In ninety extraordinary minutes at Vicar Street last Saturday night, Tommy Tiernan led us on an anthropological extravaganza, a side-splitting journey from Foynes to Perth, stopping at all points and persons on the way. The usual stand-up 'F-words' were replaced by powerfully evocative new signifiers: 'Father' and 'Fadó, fadó'. Drawing on his own life and on his intrinsic sense of what being Irish means, this Pied Piper of Mirth seduced us all. At the end, we would have followed him anywhere... but instead he made his way back to Barna and his new baby while we smiled home, a little bit wiser and a lot happier, carrying the memory of a red balloon and cosmic bubbles.