Dara O'Briain
Dara Ó Briain is an Irish stand-up comedian and television presenter. He has hosted panel shows such as The Panel, Mock the Week and Dara O Briain: School of Hard Sums.
He has also featured on Don't Feed the Gondolas, Have I Got News For You, QI, The Apprentice: You're Fired! and Stargazing Live. The Irish Independent described him as "Terry Wogan's heir apparent as Britain's 'favourite Irishman'". Writing for The Evening Standard, Bruce Dessau noted that "If you don’t laugh at Ó Briain, check your pulse, you must be dead."
Since January 2006, Ó Briain has taken part in the BBC Three Men in a Boat series, with Rory McGrath and Griff Rhys Jones. The series, broadcast in a pair of episodes around new year in 2006 and then every year since 2008, has consistently had around 3 million viewers. In 2007, he was voted the 42nd greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and again in the updated 2010 list as the 16th greatest stand-up comic.
He attended University College, Dublin (U.C.D.), where he studied mathematics and theoretical physics.
“I'm sorry, 'herbal medicine', "Oh, herbal medicine's been around for thousands of years!" Indeed it has, and then we tested it all, and the stuff that worked became 'medicine'. And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri, so knock yourselves out.”
“If we were truly created by God, then why do we still occasionally bite the insides of our own mouths?”
“Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”