Longest solo stand-up comedy show - Tommy Tiernan
sets world record
GALWAY, Ireland -- Comedian Tommy
Tiernan has completed 36 hours and 15 minutes of non
stop stand up comedy-setting the world record for the Longest
solo stand-up comedy show.
After the show, he said: 'Towards
the end I didn’t think I was going to make it, but there was
such good support from the audience. After about 30 hours
I was finding it pretty hard to string a sentence together.
I’m a bit busted after it all.'
Touching on plenty of controversial topics,
Tiernan joked about failed suicide attempts, the Holocaust
and getting caught parking his car in disabled-only spaces.
He stood for almost the entire event, eating
pasta, fruit, water and high-energy drinks on stage, and being
allowed a five-minute break every hour. World Record rules
also stated that there needed to be ten people in the audience
at any time.
Tommy
Tiernan spoke about growing up in Navan in
the 1980s, wearing his mother’s velvet trousers, applying
too much talcum powder to the groin area, and how as a teenager
he was forced to cycle his mother’s “Raleigh shopper” with
a basket on the front.
He described how his father reacted the first
time he cursed on The Late Late Show (Tiernan’s girlfriend
took the angry phone call and said he was in the shower; “Well
tell him to wash his f***ing mouth out,” his father replied).
In some of his more risqué material, Tiernan
said he was curious about failed suicide attempts: “I committed
suicide myself,” he told the audience, “we’re all dead; this
is limbo.”
He joked about Israel, which acted “like they
had applied for planning permission in the Old Testament and
it had just come through now”.
As he neared Saturday night, the jokes took a
turn for the more explicit, Tiernan describing his first sexual
experiences and wondering whether it’s “OK to give your own
girlfriend [the drug] rohypnol”.
Profits from the event are going to help homeless
teenagers in Galway.
Before Tommy
Tiernan’s attempt, there was no official record for
the longest solo stand-up show.
As he prepared for the event, titled Testamental,
he admitted he would have to tone down his usual high-energy
performance. ‘It will be like the Sex Pistols doing an album
of ballads,’ he said. ‘I have to mind my voice. I don’t want
to end up sounding like Freddie Starr. I will have to be careful.’