Top Irish stand-up Neil Delamere has announced details of his brand new tour, CTRL+ALT+DELAMERE, which is coming to venues around Ireland, starting in December. Delamere’s tour will hit the Radisson Blu Hotel, Athlone on Thursday, February 25, 2016.
Neil Delamere has been an established name in standup comedy for many years. However, there was a time when the Edenderry man was heading down the road of computer science. It seems like a giant leap from that to the stage, and as Delamere says himself, “It kind of just happened”.
“It was just a case of being inspired by a gig I saw in college,” he says. “I was aware of standup but I never thought of it as a potential job until I saw that gig. Then when I moved to Dublin to study in DCU, I was introduced to the International Bar, which is the bar that Barry Murphy started comedy in with Ardal O’Hanlon back in the late 80s.
“By the time I went to college in the late 90s it was well established. I said ‘Ah sure listen, I’ll give it a go once’, and I had no intention of doing any more than that, but things really took off from there.”
When asked what kind of computer scientist he would have made, Delamere says: “Given how intertwined computers are in every part of modern life, if I was a computer programmer I’d imagine the nuclear reactors would explode and the medical records would be lost. I wasn’t really cut out for it. I hadn’t the attention span I think. That is the great thing about standup. Once you get established there is a lot of stuff you can cast your eye on. When I was doing computer science I imagined myself sitting at the same desk year after year, and that really wouldn’t have suited me.”
Delamere’s schedule is jam-packed at the moment. As well as touring he is also the host of his own hugely popular two-hour weekend show on Today FM, Neil Delamere’s Sunday Best, and has two TV series in the pipeline with the 11th season of The Blame Game on BBC and a new 10-part science-based show for RTÉ called Eureka. With so many irons in the fire, one wonders whether Delamerecan ever truly relax, or whether he is always on the job.
“I am certainly not on all the time,” he says. “God no, sure you would be divorced and living on your own in no time. I have a dog whose company I enjoy immensely. I do the normal things like going for walks and meals with my wife, or we go to the cinema.” And then of course there is football: “I don’t know if you have ever seen me play football down in Kilkenny with the rest of the comedians,” he says.
“The rest of the world play the Irish comedians at the Kilkenny comedy festival every year. Most people who see that would say that I would have been a pro footballer if I didn’t go into comedy,” he jokes. “I play football like a newborn foal trying to take its first steps,” he quickly qualifies. “It is a surprise to me at the end of every match how I haven’t managed to injure myself and a bunch of other people.”
As for what people can expect from his latest show: “The shows are invariably a combination of me messing around with people in the audience, talking about things that have happened in the last year and maybe some bits from the new science show Eureka, because I am getting to do some really mad stuff for that.”
Neil Delamere will perform at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Athlone, on February 25, 2016. For ticket and tour information visit www.neildelamere.com/gigs
