`I don't have an anti-Catholic agenda at all and I have no idea why people were so upset. I don't hold any grudges against them, though."

Tommy Tiernan is the comedian at the centre of a recent storm about material he used on The Late Late Show, which many viewers felt poked fun at the Crucifixion. "I was genuinely surprised by the reaction," he says. "I thought the drugs sequence would create more of a stir.

"A magnifying glass has been put on that piece of material about Christ on the Cross. It's quite small and incidental really. . ."

To Tommy Tiernan, winner of this year's Edinburgh Festival's Channel 4 So You Think You're Funny competition, perhaps - but not to hundreds of furious callers who jammed RTE's phone lines with with complaints. Aggrieved viewers continue to make their views known in the national press.

"That night was the first inkling I got of people's anger," Tiernan says. "RTE informed me they'd had over 300 calls. The people who couldn't get through on the phone drove out there. They were very upset and wanted to see me. I had to camp in the hospitality room. It was one in the morning before they all left."

Not wanting to add fuel to the controversy, RTE pulled the scheduled repeat of the show the following Tuesday morning. Joe Mulholland, managing director of television at RTE, says they did so to avoid compounding the original mistake of letting the material - a skit on a priest's sermon about the Crucifixion, part of a seven-minute slot - through. He says if it wasn't suitable for the Friday show, it was still less so for the morning screening, which more elderly people watch. "As we have seen in other countries and faiths, mocking people's religious beliefs can be very dangerous," Mulholland says. "The Late Late has a reputation for tackling controversial issues sensitively. It reflects the great diversity of Irish life. Personally, I wasn't amused by the sketch. It was in bad taste.

"We do make errors sometimes in a live broadcast situation."

Mulholland dismisses the suggestion that RTE's error was all the worse because Tiernan appeared just before a live link-up between children's choirs representing UTV's The Gerry Kelly Show, The Late Late Show and the BBC's Children In Need. Together they sang Nanci Griffith's overtly religious tune, From A Distance.

"The persons who contacted us weren't a minority of cranks," Mulholland adds. "They were very reasonable and considered."

Naturally, Tiernan sees it differently. He believes the vast majority of Irish people are amazed by the degree of offence taken, and by RTE's subsequent actions - up to and including Gay Byrne's apology on last Friday's Late Late.

"People would have their opinion on whether it was funny or not," he says. "It was never my intention to offend."

One of the ironies of the uproar is that Tiernan himself almost joined the priesthood at one point. During his time at a Catholic boarding school in Garbally in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, he attended a retreat by the Redemptorist Order. So serious were his intentions that his parents were consulted. He gave up the idea only just before entering the seminary.

"There's a certain kind of purity in that lifestyle where you let go of all things material, supposedly. It was an alternative and I found that very attractive," he says. He says he was also attracted by Father Darragh Molloy's hybrid of Celtic Christianity. In his midteens, he visited the radical cleric and his flock on Inis Mor. (Father Molloy developed a certain reputation in the mid-1980s for protests against the educational system. One of his tactics was to chain himself to the railings outside the Department of Education.)

"I guess you're looking for an intensity of experience," he says of his spiritual quest. "Life can be very mundane. You're always hoping God will switch on his torchlight and say: `This is where the intensity is. Come here!' " "Life is incredibly short," he says. "Whatever happens when you die, the point is to make the most of things while you're alive and have as much fun as possible. It would be good to live with that knowledge as a constant."

Tiernan's rise in stand-up comedy has been swift. Less than two years ago, he was a theatre actor with the Punchbag and Druid companies in Galway. He says he spent, in all, seven years on the dole. He has a four-year-old son with his long-time partner. He did not have a Catholic upbringing. His "infamous" (as he calls it) appearance on The Late Late was his third. Tiernan had been a mere two months gigging in Dublin when a former school mate, a researcher for the Late Late, spotted him. Next thing he knew, producer John Masterson was inviting him on for his television debut.

He followed this up with a second, even more successful, comedy segment and panel chat. The Late Late team was so happy with his performance that there was talk of devoting a full interview to him next time round.

"Unfortunately, the slot that came up was between Bernadette McAliskey and Dana," he says. "There was no room for frivolity there. A comedy chat was off so they offered me the by-now treacherous spot."

Joe Mulholland says there's no question of RTE imposing a ban on Tiernan. Tiernan did not transgress any regulations in the broadcasting act. Jim Cantwell, director of the Catholic Press Office, outlines the horror so many religious people experienced. "There's no problem lampooning priests and bishops. They're public figures. But this mocked the very fundamentals of Christian faith. The phrase `the Lamb of God' is used to refer to Christ as the redeemer. The Crucifixion is central to the divinity of Christ and it was grotesquely mocked. If it was the intention of the comedian to satirise priestly life and the behaviour of the congregation, it badly misfired."

"My only concern was that the audience weren't going to go with it," insists an unrepentant Tiernan. "Everywhere else I performed it, it was greeted by laughter.

"There are people who are like burglar alarms. If you touch on an issue that they hold impossibly close you set off their sirens and they go mental about it. I'm temporarily hesitant to write any more similar stuff but I'm certainly not going to stop doing it. "Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks are heroes of mine. Like them, I'm committed to a notion of personal freedom. I try to combine honesty with a wild sense of fun. I'm not going to be bullied by people I feel don't fit into my idea of Ireland as a generous, pluralist and joyful country."

Tommy Tiernan plays St John's Arts Centre, Listowel today, Garter Lane Theatre, Waterford, tomor- row; Galway Town Hall Theatre on 12th; and Andrew's Lane Theatre, Dublin on 18th, 19th and 20th.