Stomping through stand-up: Dan Tiernan interview

Written by: Kat Mokrynski
Published: Friday 24th January 2025

After a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year, Dan Tiernan is bringing his second show, Stomp, on tour. The show has "tightly-packed gags about gout and gay-awakenings" and promises a "show-stopping magical finale!" Recently, we had the chance to speak with Tiernan about what the creative process was like for Stomp versus his debut hour, Going Under; his love for the Fringe; and even how he once thought the most logical step in careers was from comedian to magician.

So starting with a bit of a general question, how did you first get started in the world of comedy?

I wanted to do stand-up ever since I was a kid! I was twelve when I first started being like, "I really want to do stand-up." But you can't really do stand-up when you're twelve, so I was a magician 'til I was eighteen. A really, really bad magician. I've got dyspraxia, so it's not ideal for magic effects.

So I was a rubbish magician until I was eighteen, and then stopped doing magic. And then, when I was twenty, my mum got a bit sick of hearing me saying I wanted to do stand-up, so for a birthday present, she signed me up for a course at the Frog & Bucket [Comedy Club] and I did a stand-up course for six weeks. At the end of that, there was the first gig. And then I was off, really! So that's how I started.

How did you go from comedian to magician being the next thing in line for a career?

I say that like it's a standard path! [Laughs]

I guess because magic... It's the easiest way to get an audience. If you say to someone, "Do you want to see a magic trick?" you're performing straight away.

I was just desperate to be funny and entertain people on my own. So learning magic tricks was, for twelve-year-old me, the obvious way to try and do comedy or to be funny. And then all of those years of being bad at magic made me realise that I was really bad at that, but the bit that I was good at was the improvising and making people laugh.

Can you tell us a bit about your current show, Stomp?

Sure! The main talking points in it are about me being a magician. That's a big part - why that didn't work out, and how that led me to be a stand-up comedian. Also, a major throughline is about me having gout, which is a disease you get from being a legend. So there's gout, there's magic, there's a lot about me going to Australia . . . And then in July, before Edinburgh, I had a psychosis, which was weed-induced, so it meant quitting weed completely. So they're the three main components - gout, psychosis and magic! [Laughs] Well, we do the psychosis at the end. I win the crowd over with the magic and the gout before we go into the psychosis - I'm not an idiot!

What was the creative process like for Stomp? Did you find it was different from your first show, Going Under?

Yeah, definitely. Going Under was my debut, so it was just a case of every single joke I'd ever written, getting all of that down and then being like, "Okay, what else can I add to that to fit in?" Whereas Stomp, the second show, was all written in one year.

As a lot of comedians will say, the second hour is terrifying because you've literally got nothing. So that was the whole year, just flat out trying to get anything in. And then what was really satisfying, and the reason why I'm going again and writing a new one, is you feel like you've got three months left, and then you've got a month left and you've got nothing, and then it just all comes together last minute. And, without even meaning to, you write an hour of a narrative, because you write everything in one year. It's all about you, and you're in a certain place of your life.

So that was all the stuff I had going on, and it all links together without you even really meaning to because you've written it in that year. Your debut hour is written over lots of years, so a lot of the material maybe isn't about who you are now, whereas Stomp has very much felt like an hour of comedy about where I was when I was doing the show.

And how has the tour been going so far?

We've not properly started yet! We did four dates at Soho straight after the Fringe, then a date at Manchester and then we're getting started properly in February. But really good! I love being on tour. I really like performing to people who've chosen to see me, rather than people who are there for a night of comedy. That's what I do the rest of the year - a lot of gigs in the middle of nowhere for people who have never chosen to watch Dan Tiernan. Sometimes you can see some bewildered looks like, "What that fuck is this?" [Laughs]

[Laughs] What was it like performing Stomp at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

I absolutely love the Fringe! I've done both my shows with Monkey Barrel and they're, in my opinion, the best venue at the Fringe. The rooms are incredible, the split they give you is really fair, all the staff are amazing and the audience they get in is the perfect audience for me.

I love the Fringe. I've been doing it since I started comedy, so the dream was always to bring my own hours there. Obviously, it's very expensive, and it's a lot harder to go to than it once was because of the price of accommodation. But, for me, I'm just in my element there. I love being around comics and being a comedian. And it's so nice to not have to travel! I was staying a five-minute walk from my venue, which is just a dream compared to the travel we have to do the rest of the year.

Did you have any highlights from the Fringe?

I tend to do my shows later on in the evening, which really suits my style. But it does mean that you have the whole day before your show, knowing that your show is coming. Normally, I'll just make myself go and watch shows, but even if it's the best show ever, I just won't enjoy it because I'll be worried about my show. And because I had a psychosis in July, I was trying to be like, "Just do whatever you can do to get yourself in the best frame of mind," so that did mean I saw a pathetic amount of shows this year, like six shows or something. It is a feeble effort, but I stayed with all of my mates in comedy just around the corner, so I really enjoyed just hanging out and improving the show and stuff like that.

So I've not got many highlights in terms of what I watched, but I still had an amazing month. It's probably my best Fringe so far. Maybe that's where people are going wrong at the Fringe - they're watching too much comedy! Just hang out!

Only watch six shows!

Yeah, exactly! [Laughs]

Do you have any advice for those looking to get into comedy?

Don't, there's no room! [Laughs] I think stand-up is really hard, and the more comics that I meet who are really successful, the more I realise that it's not the most fulfilling of art forms. No matter where you're at, you're never like, "Okay, I'm done. I'm happy, I'm content." It's an art form that lends itself to being constantly insecure and feeling the need to get better. You're setting yourself up for a life of stress and insecurity.

But, on the other hand, I have to do this - there's nothing else out there that I would want to do. So I would say do stand-up if you feel like that it has to be stand-up, in which case you're probably a comedian and you should do it, but it's a marathon. There's a lot of comedians, so it'll take a very long time, and you just have to keep going. Don't stop. And don't rush! Too many new comedians are desperately trying to rush and they end up doing themselves an injustice because they're putting stuff out and running before they can walk. Just take your time.

And also, the period when you're an open mic-er, that's the most free you'll ever be as a comedian - you've got no pressure, no expectation. I really took for granted those years where it wasn't my job, where I didn't have agents and pressure and I could just go on - no one knew who I was and I could just talk about whatever and develop my act. That was a really great time that I definitely took for granted. Enjoy that period, would be my main advice.

And what do you hope audiences take away from Stomp?

I fundamentally just want people to go, "That was really, really, really funny." I'm never going into writing a show like, "I want people to think about this or a certain way." But when people are really funny, if you've been authentic, people do take stuff away, and that's great. I've had people who've had psychosis come away like, "Oh, that's cool that you can talk about that and it's not taboo." That's great, but fundamentally, I do just want people to be like, "That was really, really, really funny."

Finally, how would you describe Stomp in one word?

Mad!

Dan Tiernan: Stomp is on tour until 22nd March. Dates & tickets