Joanne McNally reckons she can spot them a mile off. It is, she agrees, like going anywhere in the world and being able to spot an Irish person immediately. An indefinable recognition.
“I’ll be walking down the street sometimes, and if they haven’t seen me first, I’ll see them and go, ‘I bet she’s one’,” says the Irish comic, nodding. “Then she’ll come up and she’ll say she’s a pod listener.” She smiles. “I’m probably coming across as terribly stereotypical, I guess sometimes when you meet women who remind you of yourself, I’ll be like ‘Oh, I wonder if she’s a pod listener?’”
Podcasting has been only the tip of McNally’s success in recent years. My Therapist Ghosted Me, the weekly podcast she launched in 2021 with her friend Vogue Williams, now reaches 3.5 million listeners a month. She also launched her own podcast series, Joanne McNally Investigates on BBC Sounds last year, which sees her take an amusingly droll look at conspiracy theories – or “diet conspiracy theories, like nothing too heavy – I don’t believe there’s a paedophile ring of lizards running the world” – including the one about pop star Avril Lavigne being replaced by a body double, and children’s toy Furbies being used to spy on people.
McNally’s overdue success led to other opportunities, too. In late summer, she was pictured on social media enjoying a pint with actor Bill Murray – albeit with a camera crew in tow – after being enlisted to take part in a forthcoming BBC series Off Course. The six-part series, based on Tom Coyne’s book A Course Called Ireland, sees Murray joined by ‘celebrity friends’ – one of which is McNally – as he tours Ireland’s golf courses.
“It was like a ‘fake it till you make it’ kind of thing, but they knew I was pretty bad [at golf],” she says. “I’ve only played crazy golf, so there was a lot of grass flying – but sometimes I do manage to hit [the ball]. So I was like, ‘I’ll absolutely fly to Ireland and play golf with Bill Murray’. And he was really sound. I think at the start I was a little nervous, because it was three men playing golf, and then I turned up. The first thing Bill said to me was ‘Are you contagious?’ because I was wearing this floor-length Adidas raincoat and they were all in their golf gear, and I looked like I was wearing a hazmat suit.” She laughs. “He’s got something about him.” She references the unconfirmed rumour that Murray had dated singer Kelis in recent years. “That makes sense,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “He’s got an energy about him: this attractive, elder, successful man energy.”
[ Joanne McNally: ‘I’m allergic to romance. It makes me uncomfortable and embarrassed. Maybe it’s because I’m Irish’Opens in new window ]
Then, of course, there is the comedy. McNally’s stand-up show The Prosecco Express, first launched in 2019, and became a gargantuan success post-Covid, breaking records (including an incredible 78 nights at Vicar Street in total) and positioning the Killiney, Co Dublin native as a bona fide comedy star. The success of that tour meant that she felt initially daunted when it came to writing her new show Pinotphile.
“It’s very scary, sitting down to an empty page,” she nods. “I had forgotten, because I hadn’t written an hour-long show in a while – it’s a bit of a slog. I assumed if I did a new show that I’d have loads of new content. I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll probably be married with 12 kids, and I’ll have adopted a load of children, and I’ll have all this new material’. But when I went to write the new show, nothing had changed. Not a single thing.” She shrugs.
“I had a couple more failed relationships under my belt, but no huge life changes. So I was freaked, because I was like, ‘I’ve nothing to say.’ But I guess that in itself is something; as in I’m still single, still no kids. And while that doesn’t define me, they are huge parts of my life. So Prosecco was very much about my story, whereas this show branches out a little bit into the world and what’s going on. Nothing too heavy, of course; I’m not Nish Kumar, I don’t do the highbrow things,” she deadpans. “But there’s a little bit more about pop culture and that kind of thing.”
She still wants children, she says, but “it just hasn’t worked out for me yet. I’ll be leaning on science and sperm donors, I’d say. I definitely want to do that, but I’m a bit of a procrastinator and I do work a lot, so I have to be realistic about it. I’d have to stop working really, because I’d be doing it on my own, and I know that’s definitely what will happen now. So that’s the plan; that’s my next two years, I hope.”
She may claim that little has changed, but McNally is undoubtedly more recognisable than she was five years ago. Her new level of fame also comes with pitfalls, however – one of which she recently discovered when the finances and profits of her company were recently made public and picked up by news outlets.
“The money thing bothers me,” she says. . “I mean, I don’t even know what my brother earns. I’m kind of half taking the piss, but I genuinely mean this – had I never made a penny from stand up and comedy, I would have done my best to stay in it. So making money out of this is like an extra bonus, but it’s not the motivation. [So] I don’t want to sound like an ungrateful bitch, but the public money thing is a bit scarlet.”
2025 was a big year for another reason, too: McNally launched her accessories line Anxious Preoccupied, which she cofounded with longtime friend Nikki Lannen and which includes various high-end bags, sweatshirts and tracksuits. McNally, whose pre-comedy background was in PR and marketing, has enjoyed wearing that creative hat again, while Lannen looks after the business end of things.
“At the start, I was a bit paranoid that I was going to dilute what I’d worked very hard to do, which was establish myself as a comedian. I was like, ‘Bill Burr isn’t selling handbags’.
“But now, because I feel like I have done that, I can just enjoy the craic of building this bag business with [Nikki]. Now, I’ll be honest: there are times where I’m writing ad copy at 3am, going ‘Why on earth have I taken on an extra job?’, but we’re a really good team [and] I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying it, to be honest.”
It has been important to keep the range at an affordable price point. “Obviously, it’s a business, it’s a commercial venture, and people need to make money off it,” she says. “But we’re not trying to rip anyone off; we want to make them good value. I never want to look grabby.” She admits that she is “very Irish” when it comes to such matters: “I accidentally complimented myself in a podcast the other day, and then rang them up after and said, ‘Take that out’.”
2026 is looking exceptionally busy, with the Pinotphile tour set to run until Christmas 2026. Work on her memoir, with the working title of Femme Feral, is also under way. “It wasn’t a memoir at the start; I got the book deal off the back of columns I was writing for newspapers in Ireland,” she says. “But everything has shifted now. I’m probably taking it a little too seriously – I’m not up here writing Ulysses, I’m not Marian Keyes, but I want to do the best job I can do, and that needs time, because touring really takes it out of you. And I don’t seem to be the kind of person who can bang out 5,000 words in an airport lounge. I only have so many thoughts in a day, know what I mean?”
It’s just as well that she will be spending this Christmas at home in Killiney, as she promised her mum – “it’ll be me and Pat on Christmas morning, side-by-side in matching pyjamas” – for some much-needed downtime before a busy 2026, in which she also plans to buy a house in London. It’s little wonder that a much-needed holiday is at the top of her Christmas wishlist.
“I’m dying for a trip away,” she groans. “I was on to one of my mates the other day, and we had this idea about doing some sort of witchy-woo-woo-woman circle weekend in Glendalough, to kind of re-engage with our feminine energy. I think I’m getting… I’m not going to say spiritual, because I’ll never get to that point. But I’m checking in with myself more than I ever did before. Like, I’d love to do ayahuasca; I’m ready to evolve in the woods.
“So that’s what I would love for Christmas: a girls’ trip away, where there’s some sage, but also brunch. Hang out with the shaman, but then also hit the bar later on. Surely there has to be a market for women like me? Women who are ready to kind of half-heal. Nothing too intense.”
Joanne McNally tours Pinotphile nationwide until March 2026, including multiple dates at Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre. See joannemcnally.com for full listings. Anxious Preoccupied is available online at anxiouspreoccupied.com.
