Dara O'Briain jokes about videogames

Irish comedian Dara O'Briain was spotted making jokes about videogames on the Live at the Apollo stand-up television show.

"I love videogames," he proclaimed to his audience. "I enjoy saying that because half of the room are looking at me, going, 'Ah Jesus, you're 38.'"

When asked how he relaxes after a gig, O'Briain went on to say, "It's less embarrassing if I say 'I masturbate to hardcore pornography'."

O'Briain, like many of us, finds it "strange" that people still look quizzically at people who enjoy a product of "the largest entertainment market in the world".

Games are great, he said, because they do "something no other art form does" - stop you going further if you're rubbish. Books don't quiz you after chapter three and then slam shut should you get the answer wrong, O'Briain theorised, and CDs don't stop playing because your dancing is awful.

But games? Games do, and O'Briain used Grand Theft Auto IV as an example of failing and restarting, and the lengthy game-journeys involved in that. He then touched on Guitar Hero and how he wanted to play a song that turned out to be far down the tracklist. And then he moved on to Wii.

"How many of you have ever played with a Wii?" he canvassed the audience. Cheers rippled through the crowd.

"That doesn't count.

"This is a Wii game," he declared. "'Ooh I'm stroking a pony.' That's a Wii game, right. 'Ooh I'm feeding sugar cubes to a unicorn and it's going to poo out rainbows that I can paint onto Mario's house.' That's not gaming.

This is gaming: 'Oh my god I'm in a gun battle! Which of these buttons isn't crouch?!'"

Dara O'Briain lamented the amount of crouching in games - a sketch that culminated in a fantastic burst of physical comedy where O'Briain mimicked being a videogame character interacting with a table on the stage.

He was out of breath afterwards.

Dara O'Briain's passion for games was shown before when he hosted the BAFTA Video Game Awards earlier this year.