“My only rule onstage? ‘Follow the mischief'”

Charismatic, theatrical and hugely popular in his native Ireland, Tommy Tiernan heads out on the road again this spring, looking in at the Anson Rooms on Friday, April 12.

“Tommy rants and raves, he dances and acts. He tries to be very silly and very serious at the same time.

“He mixes a love of comic rebellion and a refusal to be conscripted into a rational view of the world with a deep love for talking and the poetry of everyday speech. Using high theatricality and lots of sweary language, this is a fast paced and exuberant celebration of everything that’s wild, wrong and wonderful about being alive right here, right now. It is by turns clever and then really stupid.”

“There is a spirituality to Tiernan that makes him stand out.  The church’s loss is comedy’s gain…Imperious” –The Irish Independent

We talked controversy, confusing audiences, and the beauty of language with the great man.

You have “a deep love of talking and the poetry of everyday speech” – which is generally reckoned to be a particularly Irish thing. Do you agree?
Not really, I think people everywhere respond well to creative language. From American rap to Last of the Summer Wine, from PG Wodehouse to Flann O’Brien….we all love a well-chosen phrase.
The curious thing about us Irish is that our minds developed in tandem with our mother tongue, Gaelic, and yet we now find ourselves speaking English. So it’s the friction between these two very different ways of perceiving the world and each other that makes for good conversation.

More broadly, how much does your Irishness feed into your comedy? Your sense of humour, your way of looking at the world, even things like your schooldays?
That’s a bit like asking me how does my humanity affect my work. I’ve no idea, it’s too subjective a thing for me to be objective about.

How do you find your comedy goes down in Ireland, over here in England, and in the rest of the world? Do you feel your comedy hits home better in some places than others, or is it pretty universal?
Sometimes an audience has a certain expectation of you – and the way to stay energised onstage is to initially fulfill that expectation, and then to subvert it. You give them something they recognise and then surprise them. You have to follow the instinct to stay honest.

You’ve courted controversy with remarks once or twice in the past… anything in this show that’s likely to prod any sensitivities? And what’s your view on what’s permissible to say in a stand-up set?
Controversy is always in the ear of the beholder. I’ve never set out to be controversial but every laugh is sign of shock on some level. The only rule that I’d have onstage would be to follow the mischief…..

The show is an “exuberant celebration of everything that’s wild, wrong and wonderful about being alive right here, right now”. We do live in quite troubled times. But do they provide good comedy fodder?
All times are troubled times! Paradise only exists in myth….

Tommy Tiernan performs his new show Paddy Crazy Horse at the Anson Rooms, Bristol University Student Union on Friday, April 12. For more info, visit www.bristolsu.org.uk/groups/bristol-su-live/events/tommy-tiernan-paddy-crazy-horse

Read more: Interview: Sean McLoughlin (Wardrobe Theatre, Apr 7)