Ireland is securely tucked away in his back pocket and audiences are at his beckon call, but Tommy Tiernan will not rest on his laurels and has set out to widen his terrain by storming America with vigour, energy and most importantly, comedy. So far he has received standing ovations from over 2000 Canadians at the Gala in Montreal and seen 4500 people get to their feet at the Live at the Marquee series in Cork, to honour his show.

What an adrenaline rush! One thing is for sure; wherever he goes he leaves something of himself. Tommy has stormed the Letterman Show in New York and his first US TV Special, Something Mental, was aired in America earlier on this year.

Now it has been announced that due to popular demand Tommy has scheduled an extra show of his current Irish tour, Bovinity for Live at the Marquee on July 5. This is to be his third show this summer at the Marquee on top of his shows on July 2 and 4. He stands alone as the only artist to have ever performed that many shows at the festival.

Catching up with the puppet master of comedy, he talks of what it is like to play to thousands, why he does not read his own reviews, and his own personal run for democratic nomination with Bovinity.

Tommy set out on his tour Bovinity last September and warned people to get their tickets fast as they would literally evaporate once they went on sale. Sure enough, they did.

Asking him how the tour is going he says, "I did the 100th show in Donegal on Saturday night. I do four to five shows a week. It's relentless. It's like I'm running for the democratic nomination.

"There's a lot of travelling, a lot of garages, a lot of late night rabbits on the side of the road, a lot of dead badgers on the side of the road." In short, a lot of roadkill.

With a track record of 40 sell out shows at Vicar Street and a mounting number of monster sized shows here and abroad, he plays to crowds of a couple of hundred to crowds of several thousand. Asked how the two compare he replies, "The main difference is that say in City Limits (Cork), which is probably the best club in the country, you can get distracted with one person. You're able to follow a line of logic with that person and go off on a tangent with them because everyone else can see what's going on. With four or five thousand you can't do that.

"It's much more of a spectacle, I think, than with three hundred but it has to be just as wild, reckless and funny. When there are five thousand you have to be slightly larger than yourself."

Then he adds, "But the sound and the energy are, so much." I wait for more words to end the sentence but that was all and it sums up the sensation. It is simply, So Much.

"Eddie Izzard did this show two years ago. The smallest crowd he played to was 9000. He played a show in Manchester in front of 16,000 people. I asked him, does that change the nature of it too much? He said, no; playing in front of 5000 is the same as playing in front of 1000.