Tommy Tiernan: 'I’m already hosting the Late Late Show, under a different name'
Tommy Tiernan on a previous visit to Live At The Marquee in Cork. Picture: Darragh Kane
Tommy Tiernan has an ambivalent attitude towards phones, so maybe it's no surprise that he's not hanging on a call from Donnybrook, Dublin 4 — even if it involves the second longest-running chat show in the world.
"I haven’t any missed calls," he laughs when the subject of the — and the possibility of him presenting it — arrives into conversation.
That the acclaimed stand-up comedian and actor has been mooted as a successor to Ryan Tubridy is no surprise, particularly when you consider the runaway success of his own, much more intimate chat show on Saturday nights. Maybe he's already found the perfect fit — and maybe it’s the Late Late itself that requires some remodelling.
"Well, the thing to remember is that the developed with Gay [Byrne], so he built something that suited his inclination, his abilities, his desire to entertain and his curiosity," Tiernan says.
"And he then handed over his mindcraft to Pat [Kenny] and then to Ryan [Tubridy], so they have been working on something really that Gay Byrne developed. So it’s a little bit," and he pauses, as he often does, to consider his words, "... you’re at a loss from the get-go because it is not entirely your idea. But for the that is something I’ve built myself, that follows my own inclination, that follows my own curiosity and my desire to entertain, so it wouldn’t make a fierce amount of sense to kind of do the Late Late as it is.
"You know, I’m already hosting the , under a different name, the following night. But I don’t know, I mean also, I’m very expensive," he adds with a laugh.
Of course it is reductive to discuss Tiernan and his career to whether or not it was all simply a prelude to hosting a show he describes as a "tank" but which is possibly more akin to an ocean cruise liner — a massive enterprise with lots of people on board and which takes an age to turn around.
His own show is more intuitive, driven by the central premise that he doesn't know of the guests in advance, and is more attuned to his sharp wit and his uncanny ability to communicate directly with whoever is seated opposite him, wherever the chat takes them.
You might think the lack of preparation would make life easier, particularly for someone performing stand-up for 25 years, so it's intriguing to hear that in the first seasons of the show, he was regularly struck with "really, really bad stress", likening it to "trying to run in three different directions at the same time — your body just isn’t capable of it so your mind ends up hassled because it can’t do the things it feels it ought to be doing.
"I remember for the first two years I was probably stressed out three months before we started filming and then I just let it go, I just said ‘OK, I’m not really in control of this, I don't know who’s coming out, all I can do is, whoever comes out, I’ll talk to them. I’ll talk to them, but I am not in control of anything here’. That really helps. So this year that was the approach I had."
It worked, with glowing reviews for some truly remarkable interviews. He says the guests dictate where the discussion will go — someone like Roy Keane or Ken Doherty were more guarded, or as he describes it with a chuckle, "we can flirt with a few things but you’re not blackwater rafting through the midst of my mind, ok?"
But then other guests, like Richie Sadlier and in particular, Denise Gough, go somewhere else. It makes for gripping viewing, where the silences between the sentences ring out. Gough, the Wexford actor who recently in Star Wars spin-off Andor, scorched the screen with her visceral account of running away from home.
"She probably knew beforehand that this is the moment that she was going to tell that story," says Tiernan. It also means other future guests know that this is a space in which they can explore those themes - almost guaranteeing similar fireworks in future.
Tiernan wryly reveals that, despite the show's success and the fact that the 'surprise guests' format is patented, efforts to have it picked up around the world have been thoroughly unsuccessful.
"We had this person who was actively trying to sell the show in places like, believe it or not, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, France, Americ,a and the UK, and nobody is interested, nobody else wants to do it because you do need at the centre of it, or at one of the centres, you do need someone who is prepared to feel the utter wilderness of fear."
This circles back to the first love and what is still the day job — stand-up.
Tiernan will bring the final performances of his Tomfoolery show to the Marquee in Cork on June 8 and 15, and in addition to the heckles — "I always get heckled at the Marquee" — he says it is also a technical challenge. Tiernan and team hang a microphone over the crowd and pipe the responses into his monitors so he can enhance the intimacy levels in what is a huge venue.
For him, stand-up is a craft, the ultimate. He has different approaches to it, from a loose, applied lack of preparation which is itself a type of preparation, to the Wim Hoff breathing techniques which he likens to "a self-inflicted panic attack" and which can send him on-stage in a transcendent state.
Having treaded the comedy boards for a quarter century, he does not believe that stand-up and how it is received has been altered by changing social attitudes.
"Comedy is as cruel, as wild, as unforgiving, and unpredictable as it always was," he says, arguing that it is both too singular and also something that typically takes place where people are drinking and unwinding, all creating an environment for "the extremes of the unsayable and the extremes of a kind of the well-written, clean gag".
The Marquee shows are Yondr gigs, so people's phones will be packed away for the duration - something Tiernan is hugely enthusiastic about.
He believes the ubiquity of the mobile phone has "sullied the public event", from the humble cinema to the theatre royal, and also creates an added layer of self-consciousness for performers. Bagging them up equals freedom, and a better show.
With all that in mind, and his palpable sense of questing energy, it is surprising to learn that he has had long drives home from some gigs, shows he felt never really took off, actively pondering whether he should pack it in.
"Crossing the Bog of Allen at one in the morning or going through Castlebar or Knock in the deepest, darkest nights of winter, or coming up from Kerry, lonely ol' drives and I have often been ‘I can’t do this any more, it’s not working, blah-di-blah-di-blah…’
"But, I find that when I wake up the next morning I am kind of going ‘do you know, maybe, maybe if I talked about the Book of Job, maybe if I did an impersonation of King Lear singing the songs of Bob Dylan, that would work’.
"So the following morning, when the tide has gone out on the drive home and you are left with the litter on the beach, that the following morning the sea is full of fish again and that is a natural thing with me."
At one point he muses on this, the sense that you are never as good as you hope. “You are always slightly disappointed in yourself, would be my epitaph. 'Here lies Tommy Tiernan - he let himself down'."
He's joking though.
- Tommy Tiernan's Tomfoolery show is at the Marquee in Cork on June 8 and 15: https://www.ticketmaster.ie/live-at-the-marquee-tickets-cork/venue/197770
