‘I wasn't very happy in my life’ - Joanne McNally tells Graham Norton why she got into stand-up

Virgin Radio

11 Feb 2024, 14:13

Joanne McNally has been hugely successful in the past few years with her stand-up career taking off, as well as her podcast My Therapist Ghosted Me. 

This summer, she will also be part of an all-female lineup of comedy headliners for Latitude festival, with other acts including Jo Brand, Judi Love and Sara Pascoe. 

Speaking on the Graham Norton Show with Waitrose, Joanne teased what the audience can expect from her set. 

“I'm dying to write new material because I'm kind of sick of my own voice telling the same stories, and my life has completely changed since my last tour,” she said. 

“It's a scary thing, starting with a completely blank page. So I'll probably take a bit of the old stuff and throw in some new stuff and see what happens.”

Joanne became Ireland’s first female comedy millionaire two years ago, but it wasn’t something she ever thought she would do. 

It started when she was in her mid-thirties and living with her mum while trying to find something that she loved to do.

“I had always wanted to be an actress or something, but my mother was quite traditional, and basically, her understanding was that actors starve to death in basements,” Joanne joked. 

Getting into comedy was something of an accident, after another comic overheard her telling a funny story about getting dumped and asked her to come on tour with them. 

She explained, “I just kind of threw my heart and soul into it. I wasn't very happy in my life at that time, and I needed a big change, which I realised was comedy. I was like, ‘This is what it is. I'm gonna just work very hard at this.; And so I did.”

“I’m a geriatric comic,” she laughed, “I’m always amazed at these comics who started at like 18. I had no life experience then.”

On top of her comedy career, Joanne is also well known for her podcast, My Therapist Ghosted Me, which she hosts alongside Vogue Williams. 

Speaking about how it came about, she told Graham: “I decided that a podcast, I just wasn't going to do because there was just so many of them. I was like, it just seems impossible. And Vogue was over here in London and we knew each other from home and she suggested we’d be decently together.

“Then she suggested we do a podcast because she was already doing one with [her husband] Spencer. It just kind of grew from there.”

Latitude festival will take place from 25th-28th July. Tickets are available at Latitudefestival.com.

Listen to The Graham Norton Radio Show every Saturday AND Sunday from 9.30am on Virgin Radio or catch up on-demand here.