’ll get to the closing story a little bit earlier. It’s not quite like a play. Most of the time you don’t have to follow a certain script. If something is amazing at the top, and takes a long time at the top, you mightn’t necessarily do everything that you intended to do with the pre-prepared material. So it’s kind of loose in that regard.

I did a show in Drogheda last week and it was so much fun that actually I did have to cut something out so that we went to time. But also, if you want to do a bit longer, you do a bit longer. Audiences and theatre staff know that it can expand or contract by seven or eight minutes here or there, and everybody’s cool with that."

It’s about three years now since Neil graced our tv screens while gracing the floor of Dancing With The Stars. This year, his fellow comedian and friend Gearóid Farrelly – who has often supported Neil on tour – is also taking part in the RTE extravaganza. Had Gearóid been in touch to seek out any words of wisdom or advice on taking part?

“No, no. But we met for lunch recently and he was telling me that he’s having an absolute brilliant time, and really enjoying it. And it is an immensely enjoyable experience, I have to say. And I know his professional dancer, he’s dancing with Stephen [Vincent], the husband of the dancer that I danced with, Kylee. So I would have come across him a lot. And I’m delighted for the both of them, they’re both very nice people. A lot of the time how much fun you’ll have will be about how well you’ll click with the person that you’re going to spend eight hours a day with. And Stephen’s a really sound lad, as is Gearóid. If he wanted to come and chat to me, he could, but he also remember, has Des [Bishop] he can chat to, and Fred [Cooke], and Kevin McGahern, it’s a small comedy scene, and Dee [Deirdre O’ Kane], so he can get various tips from various people, but from what I hear so far, he’s absolutely loving it.

He’s throwing himself into it with aplomb, which is absolutely the key to it! Because there’s only so much that you can control. You just have to go in and go, ‘I’m going to do whatever you ask me to do, and I’m going to enjoy it immensely. So if you want me to wear that, you want me to wear that, or you want me to wear that... I’ll do ALL that.’ The worst thing you can do in a show like that... well, once you’ve made the decision that you’re going to do it, you just have to go for it, ya know.

Oddly enough, I did Chris McCausland’s show a while ago, Chris who recently won 'Strictly' [Come Dancing]. And we knew that he was going to go into 'Strictly' at the time. He was a little bit nervous. So I said, listen, I did it in Ireland – albeit, briefly! - and you are really going to enjoy it. And, my God! He absolutely smashed it. He’s a lovely dude as well. I did 'QI' with him, too. I couldn’t wish success on a more deserving fellow.”

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