S7, Ep 2: Joanne McNally, comedian and podcaster

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07I'm Grace Dent and this is Comfort Eating from The Guardian. A podcast where we pay homage to the lesser celebrated foods in life. Because even as a restaurant critic, I believe the food that matters most is often that snack you cobble together when you're curled upon the sofa. Each week, I ask my guest to lift the lid on what comfort foods have seen them through their lives. Because you can tell a lot about a person from what they eat behind closed doors.

0:45Hi there. Before we start, we wanted to let you know that in this episode, we discuss eating disorders. We have added details in the show notes for organisations who can offer support. hello friends you have caught me extending for the third time today the cupid's bow on my lips that I am smearing with red lipstick one millimeter higher and I think I'm gonna look like Sophia Loren's doppelganger I think that's how it works I do this when I'm nervous, which I always am before guests arrive, if I'm very honest with you. I have got an especially socially awkward feeling about me today because I have been quite ill.

1:34For the last week, I have been lying in a darkened room, snotting. Do you know what I mean? I have not been around humans, unless you count those two presenters from Holmes under the hammer. I know I'm going to act a bit weird today. I need to get it together. Okay, and I know this is slightly too much lipstick, but it's just something to do with my hands while I wait. Excitedly for my next guest, who is the gorgeous, the hilarious, the iconic podcaster. It's Joanne McNally. Now, Joanne is one of Ireland's most acclaimed comics and host of an award-winning podcast, My Therapist Ghosted Me, which for anyone who hasn't listened, started because Joanne's therapist really did ghost her.

2:21Joanne and her co-host, Vogue Williams, toured the podcast around the world and recently had an audience of 65 ,000 over five nights in Dublin. Her own stand-up shows have broken some records. The Prosecco Express, which was on at the London Palladium broke the record for the most alcohol sold in one evening at the venue. And now you'll find Joanne on the telly box on this season of Taskmaster. I can't wait to find out what Joanne is nibbling on when she's back home after another sellout show. But before all that, honest to God, there's no such thing as too many layers of this lipstick. What's this one called.

3:08Hustle in heels. It's a very buildable shade.

3:17Joanne McNally, welcome to Comfort Eating. Thank you so much. I think it's fair to say that you have lived and breathed the saying, when life gives you lemons, aka your therapist dubs you, you make lemonade. Or more specifically, you make a smash hit 2.5 million downloads a week podcast. Is that your official life motto? When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Oh my God, my life motto. So I realised, it was only recently when I started doing interviews and stuff, that I very much backed myself, which I didn't really realise I was doing at the time because I was just kind of getting on with it.

3:53Yeah. Hang on, you back yourself. Yeah. What do you mean? I really believed that I could do comedy. So is your life motto that you'll be your biggest fan? I mean obviously the Irish in me wants to anything that sounds like fanning yourself makes me want to die inside but backing yourself sounds more measured I think. See I've only recently learned the Irish phrase notions. Really? And like I just think it is absolutely I can't believe the northwest of England had never adopted that to torture each other with. Notions is when you're just a little bit You kind of back yourself a bit too much. There's a line.

4:33We call it like notions of like, oh, they've got notions 11 would be kind of a very well used term. It's like arrogance, I guess. It's ego, ego focused. But is notions something like if you went to the shop and there was two types of hummus and you bought the fancy one? That's also notions 11, yeah. Like there's a line. You need the, you need never, you can't get above your station. My life motto is far stupid to people have done this. that's what how I learned to drive yes I was like if Barry from Kimmich can do you know anyone I knew that I thought they were like he's not the smartest spoon in the basket if he can do it I can do it that's kind of how I learned to drive my first car was a Toyota Starlet it was a 1989 car and it had one of these chokes in it the choke with the old fashioned one yeah so you used to have to kind of like bring it to life with your hand yes you had to yeah you know what I'm trying to say pleasure it a bit pleasure it a little bit I know this is a Guardian podcast by Donna.

5:29I know we don't have sex at the Guardian. Yeah, it's in the bio on their Twitter account.

5:38It's snack time. Oh, fab. Every week I ask my guests to bring their ultimate comfort food. It is the food they themselves will eat when they are putting two fingers up at the outside world. The phone's on Do Not Disturb. Your favorite TV show's lined up. what is Joanne McNally making herself to complete the solitary bliss it is under a very clean tea towel by my standards we're going to take them off now 1, 2, 3 1, 2, 3 oh I thought I ripped the lid off the bread I revealed it a bit too hard right please explain exactly what it is in loving detail I'm just going to get stuck in I feel bad now because I am kind of starting to feel sorry for chickens, but I exclusively eat chicken.

6:30And my favorite thing is a chicken salad sandwich. Like I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Oh no. I've got mayo right down my boobs. I love mayonnaise. That is some niche. Only fans, isn't it? But that isn't like a service station. No. Sandwich. Tell me, tell me what's in it. Chicken, obviously. mayonnaise I could I could put mayonnaise on my cereal I love it I'm a condiment queen I'm not into dry food everything has to be dripping and something wet it's usually mayonnaise lettuce for the crunch tomatoes love tomatoes and butter I love butter I used to eat it from the direct from the tub when I was a kid much to my mother's horror what's the heat in this there's a heat though oh yeah there's did I put gherkins in jalapenos isn't it delish it's just such a good sandwich I know God I'm great at making chicken sandwiches what bread did you use?

7:28brown sourdough so would you come in on a night and make this for you what is your what's your ideal chicken sandwich time? any time of the day or night if I'm hungover I'll have it for breakfast wherever I am on the road I'll google best chicken sandwich in the town that I'm in chicken salad sandwich and a large pinot grigio and I'm so happy I want for nothing else in life you can't mess this up it's it's reliable yes delicious yes it's creamy i love it and like you say it's got the kick of the whatever those calls jalapenos if we could judge a person from the flavors that they return to again and again what does this sandwich tell us about you That I have a basic palate.

8:15Do you think you're basic? Yeah. There's no frills with what I eat. I would eat the same thing day in, day out. I've got some sort of appetite Tourette's. I never need a change in meals. Yeah. And that I like something I can eat with my hands. Like I'd avoid cutlery for the rest of my life if I could. If me and you went for a fancy dinner. I would eat one. And it was one of those places where there's like six knives and forks on both sides. Yeah. What would happen after about one cut? I just... push them all off and just put the nails right into the trough and just start going from there

8:53let's talk about how it all started for you because unlike lots of comedians you came at it quite late you were in your 30s and had had a decade long career elsewhere before you launched as a comedian. Take us back. Can you remember the exact moment you decided to pack it all in? I was working as a publicist. I say PR, obviously you would say PR. A PR? Were you good at it? Yeah, I think I was okay at it. I really liked the front facing side of things. I loved working with the clients directly, but it's just like a job like any other job. And I think there was a side of me that I needed to explore that wasn't being explored there and that's why maybe I got so sick because I felt like I wanted this purpose and PR wasn't really filling it for me so I thought like oh I'll just be the thinnest person that's ever lived yeah that would be my reason for living so it kind of swapped that franticness into that yeah you had an eating disorder at the time, which we'll come on to.

10:01But how were you making ends meet at this point? I wasn't on good money. I was very much on, I had a low, low income. Okay. Where are you living at this point? Are you in? I was in Dublin. You were in Dublin. I was out of home, but I was very much struggling to make ends meet. But then I got into comedy, but I wasn't making money in comedy either. So I just got very good at living off very little. When I was still living in Dublin I got signed over here into my UK agency so I was getting UK gigs but I was still based in Ireland so I had to kind of make it work on you know seven shillings so I was like literally on the wing of Orion Air flight trying to get over and then when I got here I was staying in you know hostels and stuff to keep my costs down.

10:44Tell us about the hostels you used to stay in. They'd just be like you know there'd be like 16 girls to a dorm we'd all be like sleeping in these cages Just triple bunk beds. I know. But you know what? I've no problem slumming it. It feels to me like you're saying you were in a place where you were doing something that, you know, it wasn't creative. It wasn't you. It wasn't your full potential. And then you come over and even though you're living in a hostel, you are happier. I was much happier. I think I just wasn't coping with adult life. I just didn't know how to fit into that adult suit that everyone else was fitting into.

11:22And I was probably coasting a little bit. And then my whole life changed. But the better, I think. I always ask the questions that really matter. If you're sharing a fridge with 16 women, what is the food that you can put in the fridge that won't get nicked? Probably like cottage cheese. Cottage cheese, isn't it? Even the smell of it. Do you know me and you just both looked at each other in just... There was an understanding there. In complete Yeah Empathy for that Yeah Tub of Cottage cheese and chive Yeah and tomatoes in it Yeah Cottage cheese With pineapple Yes Yes And loads of pepper on it Did you cook At the youth hostel at all?

12:08No I've never been interested in cooking Not once Never took an interest I never even cooked banana bread During lockdown Which I mean Why what was it? It's kind of like saying You didn't get a vaccine Everyone did that Well I didn't do it I just don't get the set. I love eating. You literally sat in your house watching those bananas go black. Yeah. You didn't even jump. Waste, waste, waste.

12:37You were an aspiring comedian in your early 30s and you had at this point very few credentials. What are your memories of that time? When I was back in my mum's house, a friend of mine who has now directed most of my shows since called Una. She was putting on a play called Singlehood and she asked would I like to be in the play. And then the play was, it's like documentary style theatre. So it was real people talking about their love lives. And then when I was in the play, a comic came to see the play and then he suggested I do stand up. And I, at the start said like, no, it's a ridiculous suggestion.

13:15But I saw you do Jonathan Ross's Comedy Club around that point and you just like stormed on, fully formed. Probably an act of desperation. But there was no like, I remember him announcing you and you just came on and you were like shoulders back. I love a woman with her shoulders back. I didn't realize that what I liked doing would transfer into stand-up comedy. I felt like, so I knew that after, I knew when after singlehood happened and I'd loved it so much, I knew something was shifting and I was going into a different type of industry, but stand up hadn't occurred to me at all. And then I was so desperate to go into this new world and I really didn't want to go back to my old life.

13:59But there must have been a point quite quickly where you went from, oh, maybe I could do it to you're turning up, you know, at a night and you're on the same bill as proper comedians. Like it's like, you know, you and then Tim Key and then Ramesh or something. Like what's that like? There's been a couple of moments where I've kind of taken stock and thought, ah, deadly. And one of them was there's a Irish man called Sean Cox who was beaten up in England. He's a Liverpool football fan. And John Bishop is obviously a huge Liverpool fan. John put on a charity gig in the Three Arena and it was John Bishop and it was Michael McIntyre and Des Bishop, Deirdre O 'Cain who are Irish comedians.

14:48Tommy Tiernan was there, Jason Byrne was there and I was booked to do it. And I, being honest, I knew it was probably a bit of a box ticking exercise because they couldn't just have one woman on a line of that size because I was most certainly the newest and greenest comedian on that line up. yeah but sometimes you've just got to let them tick the box with you because it's just like tick away that's almost to say as if it was fair the way they used to do it before I'm like tick tick tick tick tick I'll tick for you give me the pen I'll tick myself that was a bit of a game changer gig for me then yeah and kind of more work started coming in after that so that probably would have been one of the bigger moments for me

15:36These days you have got many extremely fervent fans, but perhaps your biggest champion is your mother. Ah, yeah. She's called Pat. She is fundamental to your life. Now, in my background stalking for this interview, I found a picture of her on Instagram. She's had her cataracts done. She's thrilled with herself. She'll be feeling like a million dollars. I found this photo of her. Can you describe for listeners who do not know, Pat, what on earth is going on in this picture? Oh, is that her birthday? Yeah. Yeah. She loves, I mean, she loves a cocktail. I didn't lick it off a stone. And I love taking her out for lunch because we have a great time.

16:20Because obviously I don't live there anymore. Oh, yeah. So I don't see her as much as I do. But she loves a Pornstar martini. So I'm pretty sure that was her birthday. So she's adding the Prosecco into the cocktail. I love how serious she is as she's doing it as well. It's science. She has to get the maths right, the balance right or she'll knock herself out. Do you drink cocktails together often? Yes. We love it. It's one of our favorite things to do. Like Christmas Day in our house is Cosmo Day. We make a big jug of it and it sits in the fridge. I mean, we're not exactly high end. That is absolutely lethal.

16:51Do you know what I mean? Like a jug. So you're talking about cranberry juice with a load of vodka and... Cointreau and ice and lime juice. Yeah, but how long before some harsh truths are being told about each other? Oh, there's always some tears and then there's hugs and you know yourself. It's just like, yeah. Sometimes you need those little blowouts where the lips get a little looser and if there's any kind of little resentment there, it all comes out and then it heals the soul. As your fans will know, you were adopted, but you were with Pat. She was your mum. What kind of mum has she been to you?

17:25It's funny because the adoption thing To her I remember her once saying She was like The idea you didn't actually come out of me Blows my mind So it wasn't even like a big Kind of declaration She just said it in passing one day She's like it kind of blows my mind That you didn't come out of me Do you feel like you did in a sense? To me this is all I know But I can't imagine being any closer to anyone else Unless I literally climbed back into them So How old were you when you went to her house? Oh very young Three months maybe Six months something like that and then so her and my father he was Lancashire he's Preston and he's dead now but it's actually his 80th birthday today weirdly but so I know happy birthday but I mean yeah so whatever they couldn't have kids and they adopt my dad wasn't really mad about the idea of adoption my mum just basically overrote the whole thing and was like I don't care here's your two kids get on with us yeah they're here now Frank and of course and she says he was mad about us then once we arrived but he had some doubts dates as a lot of people would but mother pat had no dates because that's how pat rolls if she says to you i'm thinking about it's already done but we love laughing we love laughing which i think i definitely maybe inherited from her how you're raised has such an impact on your character as well it really does like there's some stuff that i can do so say when i was first started going to school it i i could tell that i was good at writing and by when you're in school i just was good at spelling so I would have been on the in the one of the better like kids at spelling and stuff and I remember because as an adopted kid you're very curious about your DNA and your genetics and I remember acknowledging I was like oh that's something I've arrived with rather than learnt like that's nature rather than nurture but then there's other stuff that I know that I have inherited from her or how I was raised or kind of cracking jokes about things like she's had a great sense of humour.

19:20They say like comedy is tragedy plus time. Our time would be pretty short. Like within five minutes we can probably squeeze a laugh out of it. It's only your family that can do that though isn't it? Like something really bad happens and you can see they'll give you four minutes. Yeah it's releasing energy isn't it? Laughing is like releasing tension. That's why funerals can be so funny sometimes. You have to kind of control yourself. You're like shaking, your shoulders are shaking laughing in the pew. You moved back in with Pat in the early days of your career? What's she like as a flatmate? Not great, no.

19:56I mean, I think she says the same about me. When you go back as an adult, it's very different. And she would be, she's a very clean, organized person. And that is not something I inherited from her. I am chaotic. I'm like a whirlwind of, there's clothes, there's bras hanging off the roof. Like I don't even notice it, to be honest. so it doesn't bother me. Just like a trail of destruction. And if you leave so much as like a mascara on the kitchen table, it's at the end of the stairs with your shoes to go back up. You know, this kind of stuff. So I think as an adult, I drove her absolutely insane.

20:31It's almost like a full-time cleaning job living there because I spent so much time cleaning up after myself because I can't stand the passive aggressiveness of the mascara on the stairs. In fairness, we both, she really tried to relax. like she I remember once we were having an argument and she was saying like you don't know how many times I've bitten my tongue and I'm like well not enough there's a lot of tongue biting going on when you're an adult back living with your parents because it's not really you're not supposed to be there she was just unlucky that she got a kid with the rest of development

21:11Take us back to your childhood what are your early memories of life in Kalini Irish coast south of Dublin it sounds like it's very pretty so it's south Dublin it's very idyllic out of ball really can't complain about my childhood at all and because I don't know if it's because I was adopted but my parents put me into a lot of after school activities to kind of see what I was you know any skills that I'd arrived with give me some examples of after school give me ballet electric keyboard hang on we'll go through them one by one ballet how is that not great next one electric keyboard did you find your sound no I just put on the pre-programmed ones and just kind of banged the keys so electric keyboard after school art classes how did that go not great the scouts I was in scouts for years how was that loved it oh did you get kicked out I did actually yeah did you know that yeah but you just got just got that look I did get kicked out but I was accepted back in you got asked not to come back one day for smoking no I wasn't smoking you went out on on a manoeuvre and instead of coming back you snogged a boy no sure everyone was snogging everyone in skates that was standard practice it was like an orgy you told someone you told big owl or whatever he's called to go and fuck himself no I was actually very well but I was very respectful of people in a higher position than me what actually happened was but I was also very suggestible we were in Kandersteg Kandersteg on a Scouts Jamboree in Switzerland so we were up and down the Alps yes and we were a mixed troop so it was boys and girls and I was always a bit of a like I was definitely a bit of a class clown yeah and we got the ski lift up to this gorgeous look I point to this big restaurant that kind of used to spin around and we were all stealing stuff from the restaurant like we were like 11 or something we were like you know haha and this gas but I ended up stealing something quite expensive what was it it was this very ornate salt and pepper holder on the table like so stupid anyway I put it in my backpack haha look at me am I mad got on this on the I thought it's called a stair lift got on the ski slope thing to go back down.

23:34Yeah. And next thing on the door and you're one from the restaurant was like, who took that? And I straight away, I took it and I remember my scout leader going, Joanne, it's not the time for messing. And I was like, no, no, really, I have it. And I whipped it out of my bag. Then we all got the, we got the lift back down and it was an awkward silence. And then of course I had to be punished. So they kicked me out of scouts, even though I was still with the scouts in Candlestag. And then I had to reapply. But a valuable lesson was learned. I have never stolen anything since. Well, actually I have, but again it was due to a lot of mental illness but I don't usually steal anymore.

24:09I steal very rarely now so the lesson has been learnt. Just going to leave this going to see what you eventually admit to. I killed a man. So scouts, electric keyboard, hanging out with your friends it sounds absolutely beautiful. When you're in the house what's being cooked there? Tell me about family meals. In fairness to my mother like she worked very hard my dad worked as well but we always had home cooked meals so it was a lot of like spaghetti bonnet you know she'd batch cook stuff spaghetti bonnets chilli from carny there was always cake coffee cake was kind of her signature dish she had these amazing jelly melts like she was great at throwing a party for the kids so like one year for my brother's birthday she'd always make us our cakes from scratch and she made us cakes but then she hid so when he went to cut the cake in front of his friends and he was probably about 11 as well.

25:04There was a hit all this kind of tinfoil and she'd cooked boxers into the cake. She thought this was really funny. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Boxers. Boxers, like knickers. Boys, knickers, knickers for boys. What do you call them? Boxers. Pat is just like, she's the gift that keeps I'm giving, isn't she? She's got a real creative one. She cooked, she baked a cake and inside it was boxes, boxers shorts. She cooked boxers in. She thought it would be gas and it was. Were there any clues back in there? electric keyboard and coleslaw days were there any clues back then of where your life was going to go you know were you dramatic were you you said you were class clown but was there a clue there do you think to where you were well I loved drama so I did drama I did after school drama as well and I loved it as a child being good at drama I always just remember they were like she can really project her voice and to this day there's venues where I'm like I don't need the microphone on your grant.

26:01Someone told me that when you were at school you were a storyteller. Because of the adoption thing which once I realised there was kudos in being adopted I started coming up with all these stories about my birth parents. I basically started killing them off in all these fantastic ways. What would be a kind of a... Airplane crash. No! That's the most dramatic. I do remember standing there and there was like a little gathering of little women around me and I was telling this story because then I realised, oh, this makes me interesting, actually. Yeah.

26:43You've taken a number of solo comedy shows to Edinburgh and have toured sellout shows around the UK. One of your early shows, Separated at Birth, it was an autobiographical show about the experience of being adopted. you are obviously a therapy girl you spent years talking about it on your podcast do you think that you do use comedy to process things? I don't know I think it's all I think I've always and comedians do like you just mine your own life because I'm not one of these comics who can write an hour show about how like I'm not an observational comic in that way that you know Michael McIntyre can write an hour about a bath and it'd be hilarious That's never been my thing.

27:26So I can only really tell stories about stuff that I've done. I'm always going to mind my life. Do you ever think I'm absolutely never going to talk about this? Oh, there's certain stuff that you keep to yourself for sure. But it's few and far between, to be honest. Prosecco Express, the last show I did was a very light stand up comedy. There was nothing really, you know, there was no, there was nothing. There was no confession in it, really. But when I did Bite Me, the show about bulimia, which I thought was a comedy show. I mean, in hindsight, it was a dark play with comedy in it. So this was 2017.

28:01Lynn Gardner, very esteemed reviewer. She said it was hilarious and brutal based on your life in the 20s. Actually, tell us about that period. So that was when I was very unwell. So I guess I wouldn't, I say I wouldn't take any of it back. I mean, it wasn't an ideal thing to go through, but it did change the course of my life. So Bite Me was about that time in my life, like getting treatment and kind of my thinking about what I was doing and thinking I was on this fantastic detox and that anyone who was kind of trying to interfere with my amazing diet was just jealous of my new bod. Disordered thinking.

28:37My very formative years were during all that like heroin chic madness. And I took that all on, you know, I absorbed all that thinking and thin, you know, there was no such thing as too thin and thin was success. and when things aren't going well for you it's like we all know this at this stage but it's control. But also people say that you look amazing. Oh yeah. I had more boyfriends when I was bulimic than I've ever had before or since. Theirs brainwashed us off. Yeah. Now they didn't last very long. Three months, it took them three months on average to realise I was out of my mind. Yeah. I always say to anyone, if someone in your life who you think has an eating disorder, don't say you're too thin because all you hear is you're too thin.

29:19Even no matter what tone it is. You're like, well, thank you. Even if they're crying, you're like, thank you so much for that gorgeous compliment. But what really worked for me was when people were saying like, you don't look well now, like you look sick. That was the, they were kind of like the kind of little breakthrough moments. They weren't saying anything about thin, not thin. They were saying you don't look well. And all I wanted to be, I wanted to have my work admired. So when I felt like my work wasn't being admired, I had to kind of start second guessing myself a bit. By the time that I went into treatment, there was so much damage done to my relationship with food that there was no way of just picking up a fork and going back to normal.