TOMMY TIERNAN IN THE CHAT ROOM

The unfortunately acronymed Thomas William Anthony Tiernan – or TWAT, as his wife Yvonne jokingly informs me! – needs no introduction in these pages. Nor in muddy Stradbally.

It’s the second afternoon of Electric Picnic and, the moment Ireland’s undisputed High King of Comedy walks onstage in the Hot Press Chatroom for a public interview in advance of his headlining show in the Comedy Tent tonight, the audience bursts into spontaneous, rapturous applause. There are several shrieks of, “We love you, Tommy!” They clearly do.
“It’s like a press conference or something,” Tiernan quips as he sits behind his microphone. Speaking in a BBC voice, the 40-year-old controversialist gravely intones, “this country is now at war with Germany.”
The crowd are in stitches before we’ve even begun. They remain that way throughout.

Olaf Tyaransen: Okay, I’d just like to open by congratulating you on your recent marriage.
Tommy Tiernan: Thank you very much. [Wild applause from audience]. Ha! Why does everybody clap when somebody else gets married? Do ye think you’re safer? Yeah, I’m married a month today.
Congratulations!
Thank you very much. So far, so good. If the rest of my life is like the first month then I would heartily recommend it.
What I want to know is how did you find a priest who was willing to marry the two of you?
He was an old, an old man. No, except the priest, actually was interesting. Do you remember – I don’t know if you remember this – but in the ’80s in Ireland, folk masses were springing up like rashes. They had guitars and sandwiches – [sings] “He is risen from the dead …” and they all kind of floated around in this kind of … without substance world. And the priest was a family friend of my wife’s, and he originated in one of those folk groups, and he’s now in his early forties, and there’d be a heft of us who’d be there or thereabouts. You know, and we might grow beards and listen to Jim Morrison or whatever, and this man has avoided all that. He listens to Cliff Richard and Val Doonican, and I don’t think he has ever had to shave in his life. And he forgot half the mass because Gay Byrne came to the wedding [audience whoops and cheers].
Yeah, and you know Gay Byrne is like the Mount Rushmore of Ireland. But the priest didn’t know he was coming to the wedding. And the priest was up on the altar doing his stuff, and he saw Gay Byrne in the audience – and he fuckin’ lost the plot! He started forgetting bits. My brother was supposed to do Prayers of the Faithful, and the priest forgot about it! A friend of ours was supposed to sing the ‘Our Father’, and had been practicing for ages. There’s a great tradition of the ‘Our Father’ being sung in Irish, Liam Ó Maonlaí does a great version of it … [sings] ‘Ár nAthair, atá ar Neamh, go naofar d'ainm, go dtagaidh do ríochhhht.’ It’s fantastic, fuckin’ soulful stuff. My friend was all set for this, and in the back of the church practicing, ‘Chhhhh … chhhh … chhhh’. And the priest just fuckin’[goes], “Gay Byrne! What the fuck am I going to do?! What the fuck?!” So that’s the priest we got, anyway.
Do you get many priests coming to your live shows and feeling the need to go over and say, “I’m a priest but I still like you,” kind of thing?
Ah no, not really. The heat of that is kind of gone. Nowadays it’d be more … what year is this? 2009. I think, maybe 10/15 years ago the church thing had more weight, you know. I think they have been sidelined now. I think a priest trying to gain the moral high ground now is, eh … I don’t think they’ve got the ability to do that anymore. So, I don’t really get priests anymore. Not really. I get old women.
Old women?
This old woman in a bookshop came up to me, and she had the softest hands that I’ve ever felt – these lovely, beautiful, child-woman hands, and she said, “Tommy Tiernan, I love you.” And very few people tell me that they love me and say my full name. It’s a thing that affects me, you know. She says, “Tommy Tiernan, I love you.” And lovely soft, lamb hands, and she said, “but would you ever keep your mouth shut!”
I think we should all say that, “Tommy Tiernan, I love you.” One , two, three . . .
AUDIENCE: “Tommy Tiernan, I love you!”
And I thank you very much. I don’t take that personally, but I will deliver the message to Tommy Tiernan when I see him. He will be moved.
What’s your take on the recent blasphemy law?
Ah, my God, you’d wonder what people are thinking about when they spend time on something like that, you know. Eddie Izzard has a great take on it: ‘Blas fo’ me, blas fo’ you, blas fo’ everybody’. Blas, is that the Irish for ‘taste’? Does anybody speak Irish here? Blas? Taste? Maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. I don’t really have a take. It wouldn’t concern me. I’d get more concerned about something like Brian Cowen referring to the Irish people as a brand.
When Brian Cowen spoke to his Ard fheis the whole fuckin’ country was watching that because here we were on a very interesting part of a fuckin’ magnificent journey, which is the journey back into an Ireland where money isn’t the most important thing. And the politicians and all the economists were panicking because they don’t have the vision to lead us into that country, or when we’re there they don’t know how to mind us.
And Brian Cowen got up and he said, “Ireland is a great brand.” And I thought, for the leader of our country to see us in purely economical terms is fucking blindness to a degree that the man should be sent to prison. We should adopt Chinese gulags. Old Ireland, in order to be the King of Old Ireland you had to pass many tests, and one of them was you had to be able to walk naked to Tara. And not just naked in your body, naked in your mind, naked in your soul. And you are saying to people, “This is who I am, completely vulnerable and uncovered, but I am still fit to lead you.” And Brian Cowen, they’re just so… Would you say to Bobby Sands that he was a great brand? Would you say to a young itinerant girl, running down the hill on a summer’s evening, her freckles moving back towards the back of her head with the speed, would you say you are a great [brand]? It’s blindness of an alarming degree. An alarming degree. And I would get more concerned about that than, you know, a blasphemy thing which is like something out of a Monty Python sketch, really. It’s not relevant.
Actually, Tommy, all I’ll say to you there is that I was actually at that Fianna Fail Ard fheis and he didn’t say ‘brand,’ he said ‘land’.
He said ‘land’? [puzzled]
“Ireland is a great land.” [Audience cheers]
Well, that’s fair enough. That’s fair enough. In some other dimension, he said, ‘brand’. In the dimension I’m in, right now.
Actually, I’m lying. I wasn’t really there.
Well, you were, in another dimension.
Onwards. Your comedic colleague, Andrew Maxwell, recently got very drunk before a show – I actually like Andrew, he’s a good guy— but...
But why this trial, then, Olaf? Why would you bring it up in front of all these people unless you want to pass some kind of judgement on him? If you like him, let it go, let’s move on to the next question [audience cheers].
No! No! No!
As a friend of mine said, “May Jesus who died on the cross have no hard feelings against you.”
Okay, I shall move on.
Ha! That got you back for ‘land’.
It ain’t over yet. You recently entered the Guinness Book of Records for… [longest continuous stand-up performance]
That was before I was married, now, and my wife didn’t mind … there’s a joke there for anybody who wants to take it on. I took the book out for a few drinks beforehand, I didn’t just plough into it. I took it from behind. Ha, ha! Go on, sorry.
I think I saw you when you were about 18 hours in, or something like that. You were still quite lucid.
I saw your silhouette. I saw you ‘cos you came in about 10 or 11 o’clock. I remember that, yeah. I do remember it. One of the interesting things about that was that we did it in a place – those of you who know Galway – in a place called Nun’s Island. And in Nun’s Island there is an Order of Poor Clares. They’re nuns who, more or less, take a vow of silence. And they spend all their time praying, sending out love.
They believe that they… they believe in the power of prayer, so they believe if they sit in a room in Galway, and, you know, send – I was going to say via Bluetooth – but via Blue Nun – they send love out, you know. “I love Galway, I love Galway. May Jesus who died on the cross have no hard feelings against Galway.” It’s almost Rastafarian, “Ah send out pure love ta Galway!”
And they’re doing this all the time, but they do it in silence. So, next door to me you had these nuns who were being very careful, and not speaking, and it was marking the time that Christ spent in the tomb [Tommy’s world record was set during the Easter weekend – OT]. And it was love, and they were sending out love, and they didn’t speak at all. Love. And it all was honourable. And love. And next door to them there was me going, “Eat me balls! Eat me balls!” Different kind of love. That was interesting for me that those two things were going on within a couple of hundred yards of each other.
The last time I interviewed you, you were doing the American thing, trying to crack America, and then you kind of changed your mind, and said, ‘No, fuck that, I’m just going to just concentrate on being the best Irish comedian there is, and dealing with Irish people and Irish ways and laws or whatever, but you seem to have changed your mind again since.
No, I think what happened was I decided that any notion of trying to crack America is useless and you have to enjoy… we all know people whose goal drives them so much that they are past the goal. It’s not fun. It’s not really a life at all, you know. So, I guess I still go to America. I did a big tour with Dylan Moran and Ardal O Hanlon in the spring of this year. We are going back to do the west coast now in a couple of weeks, and it’s great fun doing it with them, and I’m still doing American TV and all that, but I don’t have this idea of cracking America anymore.
You know, it’s blind, it’s silly, you know. So, I just try and do things that I enjoy. And I think in a sense, as well, for a comedian, you do have a kind of responsibility not to take your own career seriously. That you need to do things that are funny because you are not supposed to take… isn’t it kind of odd when you see somebody presents themselves on stage and says, “Here I am and my job is not to take anything too seriously, but that CUNT went four minutes over his time and is eating into my space!” So, I think you have to do funny things. So, one of the things I am trying to do is just to do that, just to do interesting work.
I see you’re about to do a world tour of Mayo.
Yeah! F.A.K.T. Fact! Which starts in two weeks time, I swear to God. We are doing Westport to Kiltimagh. We are dipping into Roscommon for a little bit of Ballaghadereen but you’d forgive us that. So, we are doing eight gigs. What I have done is we picked a couple of counties and we’ll do a world tour – counties that interest me. So I’m doing Mayo, I’m going to do Donegal. And then in January or February next year, I’m going to do Offaly, I’m going to do a world fuckin’ tour of Offaly! I had my stag night… I had my stag night in Bannagher, and it was fuckin’ amazing. There was people – they’ve never seen the ocean but they know how to have a bit of craic. So, it’s that idea. It’s the idea of Ireland being an amazing place, you know.
It’s a great brand!
Ha! There you go. The serpent has bit its tail! The idea of Ireland being a great place, and you know, not just confining yourself to the big places, you know. Yes, that’s the idea anyway.
Okay. I’m going to move it over to the floor in one second, but just one final question. When was the last time you cried?
Now, you won’t believe this. You won’t believe this. But I actually cried so much last night…
When the bars closed at ten o’clock?
Ah hey, I’m free from that yolk. My friend Hector’s 40th birthday party was last night, and I danced there until about two o’clock in the morning. Now, I had to give up at two because you can’t dance all night on tea and Fanta. And I went back to my… I’m staying in a hotel and I put on my MP3 player and I played songs that made me cry, and it was…
What kind of songs?
[Sings] “I try to say goodbye and I choke/ Try to walk away and I stumble/ Though I try to hide it/ It’s clear my world crumbles when you’re not near...” I cried to that. I cried to, what is it, the big weepy one of Tom Waits … “Come on up to the house, when you... you can’t come in, won’t you come on up to the house.” So I wept last night.
Okay, we have a roving microphone, I believe, so does anyone have any questions for Tommy?
“The world is not my home…’
Quick! Questions? Somebody, please?
Audience Member: Did you see Cowen on Ryan Tubridy last night?
No, I didn’t see Brian Cowen on Ryan Tubridy last night, but rumour has it that Ryan teared him a new arsehole, which is a big surprise to everybody. It’s a bit like finding out that Kermit the Frog is a serial killer. But, no, I didn’t see it, no.
[African] Audience Member: I have heard about you. I am seeing you for the first time. What is your star sign?
Now, the only way I’m going to be able to understand what you’re saying is if I listen in your accent. Have you ever noticed that, that if somebody’s talking in an accent you don’t understand, you have to listen in the accent.[Adopts deep African accent] So fah-ya ah-heed ma fren’ and ah will liss-an [audience quietens nervously]. Now, hang on, before you speak, have you noticed how tense everybody in the room got? And me and you are just having a bit of craic! And I might know this cunt. This might be a plant we’ve set up just to freak you fuckers out. And I soon as I start going, “Well, wat haff you gat to say?” ye are all going, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ Hang on, if he was from Cork and I started impersonating his accent, would there be tension in the room? No, there wouldn’t, so shut the fuck up!
Your question, sir?
Audience Member: I have heard a lot about you and I know you are very famous, and I am seeing you for the first time. So, I am very curious, I want to know your star sign.
My star sign? Ah am born un-dah da sagn of Geminah. Ha, ha! Oh, you’re a bunch of cowardy cunts, the lot of ye! You’re a bunch of cowardy cunts! I am Gemini, my friend.
Audience Member: [Dublin accent]: I saw an interview with you...
Oy saw an intear-ve-ew wit you! Oh ye’re all laughing now. Oh, this is okay? Oh yeah, taking the piss out of the Dub. Oy saw an intear-ve-ew wit you!
Audience Member: Do you really feel like you killed Father Ted?
Do I really feel like I killed him? That’s a true story.
Yeah, Tommy did kill Father Ted.
I made that fucker dance too much. It’s a true story, yeah.
Tell the story.
Tell it again? Okay, this is a true story. I was in the very, very last episode of Father Ted, and I played Father Kevin, the depressed priest. And there was a scene in it – Ted gets news he’s going to America and he is – Los Angeles – and he thinks it’s going to be Hollywood and Sharon Stone. It’s actually the projects or whatever the fuck. But he doesn’t know that yet, so he is all excited about going and he’s putting on this – I’m in his sitting room, and he’s putting on this disco music, and it’s [theme for Shaft] “Who’s the private dick …” All this mad stuff.
And I’m trying to have a conversation with him about how sad I am. And we are shooting it over and over again, because I keep fucking up the lines, and the director says, ‘Dermot, I’m sorry we have to do that again’. And Dermot [Morgan] says, “Ah no, really?” I said sorry. My first time, you know, I was nervous. Being in the sitting room on Craggy Island, it’s like finding yourself in the Rover’s Return or something. So, I kept fucking it up and doing it wrong and Dermot is dancing and going, “I can’t fucking dance anymore, Jesus, me heart!” And, “Please Dermot, one more time, please.” “Fuck! Jesus! Heart!” And, ‘Do it one more time,’ and Dermot danced, and 24 hours later, may Jesus who died on the cross have no hard feelings against him, the man passed on to the next dimension, and God be good to him.
And three or four days later the funeral was on, and it was very sad, and, as you know in all funerals, you know, especially Irish funerals, it’s like people – it’s all about weeping but you need a bit of fresh air as well, so you’re weeping and you are crying and you’re moaning and mourning, and then you need to kind of go for fresh air and then go back into the weeping and the moaning. And we all know sometimes the sex you have after a funeral is fuckin’ fantastic, because both of you are on the edge of life – I don’t want to die! And I don’t want to die!
And then, sometimes the laugh that you can have at a funeral is fantastic as well, because it’s all about just getting a bit of air so you can go back under and swim in the grief again, and moaning and crying and weeping, and the coffin is being brought up out of the church, and everybody is sad and there are children and Chris de Burgh, and it’s very, very sad. And as the coffin is going past a member of the cast of Father Ted turned to me and said, “You killed Father Ted!”
Okay any more questions?
Audience Member: Tommy, I seen you in Letterkenny a couple of times and they were great gigs and you talked about having drunken sex. now that you’re off alcohol, what’s it like to have sex sober?
Okay, sure. Let’s dance with that for a few minutes. Well, the… when you give up drink initially, it’s fantastic, you have a… it’s like the horn that the Angel Gabriel was blowing into Heaven. It’s fantastic, it’s like… it’d remind you of being sixteen, you’d ride all night. As Christy Moore said, “There’d be spunk flyin’ all over the place.” [Audience collectively groans] You’d just be good for any amount of drillin’. And now I’m… eh … I…yeah, now I… it’s different now. It’s been five years since I stopped drinking and the, kind of, the morning horn glory is gone. I’m still capable of an erection, but it’s just that I can hear a creak when it comes up.
AUDIENCE: Uuuugh!
A very good friend of mine said that the whole object of sex, he thinks, is to be able to find somebody with whom you can go to the limits of your passion and still feel comfortable. That’s an amazing thing… the limits of your passion, and still feel comfortable. Imagine doing that sober. The limits of your passion. And I think, in a sense, all of us are kind of afraid of the limits of our passion. Why? Because we reckon, and we’re probably right, it has something to do with our arse. And we didn’t think we were that type of person, did we? Oh no, we’re those dirty people!
Actually, the last time I interviewed you for Hot Press, you admitted to sticking something up your arse. It was a silver dildo, wasn’t it?
It was a silver dildo, yeah. Ha, ha! It nearly broke me back. Yeah, I put a dildo up my arse once. You have to try these things. I tensed up everywhere apart from my arse. I must have had some kind of thought process, “If that clenches you’re fucked, you might never get it out!” My back went rigid, and oh, it was awful. Fucking awful experience!
You’re the Richard Gere of Ireland.
I had my face down on the pillow, like that, and it was happening, and do you know when you are very weak, but you have to communicate essential information?
Oh, hang on - you had help with this?
Oh... my wife.
Will somebody please call The Sun?
I was there, “Take it out. Take it out. I think my back has snapped. Please take it out.”
We’re going to go for another question, because Tommy is getting excited here.
Audience Member: What’s the best heckle and which comedian do you admire most at the moment, or someone you’d go and listen to?
David O Doherty is fantastic, isn’t he? Neil Delamere is great. There’s any amount of them are brilliant. Dara [O’Briain] – he’s English, though. Hey look, you can’t be too sincere, now, in all fairness. Any of them, really. No surprises, really in terms of people. I like most of them, you know. And what was the other question? The best heckle? I should remember these more. The best heckle I ever had was actually a line that a fella helped me with. I was doing a show in New York, and it was a late show, it started at about 12 o’clock at night and there was a couple of drunken Irish in the front row, from Monaghan or something like that.
Audience Member: [presumably from Monaghan]: Yeeeeaaaahh!
Ha, ha! If Hitler had hated the Irish, I tell ya, Anne Frank wouldn’t have stood a chance of fuckin’ hiding anywhere because all the Nazis would have to do is call out the names of Irish places and an Irish person would scream out, “Yeeeaaahh!” Then, “Fuck, sorry Anne. He said Monaghan. I couldn’t help meself. We’re all going to die now. Go on, Monaghan, ye fucker ye!”
Anyway, there was a load of drunken boys from Monaghan there, and there was a bit of the show I was doing about encouraging my father – my father was having sex with my mother, and I was in the next room, and it was going on cos they were hammered, and it was like hour after hour of [bedsprings going] ‘eee … eee … eee … eee … eee.’ I had fuckin soccer the next morning and… I just wanted them to hurry up and get it over with so I...
Whipped out the silver dildo!
And the Monaghan boys were there. And I was there imagining myself shouting to my father, “Go on, Daddy! Go on, Daddy!” And this Monaghan lad shouts out, “Drive her like you stole her!”
So – ‘Drive her like you stole her’. I have always wanted to… this sentence, to me, is funny, right. And I don’t know… it’s a sex sentence. And I’m trying to imagine a situation where it would happen, and would it be a compliment or not? A guy is having sex with a girl and it’s all very, you know, she’s not, you know… She turns to him and says, “Jesus Christ, you’re riding me like a Guard!” Ha, ha! Anyway, that sentence interests me, and I made it up myself, it hasn’t happened or anything. What would you do if someone said to you that you were riding them like a Guard? Anyway, sorry.
We have time for one more question. Tommy is playing tonight in the Comedy Tent, I presume, at 8 o’clock.
At 8 o’ clock, yeah.
So, one more question... and it better be good.
There are two. The hat fella over there and the green t-shirt man. Sure we’ll do both of them, for the craic. We’ll do the hat man first.
Hat Man: Where do you get your hats from? ‘Cos they’re all flippin’ brilliant so they are!
Say that again.
Where do you get your hats?
Oh, where did I get my hat?
He gets them from The Edge.
I met the Edge once, he says, “I like your hat.” I said, “Thanks!” [pregnant silence... laughter] The Edge gets his hats specially fuckin’ made. He said to me, “My hat – I get my hats specially made.” I said, “Ah Edge, you’re ridin’ me like a Guard!” What kind of a man gets his hats specially made? Take a chance ... go into Penneys.
Green t-shirt Man: Going by your Northern accent joke and your Israeli joke... have you ever been accused of being anti-Semitic?
Have I ever been accused of being anti-Semitic? I certainly have, yeah. In America, these two people waited for me after a show. I used to do this joke along the line of… The Jews say they never killed Jesus, and the joke was I say the line, “Well, it wasn’t the fuckin’ Mexicans,” was the joke, like. Yeah, Jewish people came up to me afterwards, and they…
Have you ever seen people whose eyes are so aflame with righteousness and they never have a… The whites of their eyes are so pure and fuckin’ white, they’re just one-stream people, they’re not people that have gaps for more than one train of thought. This one train of thought fuckin’ purifies them. And these people were just saying that the Israelis are a hounded people. And God, Olaf might have more to say about that, then me, but. You know, whatever, I’m not here to hound anybody, but these people come up to me afterwards and said, [irate] “What you said …”
I tell you who I don’t fuckin’ like actually, just as an aside. I read some thing that Frankie Boyle said, he’s a Scottish comedian, and he says, and it made me very angry because he said that any time he hears a comic doing a piss-take of an accent he goes up to them and tells them, “that’s racist!” And I thought to myself, that kind of attitude doesn’t belong on the comedic stage. Because it’s all about being reckless and irresponsible and joyful, it’s not about being careful and Protestant and Scottish and mannered.
It’s about being fuckin’… it’s trusting your own soul and allowing whatever lunacy is inside you to come out in a special protected environment where people know that nothing they say is being taken seriously. But these Jews… these fuckin’ JEW CUNTS come up to me! [Audience bursts into laughter and applause]. Fuckin’ Christ-killin’ bastards!!! Fuckin’ six million? I would have got 10 or 12 million out of that. No fuckin’ problem! Fuckin’ two at a time, they would have gone! Hold hands, get in there! Leave us your teeth and your glasses!!!