Interview Tommy Tiernan
Simon O'Hare speaks to the critically acclaimed comic ahead of a rare Leeds show
Interview: Tommy Tiernan
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Have you been performing your show in Edinburgh and is that a different experience to a normal show?
Yes I just started on Friday and it’s going great. When you’re one of 10,000 at the festival, it’s very good for your humility, so yes it’s great. I think the thing for me as well is the reactions of different crowds around the world, really. I would spend a lot of time touring in Canada and Australia, most of my time touring around Ireland, some stuff over in London, and it’s great to compare the reactions of the crowds. My memory of playing in Leeds and places like that is that they are very much like the Irish. Down in the south they tend to be slightly more civilised, and up here I think they’re kind of halfway between the two; Glasgow was just insane, it was like part of Dublin. Edinburgh is slightly more formal.
Do you notice that certain material goes down better in certain places or is it universal?
No, I know that if I introduce an idea that could in any way be misinterpreted as something horrific, I think that the more civilised audiences are… it takes a minute or two for them to kind of trust me. Whereas I much prefer performing to the uncivilised because they know I’m joking.
You’ve been labelled a controversial comic. Do you think it’s part of your job to be controversial – or do you not agree with the idea that you are?
I don’t think I’m controversial. I like to have fun with the world, if you know what I mean. I like to look at the world and have fun and laugh at it. And I think if people think that’s controversial then… honestly, now, it’s just like free-wheeling down a hill on your bicycle, and say you come down a hill and the road stretches out and you go through a town, two legs sticking out and you’re singing, people might think that’s inappropriate. But it’s not really, it’s just fun.
How do you go about writing your shows – do you have ideas you feel passionate about and then try to find humour in it?
I do have big ideas that I feel passionate about but I find them very hard to get into the show. So it’s almost like I have to be talking about something else in order for whatever theories of life I have to seep through. It’s just about having fun really. Say last night, I was doing an impression of an old rabbi walking along a dusty road, and that morphed into Paolo Nutini. Now that’s not something that I’d be able to think of sitting at home, and it’s not something that’s particularly clever. It’s just silly. That’s the kind of stuff that ends up in the show. It’s just fun. There are other things in the show – it’s intelligent, there are different types of storytelling going on – but it’s not something that’s overly manufactured. If a clever person gets drunk, that’s what my show is like!
What are the main themes of the show?
I think that one of the themes of the show is the desire to know less and not to confuse information with wisdom. Other themes of the show are… I don’t know, this isn’t like a breakthrough novel with great ideas. The show is complaining about sex and is talking about the recession, all kinds of things in there. What I say to the people at the beginning is that my ambition is that we both leave here knowing less than we did when we came in.
What is the most important ingredient for making people laugh – the material, the way you say it or something else?
I think it’s fun. I know I’m saying that word a lot but I was listening to an American comedian called Doug Benson last night and he has one of his albums on iTunes and I was sat listening to it in bed. I was rolling around the place laughing because he was talking about how he went into a men’s toilet and the guy beside him farted, and it was just the way he did it was so brilliant, because he wasn’t trying to be clever and at the same time he wasn’t gratuitous or cheap. There was just something, and it’s very hard to define what that is. The same person can like Bill Hicks and Tommy Cooper and a bit of Morecambe & Wise and The Two Ronnies and Dylan Moran. I think if everybody is honest to their own inclinations then that’s a good start.
Are you able to relax and enjoy other comics or do you find yourself analysing them?
I tend to analyse them more if they’re shit. If they’re good, I’m laughing; if they’re shit, I’m kind of going ‘hmmm, how did he get so shit?’
Would you reveal who the two ends of the scale are for you at the moment? Are there any comedians who you like and dislike?
I’d say, last night there was Doug Benson, check him out on iTunes, he has an album called Unbalanced Load, and he’s a dope smoker, he talks about smoking dope and he’s really, really funny. The person I think is the worst at the moment, which I wouldn’t cross the street to see for love nor money and all my kids’ health…? That feeling is reserved for myself.
Do you know Leeds very well?
I played the City Varieties once; I think the last time I was in Leeds I went to a student disco at a nightclub where I sat for a long time watching two girls kiss each other. The weird thing was that they were in their early twenties, they were both dressed like in military fatigues, they were kissing each other in public and it was unusual to see – but they were annoyed because I was looking at them. But I had no option but to look at them! If two fellas were doing it with each other, I would have done the same thing. If it was a boy and a girl, they’d have to be doing something pretty amazing for me to keep staring at them, but these girls were trying to resuscitate each other at the same time. It was around 2003 and those girls are probably happily heterosexual now.
20 October, Harrogate Theatre, Oxford Street, HG1 1QF, 01423 502 116
24 October, The Carriageworks, Millennium Square, LS2 3AD, 0113 224 3801
Posted on Wednesday 15th September 2010
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