Neil Delamere talks to Limerick Post ahead of his show this weekend in UCH.
“Yeah, we greased the right palms there, all that bribery did quiet well.” jokes Neil Delamere on the other end of the phone this week when news came through of the IFTA (Irish Film & TV Awards) nomination for his recent documentary, ‘The Only Viking in The Village’ on RTE.
Delamere first came to national attention for his quick wit and cheeky banter on RTE’s The Panel which ran for 8 years until its cancellation last year. He has also starred in the BBC’s The Blame Game and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and Channel 4’s Stand Up for the Week.
Even with all that television experience, making a documentary about Viking history was quiet a departure from the norm for Neil, but it was always a subject that fascinated him, he explains, “I wrote a show years ago for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival about Vikings, I just picked a period of history I was interested in. I am surprised by the reaction it got, lots of people were really enthused about it. People seemed to like it. We had lots of teachers ringing the production team asking for a slightly cleaner version for children. Schools asked if we could take out some of the bad words, but the raping and pillaging aspect of it was fine they just didn’t want me saying the F-word.
For the show Delamere went back to his roots, his half Viking, half Norman roots, to be exact, to find out everything there is to know about our axe-toting Viking ancestors. In the two-part series, Neil uncovered the fact and fiction behind his hairy ancestors, while trying to see if he has any Viking left in him. The culmination of his journey saw Neil put his new found Viking knowledge to the test by moving in with some modern day Vikings in Denmark, a group of rather hirsute gentlemen who want nothing more than to impale Neil on the end of a pointy sword.
So did the Vikings really deserve the savage raping and pillaging image that has been left with us by the history books?
Delamare suggests, “They deserve it as much as we did. There is a certain amount of propaganda there. Like all Irish generations, we have decided that we write history and current affairs to suit the purpose of whoever is in power.”
Learning that DNA tests carried out in Greenland showed that a quarter of Greenlandic men have Irish or Scottish ancestry, but over half of Greenlandic women do, led Delamere to conclude that basically many Vikings swung by Irish shores and picked up their women before heading to Greenland.
Neil’s new show playing in Limerick this weekend is called ‘Restructuring’ where he come to terms with the changes in the country, the world and more importantly his own living arrangements. He explains, “Its that word that we have been hearing so much about. I began to think about it, everything seems to be in need of restructuring in the country at the moment, public service needs to be restructured, our national debt needs to be restructured, the legislature needs to be restructured. And apart from everything you get externally, I just moved house and I just changed focus in the TV programs I’m doing. Resturcturing seems to be a catch all title for everything that was going on both externally and internally for me
So I kinda thought that is a good title for a show.”
Neil also lets Limerick Post in on a trade secret when he reveals that you have to name shows before they are written a lot of times for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. “So often you are trying to describe something that doesn’t yet exist. Though, this time, I had a fair idea of what I was going to write about and Restructuring became the general title.”
Delamere’s visit to the University Concert Hall is just one of many high quality nights of comedy that the venue has hosted including Jimmy Carr, Tommy Tiernan and the upcoming Gift Grub Live Show. “Its one of the best comedy rooms in Ireland.”, Neil enthuses, “There are only a handful of venues that are 900-1000 seats such as Vicar Street and Cork Opera House and it is one of those rooms that is clearly built for a man talking, It is one of those gigs you always look forward to playing. You can play a venue that holds 1000 or 400 people and depending on the layout of the room the audience can feel miles away from you or right on top of you. And all comedians want the audience to be right on top of you. UCH is such a big room, when everybody laughs in one go, it is like a wave coming down to you.”
Though there are no plans by RTE to introduce a program like The Panel which is now shelved, Neil would like to do something on television looking at the state of the nation based on his recent experience performing at Kilkenomics which was a festival of discussions by economists hosted by some of the country’s finest comedians.
For now Neil Delamere can enjoy his IFTA nomination for best factual programme for ‘The Only Viking in The Village’ made by Anne Heffernan and Bernadine Carraher of Mind The Gap production company. Neil comments, “It is their first IFTA nomination which is great for them it is richly deserved, they put in a lot of work they were very enthused about the whole project from the very beginning.” Delamere’s next factual project will be another look back at Ireland’s history, when he focuses on the life of St. Patrick. History will provide Neil with a wealth of material for projects, as someone once, “after all history is just one thing after another”.
Neil Delamere performs his Restructuring stand-up show at University Concert Hall this Saturday, January 21.
