Despite being a house-hold name in Ireland and having had success in the UK, bagging the 1998 Perrier Award, there’s been something niggling Tommy Tiernan about where he ranks internationally as a stand-up. In 2004, Tommy received an unprecedented standing ovation at the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival. For him, this was an indication that his material travelled and translated well for a North American audience. Armed with a US Manager and Promoter, Tommy set about making in-roads on the highly competitive US market. The journey would be long, starting with 10 minute sets in some New York clubs, and working his way up from there. Thinking it might be interesting enough to document, he took his trusty camera crew along to capture a sense of the journey that took him from the hotel rooms of Mullingar and Leitrim to the comedy clubs of New York, Washington DC, Nebraska, San Francisco, Sacramento, Texas and Los Angeles, in his bid to make a name for himself as a comedian in America. As far as Tommy’s concerned, America is the home of stand-up. His comedy heroes (Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby) are all American. For the Navan man not to dip his toes into the American comedy scene and be judged by his peers, would be the equivalent of a rock band being content to brag about being ‘big in Japan’. Jokerman – Tommy Tiernan Takes On America is the television series which follows Tommy over two years on his journey from the biggest venues in Ireland to the bottom of the US comedy food chain, and beyond. Cutting from his performances at a sold-out Vicar Street to playing to a handful of locals in smoky back-street US clubs, Tommy finds himself sweating more than usual for his pennies! In this series, he also talks candidly about what it’s like to be a comedian, confirming that the business of being funny is not always a laughing matter.
In the second of the series, Tommy goes to San Francisco and Sacramento to try out his material ahead of his slot headlining the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal. This prestigious event has been headed up by the likes of comic greats Bill Hicks and Eddie Izzard in the past. No pressure, then! Impressed with his success, Tommy’s US promotional team are pushing him to do more and more gigs. But Tommy has some ideas of his own…
This week finds Tommy back on the road after taking four months time out following his runaway success at Montreal. His US promoter feels he’s ready to take his show to New York but Tommy wants to hone his material a bit more first and take to high-ways and bi-ways of the States for a while instead. So he does a whistlestop tour of Washington DC, Heuston, Texas and Omaha, Nebraska. Feeling more revived, Tommy gears up for his three-week run of theatre shows in LA for a hoping to catch the attention of the top guys in television.