{"id":662042,"date":"2026-10-22T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T12:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/662042\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T12:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T12:00:09","slug":"joanne-mcnally-is-every-irish-womans-best-friend-the-begrudgers-wont-make-a-dent-in-her-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/662042\/","title":{"rendered":"Joanne McNally is every Irish woman\u2019s best friend. The begrudgers won\u2019t make a dent in her \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone I know refers to Joanne McNally<\/a> simply as \u201cJoanne\u201d. If a Joanne comes up in conversation the assumption is that it\u2019s Joanne McNally that\u2019s being referred to, unless otherwise stated. I have a cousin called Joanne, and in a recent text conversation with a friend about a family trip I had to specify that \u201cCousin Joanne\u201d was going, \u201cnot Joanne Joanne\u201d. <\/p>\n

Joanne McNally is every woman in Ireland\u2019s best friend. The comic jokes that when she\u2019s doing gigs she\u2019ll regularly get Instagram<\/a> DMs from audience members letting her know what pub they\u2019ll be in beforehand in case she wants to join them. The thing is, it feels plausible that she might join you, have four wines while debating if it was obvious that you left your scarf at a lad\u2019s house purely so you\u2019d have a reason to get back in touch, and make it on to the stage to deliver a stunning hour of comedy. <\/p>\n

When my best friend Joanne appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon<\/a> this week it inspired a sense of national pride we haven\u2019t felt since Jessie Buckley<\/a> won the Oscar. We do so love to see Irish people doing well. Until, of course, it tips over into begrudgery. However, with the women of Ireland behind her, I can\u2019t see the begrudgers making a dent in Joanne even though the higher you climb the harder they\u2019ll try. And she really is climbing. <\/p>\n

On top of the Fallon appearance, she\u2019s filming her show Pinotphile for a Netflix special in New York next month, the first stand-alone special on the streamer by an Irish comedian. My Therapist Ghosted Me, her podcast with Vogue Williams, draws millions of listeners every week. She\u2019s in Bill Murray\u2019s BBC golf show A Course Called Ireland (which begins this Friday) and also joined a star-studded cast on this year\u2019s The Celebrity Traitors with the delightful air of someone who\u2019s not in the Scottish castle to catch traitors so much as to enjoy an all-inclusive holiday. <\/p>\n

There was some scattered criticism aimed at Joanne when the Fallon appearance was announced, given the calls to boycott the American talkshow after Conor McGregor was interviewed and fawned over by Fallon in June of this year. Joanne was quick and assured with her response: \u201cImagine every single woman was expected to deplatform\/silence\/shrink herself from all and any public platform or professional opportunity cos it had previously had a bad man on it \u2026 he\u2019s ruined enough women\u2019s lives \u2026 I\u2019ll be taking the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Lena Dunham\u2019s Girls will be glorious again as long as it sticks to this one principleOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In Prosecco Express, the show that preceded Pinotphile and ran for a record-breaking 78 nights at Vicar Street, Joanne used McGregor to help explain the class system in Ireland. At the top is Enya \u201cin her panic room in Killiney\u201d, the rest of us are in the middle and \u201cdown the bottom is Conor McGregor\u201d. She joked during the show that there was always a twinge of fear that one of McGregor\u2019s sisters might suddenly rise up out of the Vicar Street audience. It\u2019s not beyond the realm of possibility given the numbers who attended. <\/p>\n

I ended up seeing Prosecco Express three or four times between the jigs and the reels. Joanne attracts an audience that\u2019s about 96 per cent woman, 3 per cent gay men and a meek minority of straight husbands and boyfriends. She relishes in her female audiences, saying recently in interviews that a male comic had told her that she\u2019s really \u201cfound her niche\u201d as if women wanting to laugh is a \u201cniche\u201d. Could you really call four upcoming nights at the 3Arena and a Netflix special a niche? <\/p>\n

\"BillBill Murray and Joanne McNally on A Course Called Ireland. Photograph: PA <\/p>\n

I do worry that if my best friend Joanne ever gets married or has kids, the women of Ireland will fall apart. Singledom and parenthood are common themes in her shows and she has spoken about freezing eggs or maybe having a \u201cgayby\u201d with her best friend. <\/p>\n

Of course, we\u2019d all be thrilled for her if she chooses motherhood, but is she machine enough to raise a chic baby while doing a hundred nights in a row? Joanne\u2019s shows have a distinct and gloriously deranged mams on tour vibe, but where will the mams go if Joanne joins their ranks? Who will they live vicariously through? Can a woman, even our beloved Joanne, really have it all? (Of course she can, don\u2019t be ridiculous, she\u2019ll just siphon off one of Vogue\u2019s nannies.) A funny woman who has it all. How niche. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone I know refers to Joanne McNally simply as \u201cJoanne\u201d. If a Joanne comes up in conversation the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3265,14768,1714,25772,93,631,61,60,312,3721,45750,1868,12460],"class_list":["post-662042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-3arena","tag-bill-murray","tag-conor-mcgregor","tag-emer-mclysaght","tag-entertainment","tag-for-you","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jessie-buckley","tag-jimmy-fallon","tag-joanne-mcnally","tag-netflix","tag-vogue-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}