Stand-up, actor and chat show host Tommy Tiernan thrives on the adrenaline surge of performance. In fact, as he tells Claire O'Mahony ahead of the return of The Tommy Tiernan Show last week, it’s the danger that makes being in front of an audience worthwhile.
"How am I doing? Mighty. Always mighty."
Tommy Tiernan doesn’t hesitate when asked how he is. It’s the sort of hail-fellow-well-met response you’d expect from the comedian and actor, known for his good humour, high energy, insatiable curiosity and fearlessness. His positivity also underpins The Tommy Tiernan Show, which returned to RTÉ One for its tenth season last week.
For Tiernan, however, the number of seasons barely registers. "It wouldn’t have been part of the dream of it, how long it might last," he says. "The adventure of it is the intoxicating thing, not the duration of the commission or anything like that. If it lasts 30 years or if it had only lasted one, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The adventure was committing to it and going, 'this is terrifying and exciting.’ Or is it of any value to other people?"
That sense of uncertainty has defined the show since its first broadcast. Guests arrive unannounced. There are no prepared questions. What unfolds is a conversation shaped entirely in the moment. It is a format that, even after a decade, Tiernan says still carries risk.
"I get nervous for sure," he says. "It’s not as nerve-wracking as it was, but there’s a wonderful release after the show. There’s a great feeling of having been through something worthwhile."
He describes that release in a characteristically Tiernan way. "Like a decent bowel movement. It was worth the effort," he laughs, before adding, "I’m not sure if you get one without the other. I’m not sure if you get this feeling of event if you haven’t gone through this feeling of crisis beforehand."
From a viewer’s perspective, the show has become known for how quickly guests open up, particularly men. There have been tears, often the host’s own. Tiernan does not claim to have a theory for why that happens, and instead, he points to the setting.
"It’s a strange platform," he says. "We’re in a television studio, and it’s mainly dark all around us. Where the interviews are conducted is on a raised platform, so there is a sense of this is a heightened arena. But it’s also very intimate because it really is only the two of us there."
It’s a combination that gives guests the leeway to open up, he believes. "That sense of something being elevated gives us permission to talk in a way that we wouldn’t normally," he says. "It’s not like sitting down beside somebody in a café or on a bus or on the couch in your sitting room."
He says that doing the show has taught him that "I am capable of conversation," he says. "Because there’s no plan and because I don’t have set questions in my head, you are trusting." He references something Billy Connolly once said, about improvisation and uncertainty before stepping on stage.
"He said, when I walked out on stage, my funny turned up," Tiernan says. "I feel that way before the chat show. I have very little faith in it because I have no idea who the person is going to be and I can’t prepare. But my questions turn up. My conversation turns up."
Risk is a recurring theme across Tiernan’s working life. He has courted controversy in the past with some of his comedy, and he is not afraid of venturing into new territory when it comes to work. Best known for his stellar stand-up career, performing sell-out gigs around the world, his acting roles include Father Ted, Derry Girls (as the long-suffering Da Gerry), Conversations with Friends and the travel documentary series, Tommy Tiernan’s Epic West. There’s also the successful podcast alongside Hector Ó hEochagáin and Laurita Blewitt.
If one was to distill all his work down to its essence, it’s that he is a consummate storyteller.
Although famously associated with Navan, he was born in Donegal, but grew up and attended school in Meath’s county town, having spent earlier parts of his childhood in London and Zambia due to his father’s work. He’s made Galway his home for the last 35 years, living in coastal Barna with his wife Yvonne, a psychotherapist and singer with folk group The Raines, and their three children. The comedian also has three children from a previous relationship, and became a grandfather five years ago.
The 59-year-old writes every morning in a shed at the bottom of his garden, a routine he describes as calm and restorative. "I really look forward to it," he says. "I’d be excited almost at the idea of it each night. Each morning when I wake up, I go, ‘Oh great, I get to do that today’. But I don't know if what I'm producing is of any interest to people, but I can tell you that it feels good."
Live gigs and the chat show provoke a very different physical response. "Because the stories are new each week, my body gets agitated. I guess this is a part of performance. I wonder how good it is for me. Is it good to have those chemicals encouraged and flow around your system?" he asks. "Would that stress help us live longer? I don’t know.
"What do people feel about their jobs? Are there parts they really look forward to? Are there parts they dread? I can’t imagine anybody sticking at a job full-time with the level of anxiety that I sometimes get before a performance. That would seem a bit masochistic."
He adds: "I've always chosen pressure when I was going to school and not having any homework done and trying to get the homework done during the day, which is a bit like trying to cook a dinner while eating at that same time."
Every Thursday, that physical response is tested during Mabinóg, his weekly live storytelling show at The King’s Head in Galway. The word, he explains, comes from Welsh. "Mabinóg is an old Welsh word that I put a fada on the ‘O’ to claim it for the west of Ireland," he says. "It means ‘apprentice storyteller’."
The setting is small, with an audience of around 40 or 50 people, but Tiernan says the scale makes no difference to him. "I have always felt the same about telling stories," he says. "It doesn’t matter if I’m telling them to myself in a daydream or one person or 20 or 5,000. It’s the telling of it that I gravitate towards."
That focus on live storytelling also fed into the launch of his new Substack, Tommy Tiernan Standup Storytelling, which he describes as a creative space where anything from gigs, interviews, writing, reflections, videos and audio pieces could be featured.
The Tommy, Hector and Laurita Podcast is also back for a new season, now recording in front of a live audience. He says that he puts huge value on laughing. "The most delightful thing to hear about the podcast is that it makes people laugh," Tiernan says.
"We just get these great stories about people listening to us when they're out jogging and having to stop because they were laughing or having to pull the car over because they were laughing. I just thought that this year, when we go at it, to increase the jeopardy of it or to inject some adrenaline into it, is that we do it in front of a live audience. It's given it the vitamin boost that it thrives on. So, long may that continue as well."
It’s another leap of faith with his upcoming project, which sees him make his musical theatre debut in Mick Flannery’s The House Must Win, in April.
How is he feeling about this? "Well, I mean, awful, obviously. But there’d be no adventure in it otherwise."
He had always been told that he wasn’t able to sing. "I remember in the school choir in sixth class in St Oliver Plunkett’s primary school in Navan, Mr Doyle, the teacher saying: ‘You can mime this Tommy’. That's been another trip into the unknown, working with a singing coach and being told, ‘No, you actually can sing. You have a limited range in fairness, but you can sing, so let's just encourage that’."
He continues, "It’s a weird one, isn't it? Being told all your life that you can't. I think when you're told you can't, it increases your inability. Then for someone to say, no, actually, you can. Then that draws out some other strange confidence in your ability."
Working on the assumption that he may have other hitherto unknown capabilities, what does he think they might be? "I would say that there is somewhere inside me is, perhaps, a great cook. I just need people around me saying, ‘you have to cook', or ‘you can cook’."
He appeared on The Great Celebrity Bake Off 2025, testing his baking skills in aid of cancer research. "I found that very stressful. But I did manage to make a Bob Dylan pecan pie with a crunchy harmonica."
Given the intensity of his performance and the fullness of his dance card, how does he unwind?
"I don’t really unwind. I think I collapse. I have a very childish physiology – it’s just like a kid hyper at a party, and then just collapses in sweat and tears. I think that’s what I do."
Even his TV viewing is high-octane. "The only thing I really watch is Liverpool Football Club, and that is so stressful. They're so dramatic. It's not enjoyable, but at least my body, then, isn't moving that much. I'll be unwound enough when the great departure happens. I'm not for unwinding now."
See tommytiernan.ie for more information.
