Dara Ó Briain hits out at TV critic who called him 'British'

Dara O'Briain hits back at critic for calling him British

Irish comedian Dara Ó Briain has hit back at a TV critic who slammed his latest show after it described him and his colleague Ed Byrne as “white British men”.
The review was written about Ó Briain and Byrne’s documentary, Dara and Ed’s Road to Mandalay, which sees the pair explore south east Asia as they travel from Malaysia to Myanmar.

It follows the success of Dara and Ed’s Big Adventure which saw the pair travel from North to South America in 2015.
However, one person who was less than impressed was The Guardian’s TV critic Chitra Ramaswamy.
She pulled no punches in her review, describing the three-parter as “increasingly dull and unedifying”.
But it was Ramaswamy’s misinformed description of Dara and Ed that caused Ó Briain offence.
The review read “sending white British men to far-flung places in search of ‘strange and quirky’ aspects of other cultures”.
Of course, both Ó Briain and Byrne were born and raised in Ireland.
Ó Briain took to Twitter to hit back at the review. He tweeted: “Bravo @guardian telly review! Accuses us of cultural insensitivity, while in the same sentence subsuming Ireland back into Britain…”


The word ‘British’ was later deleted from the review on the Guardian’s website, but Ó Briain hit out at the amendment too, tweeting: “Ha! Well done @guardian! Now it just implies that you’re bored of Irish people and our many travel documentaries.”


If you missed it, the three-part series is available on the BBC iPlayer.

Written by Andrew Moore