Dylan Moran DVD (From York Press)

Dylan Moran DVD

11:50am Friday 18th November 2011 in Comedy By Charles Hutchinson

IF you missed the rambling, ranting Irish charm of Dylan Moran at the Grand Opera House in May, or indeed if you saw that sold-out show in York, here comes another chance to celebrate the shambolic master of social commentary, domestic detail and political putdown.

This week, Universal Pictures UK releases the tour DVD, Dylan Moran: Yeah, Yeah Live, a show that finds his searing intelligence and Wildean wit hitting a new peak, as the trademark grumpiness settles around the middle-age spread.

Comedians can irritate by being parochial, unduly coarse, too young, too in your face, too now, too T-shirt and jeans, but Moran is everything you could want in a stand-up. He’s an Irishman living in Scotland, making him double the outsider but still he has the inside track on the English.

He has the ear for a phrase of a novelist, a poet and a songwriter rolled into one; and he has an opinion on absolutely everything that has you agreeing him with him pretty much all the time, no matter your religious, culinary, sexual or political persuasion.

On the nonchalant surface Moran comes across as woolly as his still boyish hair, but when it counts he has an economy of words and imagery that nails his target. Part of his skill is in never labouring a point; he is full of lethal jabs and dazzling combinations of punchy putdowns and his victims fall quickly. When a little sentimentality slips into his family stories, so does self-deprecation.

Glass of full-bodied red in his hand and chocolate bar by his side, he is utterly relaxed yet worked up, his eloquent scoffing and misanthropic observations the most wonderfully spun from Ireland since the peerless Dave Allen.