Mock the Week legend Dara Ó Briain: "It's very worrying that the BBC has less money to do things"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

What’s the view from your sofa?

In the room where we all sit around and watch The Traitors or whatever, there are two fairly comfy couches, but side on. It gives the illusion that they’re there for conversation, but actually we just sit like emperors and watch the television off the two sides. We’re nominally facing each other, but very much looking to the side, and going, “Shush, Claudia’s talking.”

You’re clearly a fan – would you do The Celebrity Traitors?

Yeah! And I don’t do shows like that, as a rule. It’s kind of known that I’m not planning on going into the jungle, or dancing. It’s just not my thing. But for The Traitors, I would probably make an exception because my family would be furious if I didn’t. Because of my persona – the science shows – there’s a perception that I would somehow be very good at it, but I’d be awful! Still, it didn’t stop Alan Carr…

After four years away from Mock the Week, did you have any doubts about returning as host?

No. It would have been a weird stance of “Surely it’s time for another generation” – screw that. There’s no element of me going, “Do you know what? Maybe it’s time for the baton to be passed.” No. You’ll have to take the buzzer out of my cold, dead hands.

Has making the show for TLC, rather than the impartial BBC, given you more freedom?

I mean, obviously that stuff was kind of overstated a bit. I sometimes made a joke at the time imagining how the BBC would bring me into a room and sit us down, and go, “OK, Dara, Fiona Bruce, and Mr Turnbull – this is our stance on things this week.” Which obviously, they never did. The people you talk about changes, because a different government is in charge – like Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves. But that isn’t because we’re not on the BBC. It’s because they’re the ones in power now.

Do you think the initial cancellation of the show was premature? On TLC, it’s already been renewed for a second series…

Yes. Rather than presume that there was some sort of political reason for it – and I understand the case that can be made for, “Oh, that’s weird, that it was The Mash Report, us, and Frankie Boyle’s show that got cancelled” – the truth is they just didn’t have the money to make it any more. It’s very worrying that the BBC has less money to do things, and is supplying less of a service than it did, because we’ve let it be depleted of cash.

You work a lot back home in Ireland, too. How different is Irish TV to British TV?

Irish TV famously has to do English TV on a much smaller budget because it’s a much smaller market. There was Irish Apprentice for a while, which was quite hilariously low-rent in places. There was an episode where the winning team’s prize was dinner in a warehouse of a stationery company, because they’d sponsored it. It was just plastic boxes and lever arch files, and they’re in the middle, going, “Bravo, we have won the task this week.”

That’s amazing...

I genuinely think people in the UK have no sense of how we have a total, actual culture in Ireland, which is not in any way dependent on the UK. All news is local in Ireland. There’s a sense of intimacy to Irish TV. We feel like we know every one of the people on it, even if we don’t. I’ve gone, “Oh, hiya” to Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan, even though we’ve never met. We just do that, all the time. And we have our own heroes. An Irish version of Celebrity Traitors would, to your eyes, be: “Who are these people?” But in Ireland, some of them are gods.

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