Review: Tommy Tiernan's Under the Influence

Recorded at the Water Rats venue in London, an English audience provides the ideal sounding board to play out ‘Irishness’ onstage. With his trademark Navan accent and penchant for taking tradition and turning it on its head, Tommy Tiernan’s Under The Influence is much like being on a night out with a brazen friend, commenting on everything wrong with society and their 'ingenious' solutions to fix it. Comedy is one of the best forms of social commentary, after all. Indeed, every hot topic that has dominated headlines lately gets a mention on Tiernan’s hit list. Take abortion for example - which should be legalized until 18 years of age when layabout teens can be kicked into machines and out of their traumatized parents’ hair. Then there’s the health service. We all know it’s on its knees, but why? Because people are living too long, naturally. “We’re not supposed to live forever’ would be the motto of the health service under Mr. Tiernan’s reign. Ireland should be a united land. Not only that, but we should take Scotland too – and on a bank holiday, so we catch them unawares.  Of course, the classics get a mention too. Irish people are repressed about sex, but it’s sex worth being repressed for.

If laughter is the best medicine, laughing at oneself is the ideal high, and Tiernan is a master of making the familiar absurd.

Tommy Tiernan’s Under the Influence is out now on DVD.