Q&A: Rob Delaney

'My greatest achievement? My marriage and my sobriety. The sobriety makes the marriage possible'

Rob Delaney & Sharon Horgan interview

We grill the two creator-stars of Catastrophe.

Catastrophe box set review

Sharon Horgan's Irish teacher and Rob Delaney's American advertising guy are a perfect, witty fit as two strangers drawn together by sex - and then pregnancy.

Round two of Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney's deeply funny romcom continues, as the pair visit Paris in order to revive their sex life. But not even a Channel crossing can curb their squabbling, especially with Sharon's post-pregnancy body a ticket to both traumatic boob issues and infuriating pharmacy visits. Despite mining sitcom tropes of yore (language barriers; dodgy interactions with masseuses), its diligent cataloguing of emotional minutiae reroutes it into something that feels relevant and real.

Rob Delaney profile

The fact that Rob Delaney's hit sitcom is called Catastrophe is rather apt. Thirteen years ago his life was exactly that.

Catastrophe review

There's something about the crudeness of the Channel 4 comedy series Catastrophe that is insanely addictive.

TV review: Catastrophe, C4, episode 2

I'm worried. You want to know what I'm worried about? I'm worried that I'm going to run out of new nice things to say about Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney's screwy screwball relationship comedy (with occasional screwing).

Radio Times review

Sharon (Sharon Horgan) has now got over her anxieties about bonding with baby Muireann, the child with the unpronounceable name. In fact she is so attentive that a sexually frustrated Rob (Rob Delaney) accuses her of behaving like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, salivating over her "precious".

It's another familiar dilemma explored by this filthily funny comedy that will feel painfully close to home for many couples. As will the pair's attempt to remedy matters with a weekend away in Paris, which contains some excruciatingly hilarious moments.

They could row for their countries these two, and Horgan and Delaney's effortlessly nimble writing is brilliant at showing how arguments can escalate - even in two minutes of screen time. A restaurant ruckus is very funny and (again) eerily plausible, and a scene with a dodgy hotel masseur really does take things to the brink of very dark.

But just when things begin to look as if they may go pear-shaped they pull it back, thanks in large measure to their warmth, verbal inventiveness and extraordinary chemistry. This really is top-class comedy.

Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaneys genius sitcom continues with Sharon suffering badly from the baby blues. But that's OK, because she's been prescribed drugs and now feels "borderline nothing - but in a good way". Meantime, Rob's sexual frustration is becoming acute and a flirtation at work moves him into risky territory. A comedy that's centred on a couple whose actions are often dubious, yet with whom you can't help but identify; watch tonight as Sharon, frustrated by the demands of motherhood, turns friend-stalker.

In a week crammed with riches, we had the return of Catastrophe, rushed back for its second series this year without having apparently suffered for any undue haste. It's still glorious - gloriously profane, savagely observant, yet shot through with, at its heart, two characters so obviously in love they can be ripping the serious bejesus out of each other at full volume yet still turn away and snicker at something funny said. Which happens often.

The miracle of this programme is not just the two stars, Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, nor the fact that their very coupling - a car-crash between loopy Irishness and straight-jawed Yankhood - brings so much potential, but that the pair find so many new ways to say something delightful, believable, witty about the hoariest old sitcom cliches. Breast-feeding, childbirth, dire family gatherings: all are tackled with a freshness of thought that amazes, after decades in which I've gazed at similar setups with my pained curdling-milk face-ache on.

We also had Carrie Fisher as Rob's exuberantly unlikable mother, and the beginnings of dementia, and post-partum depression, and a dead dog: but all treated with humanity, not least when Sharon, serious for once and worried that she can't bond with her three-day-old daughter, frets over the fact the baby looks "manipulative, like it's plotting something". Hmm. We've all seen those kids.