Dave Woodhall discusses middle-aged anxiety with Ireland’s biggest-selling comedian.
However relatively unknown Tommy Tiernan may be in the UK, on the other side of the Irish Sea he is, to put it mildly, enormous. In terms of ticket sales, he’s second only to U2 and a lot less divisive. He’s playing locally next month, as a start to a new chapter in his spectacularly successful career.
“I’ve been touring rural Ireland for five years and I feel that’s now coming to an end now. It’s been a great experience to play in small halls, sports clubs, the odd theatre and touring the islands, but consequently I’ve been writing mainly Irish material, about my experiences and various things. I thought, I did a two hour show that really worked well in Ballymacward, how will it go down in Toronto? Then I met a well-known Irish playwright who went over to New York and he didn’t change a syllable. He got into the mentality of wanting to give that Irish experience to New Yorkers.
“I then did New York with the same attitude and I did twelve countries in twelve days, ending up in Paris; I’m keen for those type of experiences and less keen on the Canadian and especially Australian tours where I end up playing mainly to Irish people. It’s great, I had an amazing experience with 4,500 Irish exiles and there was this big tribal roar when I went on stage but I’m very eager now to move on.”
Second to U2. Does that make you a tax exile as well?
“I wish. The U2 thing is very interesting. I find it fascinating that they can be so popular and yet so disliked. The Irish, we’re peasants basically, amongst the great peasant tribes of the world – us, the Mexicans, the Russians, people who had so little for so long that they can’t imagine having so much and when one of the peasants turn into a landlord they’re so fantastically wealthy and have such a profile mixing with the landlords of the world, the likes of Bill Gates, that I think Irish people resent them. They prefer their heroes to maintain their peasant outlook.”
Your current show. What will you be doing?
“I started listening to a piano player named Keith Jarrett, and he’s mainly famous for improvisation. He hires out big famous halls and he goes out and improvises for an hour and a half. Not all his shows are perfect but there’s some extra quality in the room because the audience know that nobody else has ever heard this. It’s more enjoyable than going out and playing a piece by Bach or whoever.
About a year ago I went out and tried to do it. On the European tour that I did each show was made up on the spot. It was a cross between a man outside the chemist’s who hasn’t had his medication today, roaring at strangers, and a stream of James Joyce-like consciousness. It’s a great panic situation, it’s not a comfort thing to go on stage and ramble gently, it’s terrifying. Some nights I improvise and some night I go on and tell stories. At this stage I think the smaller shows will be easier to do the improvisation and the bigger ones will be the story telling. I hope at some stage to the improvisation shows at all venues.”
That apart, do you have to change your act for British audiences?
“I don’t really know. Because I’ve been touring so much my act has been Ireland but I’m intrigued by descriptions of places. Up to now I’ve definitely been the Irishman talking about Ireland, but I am more interested in talking about other places. I can imagine that if the improvisation works, that’s very location specific, and I can spend a lot of time talking about wherever I am.
I came over to do a TV show and some other work. I had to remind myself that the bits that work in England might be different, but word had got out and all of the clubs were full of Irish people. I’m not going to complain about that, I’m delighted to be of cultural interest to Irish people. It’s something I’m proud of, when you go to Australia and 2.500 Irish people turn up to see you because they see you as a part of Ireland, it’s very emotional.”
Tommy has been, amongst other things, accused of blasphemy by the Irish Senate after a routine on Irish TV’s The Late Late Show and of anti-Semiticism after making comments about the Holocaust. ‘Controversial’ is a word often applied to him.
“It’s not a word I’d use and I don’t think people who see the shows would say that. I think it’s something you get labelled with and it’s very easy label for a journalist to stick on, it’s more of a thing I encounter in interviews, especially where I’m not so known.
“What I find is that I’m in my mid-forties and I’m finding myself drawn to talking about death, and I feel an awareness of mortality now. You’re always aware of it when you’re younger but something happens to men in their mid-forties, they feel time is short and you never know when you’ll be called so make the most of it. But we live in a culture that’s so youth-chasing and one thing I feel about, for example there’s no such thing as erectile disfunction. Calling a natural process a disfunction is kind of perverse – men and women are now told than men have to have these relentless oak erections until the day they die.
“I find myself attacking that notion of the fear of death, and in a funny and humorous way. There’s nothing in this wide world as game-changing, and as revolutionary, or as subversive, as a soft mickey. Because that says ‘I’m not playing’.”
And it would be impossible to talk to Tommy without mentioning one of the first steps on his road to fame, when he played Father Kevin, the suicidal priest, in Father Ted.
“Father Ted happened very early, yes. It was quite a thing to be sitting in the living room of the Craggy Island parochial house.”
Tommy Tiernan plays the Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton on October 2nd, the Royal Spa Centre Studio, Leamington October3rd and Birmingham Town Hall, October 4th. Tickets www.tommytiernan.com