Sometimes you just have to curse

Idon’t know why I curse so much on stage. I know for sure that it puts some people off. I was in a bookshop once, and an aul’ one was making eyes at me. She came over and put her hand on mine. The softest lamb-of-god hands you ever felt in your life, and she said, “I love you, Tommy Tiernan, I love you. But would you ever keep your mouth shut?”A wise woman.

Sometimes it’s a sign of frustration, sometimes it’s a rhythm thing. Sometimes, though, sometimes, you just have to curse.

I don’t normally do corporate gigs. A big multinational corporation, Caterpillar, wanted me to do 45 minutes of stand-up in a fancy hotel in LA, and they wanted to pay me a lot of money to do it. A decent night on Winning Streak type of money.

I said yes. They flew myself, my tour manager and my sound man out on business class and had a limo waiting at the airport. So far, so good.

We met Caleb at the hotel, the guy who organised the whole thing: “I’ve seen your stuff on YouTube; you’ll be perfect. We hired you because you can loosen them up, lift their energies. We want them relaxed and in a good mood when you’re done, ready to talk to each other.” “Sure,” I said. I was flattered, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking, “Maybe it’s Tommy Fleming he meant to get”.

Caleb was a very clean-cut and focused type of man. Someone who took his work very seriously and had an evangelical zeal for business that bore all the hallmarks of a major personality disorder. Freshly shaven and tightly wound. To be judgmental for a moment, I would say that he was living from only one dimension of himself. He was a Caterpillar puritan. I liked him, though. There was an honest American decency to him. He told me they only had one rule: “No blue language.” “That’s not a problem,” I said. He held out his hand and made bulletproof eye contact with me. “We shake on it?” “Certainly,” I said. And as I shook his hand, I didn’t think that it would be a problem.

There was a singer on before me at the show that night, but the businessmen weren’t interested. They’d all flown in on their private jets, from Australia, Bangkok, Frankfurt and Peru. They just checked their phones, drank their whiskey and didn’t give a toss. Money does that to people sometimes, takes

“They had one rule: no blue language. ‘Not a problem,’ I said”

the manners out of them. She didn’t seem too bothered. “Just sing the songs and then get out of here,” she probably thought. Stand-up is a different beast altogether. You need engagement from the crowd: it depends entirely on their response to what you’re doing. I watched from the wings, trying to figure out how I was going to turn this thing around.

My agent very wisely insisted that half the money be in my account before I left Ireland and the other half before I went on stage. Another wise woman. My tour manager, Pearse, was waiting for the email from her to say that all the money had transferred and wouldn’t let me on until it had. The singer finished up and didn’t even get a round of applause for her efforts. Pearse was looking at his computer and gave me the thumbs-up: the money was in. We were good to go.

I walked out and said hello. Nothing. I tried a joke. Nothing. I tried another joke. Nothing. Nobody was listening. I tried again. Same reaction — and then something just snapped in me. I don’t have the humility to be ignored.

“Phuck ye, ye bunch of yellow truck-driving khuntz. Ye cementloving, earth-hating arseholes.” Complete and utter silence. “Why don’t ye all phuck off to Mars and cover it in tarmac?”

A moment of tension. They saw the glint in my eye and then... laughter. They loved it. So I kept going. I was doing my job.

“The only thing that stands between you and more money is Mother Nature, so phuck her! Your favourite noise is the sound of every living thing shitting itself as you start your phucking death-diggers up.”

I had them. Once this base of irreverence was established, I could segue into some actual material.

My tour manager appeared at the side of the stage and ran his hand across his throat. It was the ‘get off/ stop now’ signal. Sure, I’d only been on five minutes! I paid no heed and ploughed on, Caterpillar style, effin’ and blindin’ like a fishwife. I heard Caleb shout, “Get him off the stage!” Pearse said no. Caleb was having a meltdown. “I will lose my job over this. Get him off the stage!” Pearse said no. And then an almighty roar. “I said get him off the FUCKING stage!”

Everybody in the room heard it. I bowed and did what I was told. Sometimes you just have to curse.