Greg Davies and Dara O Briain's tours rated - Mark Muldoon's Comedy Diary

Written by: Mark Muldoon
Published: Thursday 17th April 2025

During a DVD commentary (remember those!) Dara O Briain once commented "it's nice when life presents you with a fully-formed stand-up comedy routine".

He couldn't have known then the remarkable path his life would take in his 50s, and how it would end up presenting him with two extremely high quality, entirely fully-formed 40ish minute stand-up comedy routines.

That's not to downplay any emotional impact all this may have had on him, but yes: two. O Briain's last tour concerned his search for his birth mother, having learnt late in life that he's adopted. This show is a sequel, then, that sees him embark on a quest to find his father.

That means you may coast through much of this story with a sense that you know where things are going. You'll be wrong. You'll also be hooked. This is a really great story.

However, all that only represents a third of Re:Creation's two hours, which otherwise unfolds exactly as you'd expect a Dara O Briain tour show to unfold: lashings of high quality chatter with the front row, alongside a few other stories and routines which are certainly fun and keep momentum going, but that nobody is going to cry over when they come to brutally edit this show down for iPlayer or wherever.

O Briain has always come across as the definition of a consummate professional comedian, seemingly very keen that every audience always has a great time. Sometimes, though, the sequel is better than the original film. That's the case here: O Briain's lighter stories don't feel like they're detracting from the overall piece, the main plotline packs more of a comedic punch, and tonight, in Bedford, there's extra fun to be had with how - that very morning - it has been announced that one of Europe's biggest theme parks would be built on the outskirts of the town.

But the two shows make for a fantastic pairing. So it's well worth watching the original first, before heading out to this one.

Greg Davies is down the other end of the Thameslink in Brighton, but he's not been seen in these kind of buildings for much longer: this is his first tour in seven years.

And fairly quickly, a pattern emerges: Full Fat Legend often feels like a list of all the most embarrassing things that have happened to Davies, that he hasn't told in his previous shows. Inarguably good stories - and you certainly admire his willingness to thoroughly humiliate himself on stage in search of big laughs - but a little more variety in the material would hardly go amiss.

Those big laughs still come. You'll see far worse comedians touring the country's larger venues. Only towards the end of the performance do cracks really start to show, as two key punchlines moderately deflate, rather than detonate, their preceding stories. One of these only appears at the end of the performance in order to service the show's thin, unsturdy structure. Elsewhere, Davies mines "I'm old, my body is falling apart" and "it was different in my day" comedy. Neither of these are original starting points for stand-up, but they're both good examples of their respective forms.

All this takes place over 90 uninterrupted minutes, which is striking given that Davies has already established how his audience are older, and even told a story acknowledging how old age has significantly depleted his body's ability to go without toilet visits.

All of which would've been pretty easily tolerable, but the audience's age also points towards Full Fat Legend's biggest problem. When discussing said bodily issues he says it's "for every sad, middle aged man in this room. And fair play, there's a few of you". Yes: the audience is definitely older than you'd expect for Davies, and there's likely a pretty straightforward reason why: they're the only ones that could afford the tickets.

If you want to see this tour at the Hammersmith Apollo later this year, it will cost you an eye-watering £59.75. Davies has spent a little money on a nice intro video, but otherwise this is a man, a microphone and a PowerPoint presentation. It's not exactly a Lady Gaga concert, is it. Alternatively, you can choose to book Dara O Briain in the same venue next February and pay £37.75, which feels fairly reasonable for a London show from a big name comedian in 2025. This price discrepancy is pretty typical for these two tours, and feels like the difference between a show that wishes to take advantage of its fans, and one that doesn't.

Read previous editions of this column, featuring Inside No. 9: Stage/Fright and a special piece about cancer comedy shows by Richard Herring, Miles Jupp and Mark Steel.

Mark Muldoon is also available on Instagram, Threads and Bluesky. Just once he'd like a Thameslink train to run on time. Is that too much to ask.