Tommy Tiernan Show recap: Host sheds a tear when meeting folk legend Donovan
Donovan told the Tommy Tiernan Show: 'I got this mayhem that The Beatles and other bands were getting and that was extraordinary'
Saturday night’s Tommy Tiernan Show saw a tear come to the host's eye when he met one of his music idols, and emotions were high when his first guest recalled the various struggles he has overcome.
Comedian Willa White opened Saturday night’s show and he spoke about his mental health struggles, his recovery from addiction, and learning to forgive his father.
The Dublin comic, who hails from Ballymun, said he was hospitalised three times in connection for “psychosis from taking drugs”, which he described as “a psychi-hat-trick”.
His drug use also saw him spend some time in prison. He told Tiernan he has channeled some of his experience into a play, The Examination, and he hopes to show “anybody that's struggling with addiction or alcoholism or something like that, there is a way when you can get out of it”.
He said he had a difficult childhood due to physical abuse from his father.
“My addiction stems from childhood trauma in the home. When I was a kid, my father at home, he was violent towards my mother, towards myself, towards my sister. He had no way of dealing with his emotions or the trauma he dealt with when he was a kid.”
His father died in 2016, six years after White lost his sister to cancer, and, becoming emotional, he said he learned to understand and forgive his father thanks to his recovery journey.
“I learned in recovery to accept what happened and I learned to love this man and cultivate a relationship with him. When he died in the hospice in 2016 in Harold's Cross, recovery gave me the gift. There was only me and him. I told him three days beforehand, ‘I’m not going to leave you on your own, I’m going to stay here with you’. “
Tiernan’s next guest was former Miss Universe Ireland Roz Purcell who spoke candidly about her experience with eating disorders.
Purcell, who grew up on a farm in Co Tipperary, began modeling at 18 and said she struggled with eating disorders for five years from the age of 20 and she came home to Ireland to seek help.
“I was 24 and I knew I really needed to heal from my eating disorder and a big part of me recovering was definitely changing my environment,” she said.
She added that eating disorders are not unique to the modeling industry ad they are caused by a society that is obsessed with body image.
“My relationship with food was absolutely skewed. My relationship with my body was all over the place and my whole life revolved around what weight I was.”
Purcell said she does not like to share any specifics of her disorder in case any younger viewers were watching.
“Do I add any value to the conversation by discussing that? There's gonna be a lot of teenagers watching who might try to emulate that.”
She said her sister Rachel’s cancer diagnosis was a wake-up call for her.
“It was a really hard time for our family and probably for me, the first time I didn't think about my body in a sense of what it looked like, what weight was I.
“That was a huge catalyst for me. I actually want to do good by my body. I want to protect it. I don't want to keep punishing it because I was really punishing it.”
Folk legend Donovan was the final guest of the night and the host was awestruck.
Donovan spoke of his long music career, noting the hype around his music in the 1960s felt similar to Beatlemania.
“The girls are screaming like crazy. I got this mayhem that The Beatles and other bands were getting and that was extraordinary.”
“I got this mayhem that the Beatles and other bands were getting, that was extraordinary.”
— RTÉ One (@RTEOne) February 11, 2023
Musician Donovan tell @Tommedian about finding international fame at a young age.#TommyTiernanShow @donovanofficial pic.twitter.com/zjpABBryYr
After Donovan sang some of his hit song ‘Catch the Wind’, Tiernan said he felt he “might start crying” with emotion, having listened to his music while hitchhiking around Ireland in his youth.
The singer said he has noticed people are particularly affected by that song when he performs it.
"There's an ancient saying. Of all the arts, music is the most powerful because of this: music is the invisible sound which releases the obscure emotions of the heart. So this is a healing. And it doesn't happen every song in my concerts, but I get the audience saying something happened when I heard song."
Donovan also shared an anecdote about John Lennon seeking his help when he knew the police were calling to his house to search for drugs within hours, describing the situation as “like an old British comedy”.
