Dara Ó Briain

You hosted Mock the Week for 17 years. Did you enjoy your role as ringmaster?

At times, yes, at times no. There was bits during the earlier years of it where it was very complicated, very elbowsy... And Frankie, obviously, that's his genius or whatever. And then Russell will come in as well. And so the two of them were the first in and the last in.

When it comes to your own comedy, where are the lines? What will you joke about and what won't you?

I kind of sidestep this hunt early, not deliberately, but just as it turns out, my style is generally conversational, anecdotal, personal, or I tend to do whimsical connections and elevate jokes and that, like whatever, make improvisational things. So I sidestep a lot of that. I find it kind of weird when people come up and go, you can't see anything. And I go, I'm literally talking for two hours. I dislike, genuinely dislike when people try to narrow comedy down to, well, the point of comedy is to be saying shocking and it's really not. That's the way some people like to do it. But it is one of the things it can do. But it also has been a hugely broad church.

In 2020 you met your birth mother for the first time. What made you want to find her?

I went see Philomena. Philomena, Steve Coogan wrote it, Judy Dench started in it, story of Philomena Lee... And I genuinely walked out of that cinema going, oh, you just, you're not the main protagonist in this story. There was a woman who gave a baby up for adoption 45 years ago, and you have made yourself invisible because you've not engaged with the search. So therefore, she has no idea what's going on. And I have met Steve Coogan and said, thank you for this. I have met Judy Dench. And I had two things I wanted to thank Judy Dench for, like, whatever. So I'm very happy if somebody passed this on. Firstly, just because this inspired me to do this search. And secondly, her hair in that film was remarkable.