Ability to listen holds the key to talk-show success

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Tommy Tiernan has not just reinvented the television chat show; he may well have saved it.

The irony is that he does should be all wrong – no research, no forewarning – but week after week he proves that it has never been more right.

And it’s because this is not all carefully planned out on cue cards that he has no option but to rely on his wits and knowledge – which luckily he appears to have in abundance.

Not knowing his guests means he has to think on his feet – which is sort of how it’s like in real time.

After all, if you’re going to meet a crowd in a pub, you don’t prepare a list of questions in advance, anticipating topics that might be of general interest to all.

No, you listen to what someone says and you react to it in a logical way, rather than ticking off the questions as you rush through them.

They call it having a chat – and Tommy Tiernan has turned it into a show which has the nation talking once it goes out each week on RTÉ One on a Thursday night.

Almost invariably it’s riveting and, just like real life, occasionally it struggles – but what’s brilliant in either instance is that here’s an interviewer who is actually listening instead of just talking.

He doesn’t take the traditional route of working through a guest’s life story, because he doesn’t know it – instead he might accidentally stumble on a topic that constitutes common ground.

This used to be known as the art of conversation.

And because he doesn’t have his questions quite literally in the palm of his hand, he might go down a completely different and unorthodox route.

Take a recent slot with three of TG4’s weather presenters Fiona Ní Fhlaithearta from Conamara, Caitlín Nic Aoidh from Donegal and Irial Ó Ceallaigh from An Rinn; three people Tommy had clearly never laid eyes on before.

If he’d known them or their work, he’d probably have done what the rest of us would and try keep it deep and meaningful on global warming or flooding or who decides on the names for storms.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.