Tommy Tiernan Show recap: Special tribute paid to Cork musician Eoin French/Talos
The Tommy Tiernan Show.
Tommy Tiernan returned to our screens on Saturday night for a new season of The Tommy Tiernan Show which saw the comedian and presenter interview musician Pete Doherty, writer Irvine Welsh and presenter and Gaelgeoir Aedín Ní Thiarnaigh.
Tiernan’s guests discussed a wide range of topics, including drug and alcohol abuse, parenthood, childhood, and Irish culture and folklore but it was a special tribute to Cork musician Eoin French, who passed away last year, that stole the show.
The show opened on Saturday night with the introduction of Tiernan’s first guest, English musician Pete Doherty who lives in Normandy in France with his wife Katia, baby daughter and two dogs.
Tiernan inquired about Doherty's musical talents, asking him what he owes his talent, which led to a reflection on his achievements to date.
“Without it being comfortable, or without it being amicable, I feel I’ve settled all my debts. I think there were times I owed it a lot but I think I’ve settled all my debts now which means we can start again,” Doherty said.
“Well, I was thinking of the gift as being songwriting but maybe there is something else that I haven’t quite tapped into yet because I always feel like I failed in my original artistic dream or longing, which was to write fiction and poetry and I never quite had the discipline to do it and so I used melody as a way of propping up - so what something lacked as a short story you could just chop it up and give it a beautiful melody.”
Doherty went on to describe himself as “a pleasure-seeker individual” and “a lotus-eater” and said he indulged himself wherever possible in most things.
Speaking about his health, he spoke about his struggles with his diet and diabetes.
“When I have to choose between the cheese and the diabetes, I tend to go for the cheese,” he said.
“There is going to come a point when it’s all going to come on top of me. I was 45 this year - it’s not that old.”
Discussing his past relationship with drug use and the moral and ethical implications of his actions, Doherty became visibly emotional when admitting that he changed his ways for his wife.
“It was for her, really,” he said.
Doherty also reflected on his encounters with the late singer-songwriter Shane MacGowan down through the years.
“I was working in a bar the first time I met him. He came in, he ordered a pint of Cinzano with a red wine next to it. For me, this was a glorious moment. A - I was serving him a drink and B - it was a pint of Cinzano and red wine,” he said.
Doherty described the moments that he got to sit with MacGowan and play songs as “really magical moments”.
During his appearance on the show, Doherty performed a song from his solo album called ‘It Felt Better Alive’ which he said he would be releasing in the near future.
Tiernan’s second guest of the night was Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh who spoke about his childhood in Edinburgh and his inspiration for the book.
Welsh said that he tries to understand the world as he sees it through his writing and said that while you have to live life in the moment, you can only understand it by looking back.
“I don’t like to write something that’s properly contemporary. I like to write something that’s way back to the 90s or the 80s or even beyond that, even a 70s childhood thing.
"I’m trying to understand my own life and my own times and my own place and to get some sense of the world."
Speaking about his childhood, he spoke about growing up in the tenements in Leith before moving to the prefabs in Pilton and then on to the maisonettes in Muirhouse.
“It was interesting because they zoned everything by street so it was the same people from Leith that moved into the Pilton prefabs and then moved into the Muirhouse maisonettes so it was quite a strong sense of community,” he said.
Welsh also touched on the importance of his work, sport, boxing and his relationships with the people around him.
Welsh said he is currently working on a follow-up to ‘Trainspotting’ entitled ‘Men in Love’ which he said is about these guys who have no real tools or equipment to hold down a serious relationship but yearn to be in love for the first time.
He said the book will be published in July and that he is also working on a disco album to be released alongside the book, as well as the score for the Trainspotting musical which he said is hoped to hit the Westend in Spring 2026.
The final guest of the night was TV and radio journalist Aedín Ní Thiarnaigh who has frontiered RTÉs ‘Faoi Bláth’, exploring Ireland's biodiversity.
Originally from Enniscorthy, she now lives on Inishmaan (Inis Meáin), one of the three islands off the west coast of Ireland that make up the Aran Islands.
After conducting her research for her masters degree in Irish folklore on Inis Meáin, she decided to go back for a holiday to relax on the island and four winters later, is still there.
Speaking about island life in the Aran Islands, she spoke about the uniqueness of each of the three islands and described Inis Meáin as the island that is most connected with the past.
A specialist in Irish wildflowers and their folklore, she described the island as heaven on earth in terms of wildflowers.
“I love the landscape, I love the language and I love the people. I love being part of a small community,” she said.
She said that while you’re sort of isolated and in the wilderness, you’re never too far from a community and you’re never lonely.
“If you don’t want to be lonely, you never have to be. There’s always somewhere to go,” she said.
Ní Thiarnaigh said that after learning Irish, she started looking into wildflowers as she had noticed that their names in Irish meant something completely different, describing the realisation as “a eureka moment”.
She then discovered the strong connection between Irish culture and the natural world and said that people didn’t really focus so much on the calendar but that their calendar was nature itself and has been researching and educating others ever since about wildflowers and their connection to Irish culture and folklore.
The show closed with a performance of ‘We Didn’t Know We Were Ready’ in tribute to indie electronic musician Eoin French, known as Talos, who passed away in August of last year, aged 36.
The song, written by French, Ye Vagabonds, Ólafur Arnalds, and Niamh Regan, was performed live by Jófrídur Ákadóttir, Kate Ellis, Sandrayati Fay, Steph French, Dermot Kennedy, Louise Leahy, Memorial, The Staves, Ye Vagabonds and Christ Van Der Ven, accompanied by a visual backdrop of the late musician.
The Tommy Tiernan Show returns to RTÉ One next Saturday at 9.45pm.
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