Barely had anyone noted the genial, bald and burly Irish comic than he was on Have I Got News for You and Mock the Week, not merely appearing but actually running the shows as chairman.

He agrees that on British TV he must have seemed "like an iceberg" – a sudden looming presence – but insists there has been "a straightforward arc" to his comedy career.

Student debating in Dublin taught him how to work an audience, then a job as a children's presenter got him into television, while doing stand-up at night and after becoming a regular on a topical comedy show, The Panel, he had become a well known name in Ireland.

But as a comic he wanted to crack it in the bigger pond of the UK and went to the Edinburgh Festival eight times without making much of an impression. "I belong to a healthy generation of Irish comics and we used to compete at Edinburgh" and in retrospect it stood them in good stead, he reckons.

His persistence eventually paid off and he began getting offered more and more gigs over here – including The Lescar in Sheffield – and then broke through on to TV.

He quickly by-passed the usual stand-up of comedy showcases and appeared on panel games and chatshows. He also rowed down the Thames with Griff Rhys Jones and Rory McGrath re-creating the great comedy novel, Three Men in a Boat, and had his own programme, Turn Back Time, interviewing comedy

The next step for successful comics is often movies and TV sitcoms, but not for O'Briain. "I don't act and I don't have any ambitions to," he declares. "I am on the journalism wing of comedy and have never been disposed towards acting. I become overcome with self-consciousness. I am a ham, a terrible actor."

It still surprises him that TV work keeps coming in which seems to prove "it doesn't matter if I am as ugly as sin." Is that insecurity the reason he keeps on doing the live stuff?

"It's what I do, a lot of people pretend TV shows and stand-up can't be juggled, but why not?" he insists.

His TV profile from Mock the Week might suggest that his show will be highly topical, but he prefers to present a well-honed turn which will work over a year by which time a lot of hot topics will have become stale.

So what do we get? "The act consists of a bit of storytelling and messing about with the audience. I guess I am a bit like Al Murray or Ross Noble and use the audience as a resource," he says.
Dara O'Briain is at the City Hall on Thursday.