Tommy Tiernan has told how he was inappropriately touched by a teacher when he was 16 and had a similar experience hitchhiking the same year.
The 49-year-old funnyman and actor went to school in his hometown of Navan, Co Meath, and revealed how an unrequited crush set him back in his teen years and his school work suffered.
“For the first time, I became aware that the mind has potholes. I became aware that this thing between my ears can actually work against me. It shocked me.”
Recalling the incident with the teacher, he said: “Because I was never sexually abused as a child, it didn’t trigger any memory of something that happened when I was younger.
"But bloody sure he touched me. He was so camp, and he had a lisp as well,” he told the Sunday Independent’s Life magazine.
“He’d be grabbing and squeezing you, but you couldn’t challenge his authority. But maybe he thought, ‘This weak, genial young man will tolerate it.’ I was 16.”
The Derry Girls star said he had a lucky escape after he endured a similar experience the same year when he was hitchhiking home from Dublin.
“This guy picked me up in a car in Dublin and he said ‘I’m Spanish’ - he was putting on this accent.
“He was asking me the English words for various body parts. I told him the words for boobs and all that, and then he pointed to his crotch and he said, ‘What is the word for this?’ I felt shy. And then he put his hand on my knee.
“And I said, ‘Pull the car over, I’ll get out here.’
“I was telling the story of this at a party about six months later, and a guy listening said that the same thing happened to him.”
The father-of-six added that after the experience he felt “proud” of himself for “having the wherewithal to stop him doing it to me.
“In the 1980’s in Ireland you didn’t get too much education on how to deal with perverts. I was mainly annoyed that I still had to get a lift to Navan.”
Tommy, who is back on our screens next weekend with a new series of The Tommy Tiernan Show, also admitted that he has struggled to deal with the break-up of his first family.
The comedy star had three children with long-term girlfriend Jayme Street before marrying Yvonne Mahon in 2009.
“I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from splitting up with my first family. That’s always a tough thing.
"Once you move into uncharted territory, it’s tough, and for my generation we were the first Irish generation who have got divorced.
"We had no map. You do feel lost. It’s a little like gay couples - we had no example to see how to do the best by everyone in the situation.
"I wish I had more confidence in it - in the decision itself.
“And I wish I had more confidence in the new situation - how to be a father who is not living full-time with his children.”
