Joanne McNally: 'I wasn't messing around'

Joanne McNally has said she feels "very lucky" to have built a successful comedy career, but believes there is still much more she wants to achieve.

The Irish comedian is currently taking her stand-up show Pinotphile on tour and is preparing for two sold-out dates at Dublin's 3Arena in December.

McNally will become the only Irish comedian to headline two nights at the venue when she performs there on December 5 and 12.

Speaking to the PA news agency, the 43-year-old said she had not expected her career to grow as quickly as it has.

"I maybe didn’t expect to grow so quickly but I wasn’t messing around," she said.

"I don’t have a partner, I don’t have kids, I don’t have a dog. This is all I do, and I’m obsessed with it.

"So I knew that once I got a sniff that I could make it work for myself and make a living from it, I just put my foot to the gas and kept going and I will keep going.

"I would have kept going regardless because I love it."

McNally, known for her candid and confessional style of comedy, moved to London during the Covid-19 pandemic to pursue her career.

During that period, she and fellow Irish broadcaster Vogue Williams launched the podcast My Therapist Ghosted Me, which became a major success and helped bring McNally to a wider audience.

She said she had been able to put everything into her career, but acknowledged that this had involved personal sacrifices.

"I think I had the opportunity to put everything into it, and I did," she said.

"I’m not saying other people don’t, but I do think I’ve made some personal sacrifices to do it, because I think, as a woman in particular, if you’re trying to maintain a relationship or have kids and all that, having a career that takes up all your time isn’t really sustainable.

"So, yeah, I feel very lucky, but there’s still a lot more to do."

McNally will also appear as a team captain alongside Richard Ayoade in new comedy panel show Unacceptable, which is hosted by comedian and podcaster Ed Gamble.

The six-part TLC series sees two teams of comedians attempt to persuade a studio audience to support deliberately outrageous opinions.

McNally said she had not previously seen panel shows as essential to building a successful career, having established herself without appearing regularly on television.

"Because I’ve managed to build a career for myself without a huge amount of telly, I hadn’t really felt that panel shows were the be-all and end-all of TV the way they once were," she said.

"But I think if you make something good, people will watch.

"And there does seem to be a bit of a resurgence now, particularly in different styles of comedy shows like Last One Laughing. It’s a completely different style of show and it’s amazing."

She said Unacceptable offered a different take on the traditional panel-show format, with comics making the case for opinions that would ordinarily be seen as beyond the pale.

"It’s an unusual format, it’s kind of zeitgeisty in a way, because there is a kind of tension sometimes with what can you say and what you can’t say," she said.

"Where this is so tongue in cheek with these ludicrous opinions that if they clipped up on YouTube and did us dirty, we’d be cancelled immediately, because you’re saying mental stuff, but obviously we know that.

"And I think that’s maybe why people enjoy watching it, that you’re kind of saying technically unacceptable opinions, but it’s all in good spirit."

Unacceptable begins on TLC at 9pm on Sunday July 5.