INTERVIEW Tommy Tiernan’s getting ready for the Mayo madness

Tommy’s getting ready for the Mayo madness


Interview
Anton McNulty

For Tommy Tiernan, playing small intimate venues is akin to going to see a Junior C football match. There is a certain amount of messing and unpredictability. Just the way he likes it.
“I love it. Because the shows are so intimate there is an extra unpredictability in the room that you don’t get in Vicar Street. Now Vicar Street is my favourite venue, it is an amazing place to play, but there is something a bit more unruly about going into a hotel function room on the west coast. A bit more … it is a bit like a Junior C football match between Belmullet and Crossmolina, anything could happen. I enjoy that extra energy in the air.”

Wild Mayo
The Navan comedian is back in Mayo next month for his latest World Tour of Mayo, which begins with a sold-out gig in Matt Molloy’s in Westport on July 3. He then travels to Claremorris, Ballina, Kiltimagh, Cong, Castlebar, Belmullet and back to Westport for a final gig in The Castlecourt Hotel on July 13.
This is Tiernan’s third World Tour of Mayo. He describes the county’s inhabitants as ‘plain people’ but ‘awful messers’ – one of the reasons he loves performing here.
“The last two have gone really well, really enjoyable. We even climbed the Reek the last time. It’s harder than it looks. It’s fine, except when you’re scrambling on the loose shale. That’s the dangerous bit by God. I don’t know how St Patrick thought it would benefit us all but look… It takes me two years to build up enough sin to make the journey worthwhile. I feel free to go messing again after coming down,” he laughs.
“There is an element of wildness everywhere [in Mayo] really, a kind of wildness you wouldn’t get in say the midlands. I don’t know if it’s the distance away from Dublin that you are. Especially in the summer, I don’t know what it’ll be like traipsing around Mayo in the winter, maybe there’ll be a sadness. But definitely in the summer, Mayo shines in the summer… There seems to be good country madness in Mayo,” he explains, with his own unique sense of humour.

Small world
Now aged 45 (his birthday was yesterday by the way), Tiernan has been one of Ireland’s top comedians for 15 years, breaking all Irish box-office records and performing to sellout crowds all over the world.
For many comedians of Tommy’s status, days touring around small towns performing in front of a few hundred people should be a thing of the past. But Tommy sees things differently and  gets as much satisfaction touring around Mayo as he does selling out consecutive nights in Vicar Street.
“If you obey that philosophy, fame is a prison. You can only play certain places. Garth Brooks is playing five nights in Croke Park, but would people think there is something wrong with him if he wanted to play Matt Molloy’s, then a gig in Achill and traipse off to Kiltimagh for a show? People would think ‘jaysus he lost the plot altogether entirely’. But not me, to me if I was given a choice between a night in Croke Park or a summer in Mayo, I’d be in Mayo every time and I’d be serious about that. It wouldn’t be a problem to me.
“For someone living in Mayo there would be no excitement going from Kiltimagh to Claremorris but I love it. For me there is great freedom in hitting the road, driving for an hour or two, having a nice pint of porter after it. It’s an ideal life really.”

Winging it
Tiernan has just finished a tour of Europe where  all the shows were entirely improvised, with no pre-written material going on stage. He compares improvisation to climbing Croagh Patrick – ‘both difficult and enjoyable’ – but he believes that it’s outside his comfort zone that ‘the magic happens’.
He describes his current shows as a being ‘slightly more demented and out of control’ than in the past, but he believes he still gives the public what they want.
“I can never fully predict what each night is going to be so I head out each night with the intention of doing as much improvisation as I can. Some nights the crowd just want stories and some nights they want off-the-cuff messing and that’s what you give them. It stays unpredictable, you are not entirely sure what’s going to happen, the audience are not entirely sure but you want to give them a good night out, make them laugh and give them value for money. Because I’m not a cheap date.”
After his Mayo tour, Tommy will travel to Montréal in Canada for the Just for Laughs Festival.
What has he in store for the future? “I’m a big fan of local radio. I love doing it. I’m as likely to pop up on midwest as I am on Today FM. [But] I really don’t know what’s down the road, as along as I keep talking, that is the main thing.”