Tommy Boy!

The place is the Langtons, Kilkenny, it’s the Murphy’s Cat Laughs festival 2001 and Tommy Tiernan is performing a final encore in front of a rapturous crowd. He’s told us about his overweight marathon-running friend and the Aran Island donkey who runs over a cliff after ingesting a roll of plastic sheeting. “I don’t know what else to tell yis’”, he beams, “I don’t suppose you want to hear about my first orgasm?”

The ensuing tale of awkwardness, woe, passion, innocence, warmth and abject hilarity pretty much sums up the appeal of Tommy Tiernan. As the men in the audience cringe at the memory, the women look at their partners with an expression that’s almost pitying. Yes, we really are big fuckin’ eejits and Tiernan’s let the cat out of the bag. But it’s impossible not to cry with laughter as the comedian onstage becomes the 15 year-old subject of his story, wondering why we’re laughing hysterically as he makes a total mess of this pivotal moment in his young life. When he finally persuades the girl of his affections to ‘lend a hand’, so to speak, the applause of the audience is almost triumphal in its congratulation. He’s the friend we all wish we had, an intelligent, genial and funny guy who seems to be just like us, only more so.

“That whole routine came about by accident,” explains Tommy from his home in Galway, where he’s taking a break from packing for a string of warm-up shows in Edinburgh. “I think I mentioned my first time with a girl in the context of another routine and gradually it evolved into an adolescent saga. The thing is it’s actually a true story, more or less and more than you’d think! I’ve changed the name of the young lady to protect her innocence. Not that I was ever a threat to her innocence at the time…”

Does he realise the amount of affection that his audiences feel for him?

“Yeah, I do, but it’s very much a two-way thing,” he considers. “I love the fact that people are welcoming my stuff into their heads. The reason I do stand-up is primarily because of the feeling I get from my live audiences. It’s almost a confessional thing, and the fact that other people recognise what I’m talking about gives me a feeling of real warmth. We all have orchestras and dilemmas and bad imaginings in our heads, for me stand-up is an opportunity to ask ‘I’m not the only person who thinks these things or feels this way, am I?’ Without sounding too philosophical about it, it’s nice not to be alone. And it makes you feel popular, and we all want to be liked, y’know?”

It’s a fact, though, that most of us can’t articulate those feelings with the same degree of humour or indeed insight. How does he develop his material?

“I don’t do the traditional thing where I sit in front of a computer and work it out,” he says. “Basically I see pictures in my head and I just set out to describe what I’m seeing. I can’t consciously say there’s a method to it, other than you’re flowing along with the spirit of the thing. In truth, there’s no great intellect to a lot of the stuff, it’s not as if I’m being directed.”

He has however been directed on both screen and television. Since his Perrier award in 1998 he has appeared in several films including About Adam and TV shows such as Fr. Ted and Small Potatoes. Is acting for the screen as pleasurable as live performance?

“The acting is really a distraction,” he says, surprisingly. “I’m not really comfortable about the acting work I’ve done up until now, and whenever I see a decent performance of mine on screen, I’m surprised, to be honest. I feel as if I’ve yet to achieve what I do on stage on the screen.

“It’s such a different process. Stand-up is like taking your clothes off and jumping up and down in the mud and being an eejit and wrestling big fellas to the ground! Television is a little like going in to Boston Scientific and getting all gowned-up and trying to separate molecules. It’s very different. Bur financially it’s great since I’ve got a young family and I need the cheques! But if I didn’t have a family I think I’d be on the road all the time. I like it when people come up afterwards for a chat, I love that. It’s sort of like being an inter-county footballer in that respect!”