THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.159 - TOMMY TIERNAN

Episode Date: September 4, 2021

Adam talks with Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan about the dangers of comedy being misunderstood, Ireland, hair loss and erectile dysfunction. We also talked about parents and the way relationships with dead loved ones keep changing - PLEASE NOTE: the subject of suicide comes up in that part of the conversation.COPING WHEN SOMEONE DIES BY SUICIDE (CRUSE BEREAVEMENT CENTRE)Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for his work on this episodePodcast artwork by Helen GreenRELATED LINKSTOMMY TIERNAN PODCAST AND TOUR LINKS (ON TOMMY'S WEBSITE)TOMMY INTERVIEWS THE IMAM OF THE ISLAMIC CENTRE IN IRELAND (FACEBOOK)TOMMY TIERNAN INTERVIEWS STEPHEN REA - 2021 (YOUTUBE)TOMMY TIERNAN INTERVIEWS SINÉAD O'CONNOR - 2020 (YOUTUBE)TOMMY TIERNAN FIRST STAND UP SPECIAL - 2002 (YOUTUBE)TOMMY TIERNAN ON BEING RACIST WITH THE TRAVELLERS - 2016 (YOUTUBE)FUCK OFF IF YOU CAN'T TAKE A JOKE (ARTICLE ON HOT PRESS WEBSITE by NIALL STOKES ABOUT TOMMY TIERNAN 2009 SCANDAL)THE WINSTONS - AMEN BROTHER - 1969 (YOUTUBE)THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY (OPIOID EPIDEMIC DOCUMENTARY) TRAILER - 2021 (YOUTUBE)ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION (NHS WEBSITE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how are you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here.

Sorry, Rosie, I wasn't talking to you. When I say, hey, Rosie stops on the track, looks around and goes what don't no she's not moving I hate it when you go hey you think it's your little stupid catchphrase but I find it nauseating and I don't want to come on a walk with you anymore is what I'm getting from Rosie don't be like that Rosie guy's got to have a catchphr to come on a walk with you anymore, is what I'm getting from Rosie. Don't be like that, Rosie. Guy's got to have a catchphrase. Come on.

Come on. Nope, she's standing there. Really, that was the deal breaker. Just going, hey. She's just standing in the track now As I walk on Looking around Last week it was Go back to the house and get coaxed out Now it's like a protest about my intro Blimey

I can't please anyone these days What's the deal, dog? Are there ghosts on this track or something? Hey, why are you being funny? I love you. Did you know? Dog eyes? Come on, come with me. What is the absolute problem, Rose? Come on then, let's go back to the house and do this thing again. All right, well, I'm back again now. I took Rosie back to the house. She seemed keen to get back inside and go and lie on the sofa in the kitchen. I don't know what's up. Maybe she's just not feeling very well or haunted track. I don't know.

She's not supposed to be the moody one. Anyway, how are you doing, listeners? I'm not so bad. Continuing to recover from COVID-19. Not very nice weather still. It could be a lot worse, sure. But it's grey. It's very grey. I don't like the grey.

The impenetrable grey. Wake up and it's grey. Then at lunch it's grey. In the evening, grey. And next morning grey you know what I mean I just think it's a shame because usually at this time of year it can be very beautiful

and lovely you know September time you can have a lovely balmy evening that's almost as good as the summer not this year anyway shut up okay come on let me tell you about my guest for podcast number 159, which features a rambling conversation with the Irish stand-up comedian, writer, actor and chat show host, Tommy Tiernan. Tommy, currently aged 52, was born in the town of Cardona, County Donegal, Ireland. He exploded onto the stand-up scene, I'm going with exploded, in the mid-90s and by 1999 he was writing and starring in the Channel 4 sitcom Small Potatoes.

That show, which ran for two series, also starred Sanjeev Bhaskar, Morgan Jones and Omid Jalili and featured Tommy as an underachiever who works in an East London video shop. But it was stand-up that continued to earn international acclaim and awards aplenty for Tommy, with performances that featured observations on subjects ranging from the trivial details of everyday life to religion, race, war and the meaning of existence. These observations might be delivered one moment with amiable club comic

cheekiness and the next with semi-possessed, seemingly stream-of-consciousness ranting that sometimes stomps on a variety of sensitivities in a way that's led to Tommy troubles on more than one occasion. And we talk about one of those controversies a little bit in our conversation. As well as continuing to tour regularly over the years, Tommy has taken on the occasional acting role in film and TV, notably as a depressed priest in Father Ted, and more recently, that was just a little cameo, but he's a regular character in Lisa McGee's Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls, set against the backdrop of the Troubles in 1990s Ireland.

2017 marked the beginning of a new chapter in Tommy's career when he began hosting the Tommy Tiernan Show for the TV channel RTE in Ireland. And as you will hear in my conversation with Tommy, it's a chat show with a twist that's become massively popular in Ireland and looks set to become a hit further afield too. As if all that wasn't enough talking, Tommy also has two podcasts. There's the Tommy, Hector and

Loretta podcast, in which he waffles with his friends Loretta Blewett and Hector O'Hiohigoyne, hope I'm pronouncing that right, no disrespect if not Hector, and there's Private Investigations, which features Tommy alone in his shed with a microphone, a coffee and a mouthful of ideas. There's links to those in the description of this podcast, or at least links to Tommy's website where you can find everything Tommy related. My conversation with Tommy was recorded remotely in late May of this year, 2021, with me in my nutty room in Norfolk and Tommy in a rather more grown-up looking study in the Galway home

where he lives with his wife and manager Yvonne, they're the same person, and their children. We talked about Tommy's talk show show the dangers of comedy being misunderstood parents and the way relationships with dead loved ones keeps changing and just so you're aware on a serious note the subject of suicide comes up in that part of the conversation thereafter talk shifted to island hair loss and erectile dysfunction. It was a good, wide-ranging, tonally varied ramble.

Back at the end for a bit more solo waffle, but right now with Tommy Tiernan, here we go. Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate Ramble Chat Tommy is connecting to audio. Hello there.

Tommy has connected to video. There he is. So now I'm just going to um start the audio recording on the other thing it's beautiful sounding mic if you don't mind me saying i do all right i'm sorry i said that it's just that i i've become so saddened by bad sound quality over the last year and when i meet someone with a nice mic it really brightens my day i find it very difficult to listen to stuff that isn't um easy on the ear yeah so and i'll be with you on that totally and people with grating voices but what if you live with them i think that would be a mistake to marry that person or to take up permanent residence with someone with a grating voice.

That's a deal breaker, isn't it, for like a long-term relationship? Maybe you could get them some kind of voice changer, like a really fancy version of those little plastic loud hailers you can get for children, you know? Oh, yeah? And if you click on them, they... It gives you a robot voice. But then you could get a nice one,

and it would just take the edge off someone with a very shrill voice. Sounds like an awful lot of effort just to listen. I guess the technology wasn't there for Stephen Hawking, was it, though? Because he had to just have that... I think it was called FRED, the voice setting that he used. Generic default setting. Because even in the early days of that voice synthesizer technology, you had a choice. There was a woman-sounding voice.

I'm treading carefully here because these gender distinctions are fast becoming outdated. Don't. You're like Lady Diana walking across a field of suspected landmines. I'm shouting, go for it, it go on no bother to you anyway i didn't know that much about you tommy i'm gonna be honest with you at this point i know very little about myself either and i was tempted to take the same approach to this conversation as your talk show that is currently. You're still doing that, right? We just finished the sixth series, I think.

So that's been going since 2017. Huge success in Ireland. And the format is that you don't know who you're going to speak to. Do you speak to three guests in a show? Yeah, three guests tonight. And the premise of the show is very simple i don't know who they are until they walk on and they can be a famous person or an unknown person um but the premise of the chat show is i have no idea who's going to walk out

and also the audience has no idea who's going to walk out so the show was recorded we talked for about i talked about an hour with each guest each night. Then, when the show has been edited, the information of who's going to be on is not released to the public. So, the public tune in on a Saturday night at 9.30 and they have no idea who's going to be on. Very simple. It's very stressful. But it's miraculous in a sense

because conversations go places naturally where they wouldn't go if it was researched and how did that come about originally like whose idea was that it was my idea i got it in hull i was in a bedroom in hull one night after a show i was probably drunk and i thought how about a chat show where you didn't know who was going to walk out until they walked out and that made me laugh and I've found there can be a fluency to some ideas where you're not really trying to convince people for that long that you should be allowed to do it it's like when I started stand-up, things started happening very quickly. So I became well-known quickly and I won a few prizes and I was able to earn money. And it all seemed, it seemed a kind of an effortlessness to it, which you take at the time as great encouragement.

Now, I've tried to write novels and that's been the opposite. No one wants to publish them. And no matter how much work I put in it. So I'm I'm tempted to say I'll just park that, you know, there's no point. So with the podcasting, we've done a show over here in Ireland. That's the same thing. It's done really well. And it's great encouragement from the public.

And with the chat show, it was the same. I went to a guy who runs a radio station and I said I have this idea and he said let's do it. And then we did four episodes of that live on the radio

and then I went to a television station and they said let's do it. So it was all really I didn't have to work hard persuading people. I'd probably get

disencouraged is that the right way of saying that? Discouraged. Discouraged. that the right way of saying that discouraged discouraged you're just wasting valuable vowels there so yeah

so that's the way that happened you know so I'm I don't know how much longer I'm going to do it for but it's had a fantastic response here

and we've had great guests we've had like the president came on Adam Clayton came on Bob Geldof came on and then we had this woman who is a psychiatric nurse and an Olympic boxer. So you get unknowns as well.

So the show has that balance, you know, of the dark and the light and the mainly, I suppose, the unpredictable. Yeah. Have there been encounters that just completely got away from you or were incredibly awkward yeah but part of you is also thinking when it's awkward that it's probably good television right but i'm a very sincere interviewer in that i'm not after i don't think i am anyway after i'm not after salacious details i'm genuinely trying to make contact with the other person of some sort trying to find i'm like um i'm like a lap dancer do you know a very experienced clever lap dancer and they're trying to find out how they can relate to this person um but i remember years ago watching dave letterman and thinking that that's proper funny.

If you can be funny in conversation, that's better than being a good stand-up who's repeating the same material every night. If you can be funny off the cuff, talking to people, and you come up with something funny and you never have to say that line again. And I myself like when i'm doing the chat show i had a conversation with the head imam so the top islamic cleric in ireland who came on and i was talking about how much i loved the

sound of islamic prayer and i asked him would he sing a prayer for us so this is at 9 30 on saturday night primetime irish television and i says will you sing one of your prayers for us? So this is at 9.30 on Saturday night, primetime Irish television. And I says, will you sing one of your prayers for us? And he said, I will. And then he settled himself. And then I said to him, you're not going to blow up afterwards, are you?

And he started laughing. You know, so it's that thing of when you work in comedy and the mischievous thought comes into your brain. And it's having the courage to follow through on those, even though part of thinking, you can't fucking say that to him, you know.

But sort of stuff like that, that I really enjoy about it, that I think are, I suppose, you know, years and years and years and years of being on the road and identifying the things in stand-up that you like and identifying the stuff that you don't like. And I can remember when I started in stand-up that you like and identifying the stuff that you don't like.

And I can remember when I started doing stand-up first and the adrenaline, the joyous opiate that seemed to flow through my body when people were laughing. And just the physical thrill of that the atom changing experience of that elevation that's the adventure is to be always looking for something and failure is important not to be looking failure, but to give yourself the opportunity to fail

and to succeed. You know, it's a kind of a restlessness. And I suppose, I think what I'm trying to say is to have the courage to honour your restlessness. And keep letting those

mischievous thoughts through past the mental security guards. Oh, yeah. Even though in the past, in in your past in many comedians past those kinds of thoughts have got you in hot water and have been badly misunderstood yeah and have led to i mean in 2009 you had a whole period where just this huge shit storm grew up around comments you made after a gig that were you were sort of caricaturing and taking the piss out of anti-Semitic attitudes. But you did so by caricaturing them in a very broad and crazy and over-the-top way.

And when they were written down and reported, they looked like sort of beyond appalling things that you would say about the Holocaust. Yeah, well, once you take something out of context, it's impossible to defend. Right. But that is always going to happen. So whether you felt you were right or not, or being misrepresented or not, I'm curious to know, because presumably that period was very unpleasant, and you lost a lot of work. And afterwards, didn't you think like, maybe I'll avoid that again if at all possible. So maybe I won't make a comment about a Muslim guy blowing himself up on my chat show. I don't know. What happened in that particular situation was this.

People in a newspaper were being threatened with unemployment. So the newspaper was in its death throes. And as a way of surviving, decided to approach a tabloid kind of manifesto. And they said, OK, let's get salacious, let's get salacious let's get dirty let's get hysterical and i i just came across their sight lines and they said let's shoot this fucker knowing all the while you know that what they were doing was unconscionable in the sense that people knew that i was joking that's why laughed. And my gesture towards the whole scandal was, I released an audio recording of what happened.

And I said, you know, here are the circumstances in which that comment arose. And it was funny, you know, at the time. It's not funny now reading about it in a newspaper, you know, it's of that particular moment. But it had a knock-on effect like it kind of went from because they published it in a newspaper it then became a global story and i was then i was supposed to tour north america and my promoter who's a wonderful jewish man worked with him for years he said tommy i've been contacted by these theatres to say that they can't take you

and that there'll be pickets outside the theatres. And I was taken off a Canadian tour and we received death threats and the Irish Secret Service called to the house and said, you need to take out extra security. We got unbelievably vicious mail to the house. But I kept working. I kept working through the whole thing and you know in a sense it was none of my business it was nothing to do with me but it's a it's not i don't even i haven't found a way yet really of talking about that it's even an interesting story because

i haven't really found the interesting angle for me just yet in it but it's somewhere in the desperation of a newspaper to stay alive i think that's really where the drama is and a newspaper going how do we how do we not go to the wall and they did go to the wall six months later the newspaper declared bankruptcy so i mean um no there's no question that there's always going to be a cohort of people who willfully make a bad faith interpretation of something which if you thought about it for a second you'd realize that it's not coming from that place but i feel as if the conversation now is shifting a little bit so that the intention is less important people are like well i don't care what your intention was you waded into a situation in which people

are sensitive for a reason because there is a tradition of them being marginalized or mistreated or whatever group you're talking about and the fact that you have not been sufficiently sensitive to avoid saying things that could be misinterpreted means that you are somewhat culpable yes but i suppose part of it is that you're you're speaking from a particular culture. And that's the culture of the United Kingdom. And all cultures are informed by other cultures. And we're all kind of leaning and bleeding into one another.

I'm speaking from an Irish culture. We have a history of suffering. And I think what that history of suffering does is it kind of darkens your sense of humor and there was a thing in the newspaper a week or two ago in the guardian and he talked about how anti-irish stuff shouldn't be allowed anymore and um it's uh scandalous and he talked about frank of ireland uh he talked it in a kind of sly way of you know, oh it's not really very funny and remarks that I thought were kind of nasty and he was saying, you know,

that anti-Irish stuff couldn't be allowed. Growing up in Ireland, we told Paddy Englishman, Paddy Irishman, Paddy Scotsman jokes. So we revelled in the fact that the Irish person was the thickest fucker in the parable.

And we even had our own version of that, which is kind of Kerryman jokes, you know, which were just another twist on that. So there's something about the laughter of the oppressed, I think, that's been a component of the Irish imagination for a while. So if you combine that with the fact that once you step on stage, you have so many options, OK? You can be an entertainer or you can be a trickster. And it's not even a decision.

It's an instinct. And it's not even a decision. It's an instinct. And if part of your instinct is to take nothing seriously, and that nothing includes you attack power, but you push it and you go, okay, if I'm taking nothing seriously, then I'm also not taking weakness seriously.

So it's all very well telling jokes about the Queen, okay, because she's powerful, or telling jokes about Putin, or telling jokes about... Sure, because you're punching up, so you're allowed.

But are you also going to tell a joke about the girl in the wheelchair in the front row? No. Yes, is the answer, because you're taking

nothing seriously. No, because she might be upset because she's already struggling. I'm running through the arguments here. Okay, well, I can tell you for a fact, I've done it and I've been contacted afterwards by the person in the wheelchair saying thank you because I feel included.

Thank you for not patronising me to the extent where you think I need to be in cotton wool. And I'm a wonderful human being, Adam. Sure. i have great sensitivities and i'm a nice man so i am never willfully cruel but why but when i'm on stage if there's tension like for example there was a blind lady on my chat show recently and both her parents are blind and they met in London she said and I said did they just bump into one another yeah

right now that's a fantastic joke yeah I mean alright so that's what I'm talking about it's that kind of impish

not that might have come across in a self-congratulatory way I'll bear the brunt of that but what i'm trying to say is that yes to talk about the weakness as well as the strength but that if people sense that where you're coming from is genuine then they will go along with it if they sense that you are actually being cruel then they won't laugh they refuse to laugh yeah actually being cruel then they won't laugh they refuse to laugh yeah so people can smell you people can instinctively know this is coming from a good place the person you're talking about can

know this is coming from a good place now that's i mean of course that should be the fundamental principle but it gets eroded in the social media age, in the internet age, when things are reported, when they are shorn of context, and then they become talking points and it gets further and further away from the original moment and the feel of the original moment. And all you're left with is these shocking looking words that have been reported. And you think, well, that's not cool. Yeah, I feel as if we've passed through that, though, in terms of stand-up. I remember ten years ago, maybe

Frankie Boyle might have been reported for something, or Billy Connolly might have been reported for something, Jimmy Carr might have been. I think that moment has passed in stand-up is my sense of it. But it's all a struggle, Adam. I don't want to sound as if I know what I'm doing.

Yeah, sure. Or that I have clarity in terms of manifesto, because I do not. Now, earlier on, I was saying that I was considering approaching this conversation in the spirit of your talk show and not reading anything about you whatsoever or not doing any research. I mean, obviously, because in the same way that your talk show works, sometimes someone will come on stage who you do know quite well and you know a lot about them anyway. So it's a fairly conventional interview in that way so i know a bit about you but um i resisted the temptation to do absolutely no uh research whatsoever because i quite like the research part i like reading about people and seeing what they've done and going oh i didn't know and one of the things i didn't realize was that you and i are very close in age.

I am nine days older than you. Oh, you're a rascal. You're the 7th of June? That's right. I'm the senior partner in this conversation. I've been around a lot longer than you, nine days more than you. I've seen it all.

Here's what you missed in those nine days. Okay. June the 8th, 1969, Nixon announced that 25,000 American troops would be withdrawn from the Vietnam War by the end of September. Was this in any way connected to your birth? He was sad about the war and he thought, okay, we can't get away with this now. Buckles is around. Okay. 9th of June, 1969. Just a few days away from your birth.

Day off. All right. 10th of June, 1969. Arts and Crafts. 11th of June, 1969. Peter Dinklage born. Was he in Fairport Convention or something? No, Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.

He's the guy in In Bruges. Have you ever seen In Bruges? Yes, the little man. Yes, that's right. The little man. Brilliant actor. 12th of June, 1969. That's a laundry day.

13th of June, 1969. Big day for music. Oh, yeah? Soren Rastead, Danish musician and co-founder of the group Aqua, who did the song Barbie Girl. Oh, my goodness. He was born on the 13th of June, just three days before you. Other big thing on the 13th of June, the Amen break, a six second drum solo that would become the most sampled musical track of all time was recorded.

Do you know what the Amen break is? No, I've no idea. It was sampled a lot in... It's the basis for a lot of drum and bass tracks. Oh, yeah. And it was an instrumental track called Amen, Brother by the Winstons. And that was recorded three days before you were born. You remind me of a story.

The day after my father was born, they attacked Pearl Harbor. Not the Tiernan's now, the Japanese. Yeah. So he was born, I think, on the 6th of December 1941. And I think on the 7th of December the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. And years later he said it to his mother, my granny

Mary. He said the day after I was born they attacked Pearl Harbour. And she says, oh, she said that's very funny. She says because I can remember that but I can't remember giving birth to you. Yeah man. I mean Pearl Harbour giving birth to you. Yeah, man. I mean, Pearl Harbor's a big one.

Yeah. Where were you born, Adam? What part of the world were you born in? I was born in a hospital on the Goldhawk Road in London. And what were your mum and dad doing at the time? My mum, she had just a few years stopped being a flight attendant on BOAC. All right. Which was where she met my dad, who was a travel writer and would fly around a great deal.

And so my dad whisked her away from the world of flight attending. Wow. And she got to travel around the world with him and uh and had a great um upper class time they would have been like uh flight attendants back then were the height of glamour that's right i mean they were practically models so your mama must have been uh i believe the word is glamour puss oh wow wasn't that oh that's Bagpuss I'm thinking of. It's another television show altogether. Wow. That was her husband.

And did your dad ever talk about, like, getting on this flight and seeing this? And the confidence to approach a flight attendant must have been, he must have been quite a, in a sense, either had great clarity or was quite sure of himself. I think he was. He was a good looking man, my dad, in his prime. or was quite sure of himself? I think he was. He was a good-looking man, my dad, in his prime.

You wouldn't necessarily have believed it looking at him when he was on TV with us in the 90s because by that time he was in his mid-70s when he was on our show, on the Adam and Jo show. Yeah. I think he'd let himself go by that time. There comes a point where that's allowed. There comes a point where that's almost encouraged, though, isn't come a point when that's almost encouraged though isn't it just to absolutely i mean i i do remember him he got self-conscious every now and again he'd look at some of the stuff we shot with him and he'd be

like oh jesus christ look at me but um was he balding or did he put on weight or what was his he put on a bit of weight i mean it, it wasn't disastrous. It was just old age. You know, it was just the ravages of time. Also, he never really gave anything up. Like, he wasn't smoking drugs or anything, I don't think, but he loved booze. Oh, yeah. I asked him very late on, actually, in his last months, if he ever thought of himself as having a problem with alcohol. Because he did really put it away a lot. And he said no i don't think i ever did and you know he was never out of control with it at all but he just drank a lot yeah so but this is all stemming

from the fact that he was good looking when he met my mom and he was confident enough to just get talking with her and invite her out and it all happened wow sounds like an interesting man he was he was an interesting man uh i go on about him a lot oh do you and i wrote a memoir that came out last year that was in large part about my relationship with him because he was very he was quite conservative and very dismissive of pop culture, modern culture, and a lot of the stuff that I was into. So I'm constantly conflicted in all sorts of ways between a kind of liberal side of myself and a more conservative side that is his voice in my head. Yeah. How about you with your parents? Are they still around?

No, my mother died 11 years ago uh she committed suicide um and um my so it's funny it's not funny that's been i haven't found a way of making it funny um it's uh holy, man. That is very heavy indeed. And I can't imagine what that feels like for the people left behind. Well, I think there's a kind of strange process of estrangement that begins and can go on for 20 years. So when the actual moment of death arrives, it's not like a sudden rupture.

It's this person who's been kind of moonwalking their way away from everybody for a long, long, long time. And one of the strange journeys then is after they've died is you trying to march back over that territory so they've retreated 15 miles into the hills and a flare is sent to notify you of their death and that's when your journey from where you are to the place where the flare went off begins it's a strange one you know you're trying to so i would say that my empathy and my sympathy and my love and my understanding for my mother is increasing at the moment of death things were definitely estranged and there was a a lot of negativity towards my mother coming from a lot of people in our family and then that passes and then the human instinct which is often a very

caring a loving kind one realizes you have to start the journey you have to start walking up the hill you know that's in your nature and so you begin um and as a lot of people would know just because somebody dies doesn't mean you stop talking to them you know you're still in you're still in a sense in relationship um my mother's sister also committed suicide so it was a dark you know the metaphor one of the metaphors i use for it is that they came from a part of ireland called tipperary which is surrounded by mountains these three physical ogres of hills surround the county and it's a long way to get there. To. Yeah. So it's, my sense of it is that there was

dark blood running in that family, you know, and in my veins, I guess, as well. But my father's side of the family then would be genial to the point of celebration. Great conversationalists, very fond of a pint. And light temperamentally?

Yeah, great storytellers. My cousin Eleanor Tiernan is also a stand-up and she's living and working in England and she's fantastic. But generally just good talkers. Good conversation

and the primacy of of being sociable is very important to them so you can have that you couldn't they're opposites you know so i can understand what you're saying that your your dad's conservatism is somehow still engaged in conversation with a liberalism that's in in you but that's an ongoing kind of dynamic isn't it's an ongoing you know um yeah you mentioned what you call the dark blood that was flowing on your mother's side but apart from all the thoughts you've had about her and the pain that she must have been in did it frighten you that that was also in your veins that dark blood no but it definitely i have an i have an unsocial side i can moonwalk as not as fast or as um perfectly as my mother

was able to but i can certainly retreat and i can certainly withdraw and i can certainly uh be incommunicable uncommunicable discommunicable one of the communicables non-communicatious oh perfect uh but i want i think as well sometimes we tend to lean towards more one side of our families than the other yeah also none of this stuff is written in stone even when you have a genetic predisposition to certain medical conditions that does not necessarily mean that they are going to be repeated in you you know that genetic switch isn't necessarily going to get switched on. Oh, yeah. Now, I certainly wouldn't feel in danger of anything like that, you know. But it's, I mean, in terms of a story, I mean, and it's criminal sometimes to reduce people's lives to a tale told.

But, you know, the fact that her sister died the same way. And she did struggle with alcohol i think i heard you talking about that right yeah oh yeah but i think the alcohol was my sense of it is that the alcohol really i don't know an awful lot of it's funny i don't know an awful lot about her you know and the how she was harangued and tormented and distraught and how she wanted oblivion. I don't really know an awful lot because that's the way that she designed it.

But drink would have been part of her thing, you know, tablets, you know. For pain, is this? For pain, I it's for pain or for depression or something i'm reading a book at the moment called empire of pain by a guy called patrick radden keith about the sackler dynasty and the oxycontin yeah yeah scandal and that uh opiate epidemic we have some of that in the house. OxyContin. I've just been watching the documentary about that

that's on Skytome that's very good. What is it called? The Crime of the Century. And I was watching it going and it's awful what those companies did that I remembered. Oh jeez I think we have some I'm trying not to take it

now they're talking about having they have 160 milligram tablets and stuff like that that they were pimping out I found a packet and they're 5 milligrams which I kind of think

you'd probably get a nice little buzz off them without getting addicted oh mate chuck them out flush them today but um oh my god reading this book is just so shocking and and I I think that was one message that was drummed into me fairly early by my parents was well my dad's big one was don't ever borrow money yes and my mom's big one was don't ever borrow money. Yes. And my mom's big one was watch out for drugs. She was like, don't take psychedelic drugs because you never know what's going to happen. It's like Russian roulette. If you have a predisposition to, you know, mental health problems, then see ya.

Yeah. And the other one was in a similar vein, don't use a Ouija board because there probably isn't an afterlife and there probably aren't ghosts, but no one really knows, so why take the chance? Why was she inspired to tell you those particular stories? I don't know. Maybe she had some experience with both those things when she was younger.

I didn't know much about my parents either. They were a certain kind of person, a sort of middle class person of a certain generation who I guess didn't think it was appropriate to share a lot of information with your children. Yes. And chat about that stuff. Also, they sent us all off to boarding school fairly young. boarding school fairly young and i think when you make that decision for your children you are not always but often shutting down a very big part of your relationship and and the kind of closeness that there can be between children and their parents sure you're you're you're moonwalking you went to boarding school right yeah i spent two years in a, I don't know what kind of boarding school you went to, but I went to a West of Ireland boarding school.

Is that good? Well, it's fairly rough around the edges. It's basically just a farm with bedrooms. Right. But I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the independence. I loved being away from home. I loved,

I used to do an awful lot of hitchhiking hiking as well which kind of isn't really encouraged now but i was 16 years of age and hitching all over ireland and nothing ever happened to me and the roads were filled with people hitching and i loved it and my parents it was totally fine with them you know that i'd go down to the house in in navan which is on the east coast, and I'd say to them, I'm going to Galway, which is on the west coast. I'm going to Hitch, and they'd say, fine, here's five pounds to get yourself some lunch in Athlone, which is halfway there. That's one of the things that I, even though my parents were incapable of giving me some things in the same way

I'm incapable of giving my children some things, they did give me great freedom. And I've benefited from that totally are you aware of deliberately trying to change certain personality traits as a parent yourself um yeah my dad was uh quite controlling and i have that tendency as well. So I fight against that. This is a good one now. So my 12-year-old eats with a knife and fork in the wrong hand. What's the right hand?

I don't even know the etiquette for that. See, what you're supposed to do, you're supposed to pin the beast with the left. With the fork. Yeah, left hand, and use the power stroke of the right hand to do, you're supposed to pin the beast with the left. With the fork. Yeah, left hand. And use the power stroke of the right hand to cut, right? Okay, yeah.

Traditionally, that's how we've done it for thousands of years. But my son, what he likes to do is he pins it with a knife. Holds it down with a knife. And the left. And then just kind of scrapes it with the right. Hes it down with the knife. In the left. And then just kind of scrapes it with the right. He's torturing it. Until enough comes.

So, I've lost my temper with him. And I'm going, that's, that's how you, it's the other, and I sound just like my dad. You,

that's, switch it, switch it. But recently, I've been just going, arah, fucking, I don't give a shit.

And let him at it. That would be one of the ways that I would struggle with my father's ghost. He's still alive, but the ghost of his parenting. Yes, I'm exactly the same. And every now and again, I kind of catch sight of myself. And when they say every now and again,

my middle son is particularly good at saying why yes and he won't stop until he's got an answer and i start spluttering and say because it's because it's if you if everyone because it's a system that everyone has agreed on and and and it it if you go to someone else's house and you do that and you slouch like that and you pick up your food with your hand like that they will disapprove and i don't want them to disapprove of you and that's the best argument i've got yeah and that's the truth isn't it you could You get these associative visions of him being, you know, or in a restaurant

or something like that. That's right. Yeah, just kind of let it go. And people sort of thinking, oh, we're not going to invite Nat Buxton to something again because he's badly brought up. Do you have that thing as well

at the same time that's going on? People imagining what it must be like to have you as a dad and going like, some of your listeners would be imagining, oh God, like to have you as a dad and going like some of your listeners would be imagine oh god he'd be such a great dad he's he's a good listener and he asks nice questions and uh but he's just so wise and there you are to the child because i said so absolutely yeah and my wife i know that she i know that she occasionally gets people saying to her

you must laugh a lot when you're at home and she's like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i get that um you've got five children right six i have six children six and a granddaughter as well. Whoa. Congratulations. Thank you. On all that. Thank you. Six. You've introduced six lives into the world. Needlessly. Like, you think of all the shit that can go wrong for one person, and you've multiplied that by six,

and you are invested in every single one of them, and you care about every single one of them, and it'll break your heart if anything goes wrong for any one of those six. You're insane. I think anything over two is the same two is the same as nine when it comes to children yeah if you if you've one child you know it's a dynamic intense relationship uh anything over two and you're just I don't know so six is nine is fifteen is twenty I don't really again

the more than my stand up I have no clarity I limp along from one ritual to the next breakfast driving to school trying to turn off

the fucking phone it's been you've been on it go crazy your generation I'll tell you something about your generation Trying to turn off the fucking phone. You've been on it. Go crazy. Your generation. I'll tell you something about your generation and fucking Greta Thunberg. You talk so much about saving the planet.

There's never been a generation of children who've had less fucking engagement with the real world than you have. So don't pull that shit. Just turn it off. Because I'm paying for the fucking phone. That's why. So that would be one of our rituals.

Wi-Fi be moving so slow. It's taking ages for pages to load. It was like this when the engineer came. He said it was fixed but now it's the same. I'm taking a photo with my tea. Thank you. of love because my wi-fi's too slow i was watching an episode of your chat show and the guest was stephen ray the actor oh yeah yeah guest was Stephen Ray the actor oh yeah yeah that was a great uh encounter and before I ask my trivial question about the encounter I'm interested to know how that was for you were you very familiar with his work already um and with him as a person I'd met him a few times and i like him so i enjoy his company a lot and i think he's a great storyteller as well and that his i mean he worked he was in a play directed by

samuel beckett i didn't know i mean that's just incredible and he talked on the chat show about being in a theater company in the north of that the British Army somehow kind of took a, weren't entirely approving of. So they'd be doing shows and helicopters would deliberately fly over the theatre and stay hovering. So I think he has had such a fabulous history and it's such and, you know, the whole the crying game and the end of the affair and all these marvelous films that he's been in. But mainly it's just that feeling of enjoying the places that he allows me to go with him. That's not sounding too complicated. Mm hmm. I enjoy his silences, I guess what i'm trying to say well i had just finished reading a book by patrick radden keefe uh another one i may you know i i mentioned before

i'd read uh empire of pain and the reason i read empire of pain was because i read his previous book called say nothing about the troubles and specifically about the murder of gene mcconville in which stephen ray's ex-wife no longer with us delores price was involved and i didn't know anything about that i didn't know stephen ray was married to dolores price and it was all news to me so it was fascinating to see him on your show and it was a a sort of oh what's going to happen now moment when you said to him i want to talk to you about the ira was your heart pounding when you asked him that question or or did you feel comfortable knowing him a little bit that he wasn't going to sort of stand up and walk out no because given the format of the show in that i've done no preparation

and i'm all of a sudden sitting opposite somebody in a television studio and i'm listening intently to what they're saying and i don't know what I'm going to ask them next. Only one question comes into your mind at a time and you have to have the courage to follow your instincts. So instinctually, I was curious about Stephen's history with the IRA. So if just in terms of people, if people are listening

and would like to find out more, a trail I could offer them would be, first of all, to watch the interview with Stephen, which may or may not be available online in the UK, I'm not sure. I think it is.

And then there's a documentary called Dolores. I Dolores, I think. I Dolores, yeah. And that's if your curiosity has been piqued, P-I-Q-U-E-D, by Stephen's conversation, then I Delores would be the next. That's all I could suggest to people

rather than me offering a narrative on that. I'm not in a position to do that. And I would also recommend the Say Nothing book, which is pretty thorough. I would say, I mean, you know, not knowing a great deal about the subject, but it seemed to me fairly objective and well-researched. I do a lot of work up in the north um and i love it up there but there are the ability of a culture to hold different voices in the one embrace you know we're no longer like nationality is a work in progress everywhere and to be english now isn't the same thing as it was

to be english 70 years ago or 300 years ago and the same for being irish being american certainly isn't the same thing as it was 300 years ago uh it's not the same thing that it was when we were growing up in the 80s yeah and it's just yeah it's a work it's a constant work in progress um but radically different voices within the same culture is kind of exciting you know and i go up north and there are energies up there that would refuse irishness and would say don't you dare label us with that particular brand and I sometimes think about a United Ireland

and I think well how would those fiercely loyalist colourful people how would they survive in a United Ireland and I

and it just makes me think that diverse cultures are exciting and some of the damage done like we've inherited something so the vast majority of english people 99.9 of english people have inherited a colonial culture nothing to do them. They're born into this thing

and they go, how do we cope? In the same way that 99% of Irish people, we were born into a colonised culture. How do we cope with that? How do we, you know,

it's not our doing, but we have to deal with it and move on to the next phase of it and all that kind of stuff. But Northern Ireland was a sectarian state. That's not the fault of English people who, you know, just getting on with their lives in Hull and Manchester and Brighton and Newcastle. But Northern Ireland was a sectarian state and it was oppressive. which it has never kind of accepted

in the sense that my feeling is that the Southern Irish let the Northern Irish Catholics down by not wanting to be involved, not coming to their help. Do you ever think about how in the 16, 17 and 1800s where colonialisation was starting, that did nobody ever said to them, guys, you can't be doing this. Because it's not going to work out well. Yeah.

Because people will always fight back at some point. And it might take 400 years for them to fight back or 800. But anyway, just following on the kind of the thread of what we're talking about is that I really enjoy being up in Northern Ireland there were reasons why

my contribution was not asked for in the Good Friday Agreement because I don't really know what I'm talking about but just I I like being up there you know

but in the same way I love London London is a fantastic place to be as long as you're not poor. It's probably my favourite city. I love the amount of talent that's in London. It's almost like it's a world centre for brilliant people. I like English culture. I like English habits of manners, sincerity and thoroughness.

So I'm not sectarian, but when you break anything down, there isn't much to it really. When you break down being Irish and being English, there are small differences, but they're really, they're minuscule. Do you know what I mean? They're fragments.

Yes. It usually just comes down to things like brand names and and beyond that there's fundamentally it's possible for people to relate to you know fairly universal struggles that everyone deals with okay so here's the more superficial question I have about Stephen Ray. Do you think he dyes his hair? Do you? Does Stephen Ray dye his hair?

Do you? Do I? No, do you? What are you saying? I've lost the... Do you dye your hair? Oh, I see. Sorry. You just turned it round on me in a way that I wasn't expecting.

Well, your hair is fantastically black. It's tremendous. It's going grey. I noticed the first streaks. But look at my, I got the white beard going. No, I don't dye my hair. I don't, even though I had to dye my beard a few years back for a part. And it took about five years at least off.

Yeah, yeah. And I thought, oh. about five years at least off yeah yeah and i thought oh and then every now and again you see people like stephen ray in his 70s now yes he is the hair of a teenage girl yeah he's the same hair as michelle from dairy girls it's luxuriant well conditioned it has a lovely rich dark hue to it and usually you can tell when people dye their beards it looks weirdly black yeah yeah but he didn't look like that at all i saw you talking about you realizing that you were getting a bald patch on top which i'm getting as well so you started wearing a beanie hat a lot more when you were in public yeah yeah so i thought well if you're gonna wear the beanie hat to me that's an indication that you're self-conscious about the bald patch you know i i

started i started wearing the hats before i started going bald and then i've gone tremendously bald but rather than go the kind of pep guardiola route of keeping it short and trying to look handsome my ambition in life is to have a hairstyle that nobody else has. So I have a phenomenal bald spot. Like, it's the real deal. There's nothing about to happen. It has happened. Is that a quote from Shakespeare?

The drama is done. The tonsure has landed. I don't have a tremendous bald spot, but I also have two clear ivory paths from my forehead to the bald spot. I have either side of a kind of a roundabout of hair in the middle. And when I was growing up, men really didn't wear toupees

and older men were bald and it was fine and i'm just trying to gather together a portfolio of sexy bald men now not bald as in like pep guardiola and shaving sexy bald spot men and in my imagination when jack nicholson is is riding Jessica Lange on the table in The Postman Always Rings Twice, I think we can see his ball spot. So he is entry number one. I think Bill Murray has a ball spot. Surely. And he's sexy in whatever he does. It's the same way that I rail against the notion of erectile dysfunction.

Well, what aspect of erectile dysfunction are you railing against well it's existence i think the fact of it yeah i think there are there are young men who have difficulty and they absolutely should have the tablets and that's a medical thing but there is a thing of as you get older of a decreasing libido yeah and i think that as well as being shamed into hair transplants and shaven heads, we're also being shamed into permanent tough mickeys. And I don't think, nature has offered us another road, which is of softness and kind of a different texture. I know exactly what you mean. And I'm so naive that not until this very second that you mentioned it, did it occur to me that those erectile dysfunction ads were targeted at the older gentlemen?

I just assumed it was people who legitimately are dealing with problems in that department. But of course, you're right. It's like the viagra thing isn't it it's like come on guys you can there's no excuse for not being a real man perma would yeah real man and kind of riding relentlessly into your 90s and i just i just refused that path i didn't ask for an erection when I was 12. It just happened. And I dealt with it. Ruthlessly. There's a funny bit of yours where you're talking about the erection being garrotted by pubic hair that's been caught in the pants.

It sounds indefensible. It was the most relatable thing I'd heard for such a long time. I was like, yes, I definitely get that. And in the same way that a kind of a slowering, that's a new word, a slowering

libido is, I think, to be embraced. And you become, I think, when that happens to you as a man as you're getting older, you concentrate on becoming a pleasure giver

you know that great leonard cohen line uh i couldn't feel so i learned to touch so i think as you get older i think older men make better lovers because they can't get erections right right they've got to be a bit more creative an older man is in the employ of his reclining wife there is pleasure in giving pleasure and you never know if you commit yourself to someone else's pleasure you might get a nice surprise in return in the downstairs department look look who's come to the party just when i didn't expect that and followed by the phrase you better go quick go go go go Followed by the phrase, you better go quick. Go, go, go, go, go!

Wait. This is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes it looks very professional I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop and I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, When you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code BUCKSTONE to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. Yes Continue Hello, welcome back Just changing things up a bit Hello, welcome back Slightly different to my normal welcome back

But you know me I love to change things up. I'm very unpredictable. That was Tommy Tiernan, of course, talking to me there. And I'm very grateful indeed for Tommy's time, for Tommy time. Links to some of what we spoke about. Clips from Tommy's talk show. His website where you can find tour dates and podcast links and biographical details,

all in the description of this podcast. So happy exploring. You will also find in the description a link to an audio book that I recorded recently, written by Nadia Shireen, celebrated and decorated children's author. It's called Grimwood, and it has just been published. It came out this week, as I speak. It's about a couple of city foxes who are forced to flee from an evil cat, and they meet a group of colorful woodland characters

in the process. I recorded it a few weeks ago. It required quite a lot of silly voices. Nadia instructed me not to hold back so all my stupid voices are there. I even do a little bit of singing at one point. Anyway, if you have children, or if you are childish yourself, give it a go. I had fun doing it. And I hope you enjoy it.

Links in the description. Okay, look, I'm going to keep it short this week, listeners. Got to head back, check on Rosie, make the supper. Thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell, as ever, for his invaluable production support on this episode. Thanks, Seamus, much appreciated. Thanks to Helen Green for the artwork for this podcast. Link to her beautiful illustrations in the description.

Check them out. Thanks to ACAST for their continued support. Thanks to you very much, listeners. Oh, I wish it would brighten up. There's a little bit of blue over there peeking through the grey. It's a weird time at the moment. For us at Castle Buckles, it's that time that many parents will be familiar with, of seeing their children moving on to the next phase of their lives. My eldest son is about to go off to university. And while I'm very pleased for him and excited for him,

we're all, you know, trying not to think too hard about the fact that it's a bit of a wrench. And painful in some ways, maybe even many ways. And we're all quite wet in this family. So, you know, I think if it was up to us, nothing would change. We'd all just stay, sit around and piddle about watch tv and have fun but um you can't do that forever can you why why can't you no you can't so he's going off fairly soon trying not to think too hard about it ignore stuff it's good tactic ignore stuffore stuff like that. That's my mum's technique. Okay, look, I'm just properly rambling now. See you next time. Quick hug. Come on. It's giving you a good old arm punch there like a man

until next time take care i love you bye Please like and subscribe, let me know what you think. Thank you.