Tommy Tiernan Show recap: Irishman imprisoned in Iran speaks of recurring 'nightmares'
Bernard Phelan: âThe idea of staying a day longer here was just not possible." Picture: Tommy Tiernan Show/Instagram.
Saturday nightâs explored the good and bad sides of success, the meaning of life, one manâs experience of being imprisoned overseas, and tackling grief through comedy.
Tommy Tiernan sat down on Saturday night with singer-songwriter David Gray, author Bernard Phelan who spent seven months in an Iranian prison, and the female comedic duo bringing queer cabaret to audiences across the country.
Tiernanâs first chat of the night was with singer-songwriter David Gray who spoke about the busy year he has ahead of him, saying he still has the voice and the energy to âgo for itâ.
âI think the world needs as much positive energy as it can get its hands on. Music is like a giant battery thatâs taking on a lot of positive charge⊠so I want to just give as much as I can to as many people as I can,â he said.
Speaking about his early years and how he came to know that music and performing was the path he wanted to take in life, Gray spoke of the time he had to step in and take on the role of the wizard in a school play after the original wizard was ill and had to pull out.
Gray said he had to learn the lines in one day but that there was no time to learn the dances, so he âjust had to go for itâ and improvise.
âThe audience absolutely loved me and there was this love that came back. A penny dropped and I just got it,â he said, recognising it as the moment in his life when he realised that being on stage was his safe space.
Speaking of a traumatic early experience in his life, Gray said he was born with pyloric stenosis whereby the top of his stomach âseized up after a couple of weeksâ which meant he was âbasically starving to deathâ.
âThe first few weeks of my life, I was starving and then I was projectile vomiting. Then they rushed me to hospital and I had this massive operation and they cut a great big hole in me, sorted me out,â he said.
Gray described the first few weeks of his life as âpretty formativeâ and said he feels as though he still doesnât quite trust the world.
âIt seems to make sense, Iâm still wailing for attention at the age of 56, if you like, as I was back then,â he said.
Gray also spoke about his success to date, his relationship with money and the importance of making time to do the things he loves outside making music and touring.
Touching on the meaning of life, he said: âI see life as a spring of energy just coming forth. The best way I can maybe describe it would be the feeling you get when you go for a swim in the sea and something sort of happens to the atoms in your body.
âYouâre made of water, youâre in water, youâre of the elements. Something wild happens that charges you, frees you from thoughts.â Gray said he feels as though heâs on a mission singing for death as well as life and described death as âa great privilegeâ.
Speaking about his new album and his upcoming tour, which will see him play the 3Arena in Dublin in April, Gray said his new songs are âcapable of standing shoulder to shoulder with the big songsâ.
Giving viewers a taste of whatâs to come on tour, he performed - the first track on the new album.
The second guest of the night was Bernard Phelan who spoke to Tiernan about being held hostage in Iran and spending 222 days in prison before he was released in May 2023.
Phelan, originally from Clonmel in Tipperary, and who also holds French citizenship, was detained in Iran in October 2022, on what was his fifth trip to the country.
Working as a travel consultant at that time, Phelan was helping an Iranian tour operator to sell Iran to European customers and said he got on well with the Iranian people and had no idea that he would ever experience what he experienced there.
He and his photographer pal, who was photographing a mosque in the city of Mashhad, were approached by two men in plain clothes who Phelan said showed a card and said: âFollow usâ.
Phelan described how they were taken for questioning before being separated and taken in a car - blindfolded and handcuffed - to an interrogation centre where he was held in solitary confinement.
He was then moved to a second interrogation centre where he spent about a month in solitary confinement.
Phelan spoke of his experience of life in prison - sleeping on the floor, hearing people cry out while they were being beaten, and being interrogated two to three times a day.
He also spoke of hearing the cries of the men who were held overnight in a cell in the block of the prison nicknamed âSatanâs Blockâ before they were brought for execution the following morning.
Speaking of his concern for his health while imprisoned, Phelan said: âI knew that I would only get out by playing on my health. Iranians need hostages in good health.Â
"A sick hostage is not worth anything. I knew if I played the role of getting ill, it would help me to get out quickly. The idea of spending months, years in prison was just unimaginable.
âMy dad at that time was 97, living alone. I was frightened that I would never see him again.âÂ
After numerous court appearances, Phelan was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in Iran.
âThe idea of staying a day longer here was just not possible,â he said.
Speaking of how he was eventually released, he recalls telling the Irish ambassador to Iran, who visited him on May 1, 2023, that he could no longer stay alive in prison. Negotiations followed and he was released on May 11, 2023.
Upon leaving the country, Phelan said that he didnât know if he would be stopped âright up to the last minuteâ and spoke of the tension on the flight out of Iran as the pilot made every effort to get out of Iranian airspace as quickly as possible.
âIâll never forget that. Lying in the bed on a stretcher in the plane, looking at the desert below. There were tears in my eyes thinking about my Iranian friends. It was very, very tense. Then the pilot says: âWeâre out of Iranian airspaceâ.
âI really did think that I wouldn't survive. I was also worried my dad wouldnât live through it. He was old."
He said that while he has no problem talking about his experience, he sometimes gets emotional as his father passed away some weeks ago and his friend Taj, who he met in prison, is still imprisoned in Iran, having spent 10 years in political prison.
âI have nightmares. I don't have nightmares of prison but I have violent nightmares⊠I start crying in the middle of the night,â he said.
Phelan said that getting out and making the most of life is hugely important to him but said he always thinks of his friend Taj and the many others who have been locked up for years and who have been executed.
âItâs a terrible, terrible regime,â he said.
Tiernanâs final guests were comedy duo Breda Larkin and Laura Lavelle, best known as Wild Geeze.
The ecofeminists and body-positive activists spoke of their respective interests - Larkin a stand-up comedian who has experience in writing and performing one-woman shows and Lavelle a burlesque performer - and how they met and came together to create the Wild Geeze.
Larkin from Ballinasloe in Mayo did theatre and one-woman shows for many years before getting into stand-up comedy, while Lavelle from Limerick city performed burlesque which she described as âvery empoweringâ.
âWe do come from a country where our history wasnât very good to women and women being very expressive with their bodies and sexuality. It just feels amazing and itâs quite a thing with feminism as well, thatâs how I feel empowered,â Lavelle said.
After meeting and sharing their experiences with grief and losing their siblings - Larkin lost her brother in 1997 at the young age of 16 and Lavelle lost her sister in 2011 - they decided to start a podcast discussing the topic of grief and then decided to speak about grief on stage.
âItâs a part of our lives, itâs a part of us. Itâs a part of life in general⊠there could be an audience member who really resonates with it,â Lavelle said.
The pair spoke of the meaning behind their songs, where they get their inspiration from, and their collaborations with prominent artists.
âWe just get these opportunities to collaborate with more people and weâre enjoying that,â Larkin said.
They performed one of their songs called for Tiernan and teased that more âwildâ fun will be had at their upcoming show at the Sugar Club in Dublin on February 2.
Wrapping up the show on Saturday, David Gray and Telia Rae gave viewers a touching performance of the song from Grayâs album
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