Tommy Tiernan kicks off his Australian tour in Perth on April 13.

Tommy Tiernan’s knack for attracting controversy is matched only by his propensity to put bums on seats. Are the two connected? Does it matter? AARON DUNNE spoke to the Meathman on the eve of his biggest Aussie tour to date.

Tommy Tiernan doesn’t court controversy. Or at least he says he doesn’t. Yet, everywhere he turns, it seems to lie in waiting just around the corner.

Last September we had the latest ‘incident’. At the Electric Picnic Festival in Co Laois, the Navan man went off on one about the Holocaust.

Not your traditional topic of conversation in a comedic arena, but then again, the 40-year-old isn’t exactly your traditional comedian. It was a 20-second throwaway line, he says. Those of an easily-outraged disposition look away now.

“[Being on a comedy stage is] about allowing whatever lunacy is inside you to come out in a special protected environment where people know that nothing they say is being taken seriously,” he began, preluding the knockout punch that was to follow.

“But these Jews, these f**king Jew c**ts come up to me. F**king Christ-killing bastards. F**king six million? I would have got 10 or 12 million out of that. No f**king problem! F**k them. Two at a time, they would have gone. Hold hands, get in there. Leave us your teeth and your glasses.”
The press reaction was damning.

“Tiernan crosses line with Holocaust rant”, announced the Sunday Tribune on its front page. “Look-at-me antics,” decried The Irish Times the following day. Slews of comments flooded into radio stations and calls for his arrest for inciting hatred followed.

And yet it was nothing new to Tommy, who first incurred mainstream ire when he made a gag about the crucifixion on the Late Late Show. Six months later, Tiernan can look back on it all with some perspective.

“I seem to get myself into trouble in September every year. Some people have SAD. – seasonal adjustment depression, I think it’s called – where the decrease in light actually makes people sadder.

“I think I have something similar more along the lines of SAS – seasonal adjustment stupidity,” he jokes down the phone from his Galway home, rather tragically just a day before the sudden death of his mother, Helen.

“I get into trouble once or twice a year, it’s nothing new to me really. But it’s not something that I set out to do. It was a bit different this time in that it went international – I made it onto the front page of the Jerusalem Post. That was certainly a first for a Tiernan!

“I don’t take it very seriously, though, and I think those who do are poorer for it. The people who were actually there didn’t have a problem with the material at all. It’s never the people in the room listening to the material who object. It’s the people who hear about it afterwards that seem to get disgusted.

“It was put on the front page of the Sunday Tribune a full two weeks after it actually happened, and I can tell you this, the motive behind reporting the story the way it was reported was a bad bastard motive.

“I mean the headline in the Jerusalem Post was something like ‘Irish Comic Mocks Holocaust’. I almost felt like sending them an email saying that the clue there was in the job description.

“It [his comments] was actually part of a much longer thing – the thing about the Holocaust took all of five seconds. It was part of an on-stage interview thing where I was taking questions from the floor and someone asked me had I ever been accused of anti-Semitism.

“I just felt that things were beginning to get a bit too serious at that point. I said something ridiculous and outlandish as a way of shocking people into laughter at the stupendous outlandishness of it. And that’s what got reported.

“I’ve no problem talking about it, and I think once people are in the room with me hearing about it they’ll realise the lunacy of it all.”

Tiernan is stung by the criticism that he is a headline-chaser but cheerily admits to being reckless. Part of the job, mate.

“It’s not my job to be serious or sensible and it’s not my job to be straight or careful. I don’t go looking for these controversies, that would be foolish. To go looking for them would be false, and I couldn’t do that. People would think I’m just being sensationalist for the sake of it, but I’m not.

“I go out with a spirit of recklessness about everything, including myself. But I think when you become a well-known comedian in any country there are always serious people who want to take you down a peg or two.”

Tiernan’s popularity doesn’t seem to have been  adversely affected by it. In Ireland last year only U2 put more bums on seats.

He seems to thrive on the moral outrage of others. It’s something we’ll be hearing all about when he kicks off his Crooked Man tour here in April.

The ‘Holocaust’ kerfuffle is just another good yarn to share with his audiences.

“I think Irish people value stories very strongly. There’s nothing like the excitement of hooking up with a friend to whom something fantastically bad or something fantastically brilliant has happened.

“People just love stories and yapping to one another, so I’m hoping not only to arrive in Australia with a few stories but also to come back with a few as well. I can’t wait to get down there properly for the first time.

“I was last there in 2003. I just did the Melbourne Comedy Festival, but I’m really excited about getting to tour the whole country this time. I hope it’s the start of a long love affair.”

Tommy Tiernan kicks off his Australian Crooked Man tour in Perth on April 13, before going on to play shows in Melbourne (April 15 – 16), Brisbane (April 19) and Sydney on April 21.

See What’s On for venue and booking details.