Review of the Irish comedian's tour show

As with most things, we can blame the internet. When comedians do crowd work in their tour shows it so often seems to be in the service of landing that elusive viral clip, or just because that’s what audiences have come to expect, given it’s so prevalent on social media. For most, it seems pretty perfunctory.

What a delight, then, to see someone so genuinely quick-witted and adept showing precisely how audience banter should be done, with Neil Delamare getting a volley of gags out of every ‘What do you do? Where are you from?’ interaction, then weaving the results seamlessly into his ensuing routines so it becomes part of the fabric of the show. 

Even when it’s surely planned – the constant, and always funny, explanation of his older references to the Gen Z woman for example – it brings the evening to life and creates an irresistible ‘one-night-only’ feeling. That’s especially true tonight after he chanced upon an opera singer in the room who treated us to an impressive couple of bars from Nessun Dorma to play us out. (Or Nissan Dormer, as my spellcheck would have it)

Such badinage is also helpful as a bit of glue, given Delamare has no big theme or narrative to bind the 80 or so minutes together. The personable Irishman needs no such grand structure, given he’s such a natural storyteller. Such a description can sometimes be used to excuse a performer with charm but few gags, but that’s not the case here. Delamare rattles them out at pace – matching amusing scene-setting with succinct punchlines.

Dublin’s answer to the Keystone Kops trying to dislodge an illicit drone from a tree, taking his dog for a vasectomy or holding a tiger’s tail while it was having a blood test for an Irish TV programme are the stories that provide the backbone to the night.

Mixed with the observational and the anecdotal are the odd glints of political edge, some of which come from his many years working in the North of Ireland, including as a regular on the BBC’s topical panel show The Blame Game. He jokes that he likes to be an equal-opportunities offender across the religious divide and shows a similar fleetness of foot throughout the show, impishly teasing at edginess now and again, but all in the name of playful joshing. 

His only misstep, I think, was to wrap his final stories in a heap of too-convenient callbacks, over-engineered compared to the natural conversational nature of all that had gone before.

Rarely does a straightforward stand-up show get a standing ovation without tugging at the heartstrings, but Delamare achieved it at the Leicester Square Theatre, for a back-to-basics, but hugely skilled demonstration of enterprise-class stand-up.

Kudos, too, to opening act Eleanor Tiernan, who set the mood with a hilarious set ranging from insightful cross-generational teasing to her sluggish sex life – and closing on a gag about the fragility of life that perfectly showcases her ability to make the downbeat realities of life sardonically funny.

Review date: 13 Nov 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Leicester Square Theatre