Joanne McNally is taking the podcast and comedy scene by storm, one belly laugh at a time (Picture: Kate Swift)

If you didn’t already know Joanne McNally, then let us introduce her, because – just like when she wore a nappy in place of a tampon – you will never look back.

So much is Joanne the vivacious life and soul of the party, that her London Palladium show actually broke the venue’s record for the most wine bought in one sitting. Like, ever.

‘I kind of hoped if I was breaking records it’d be for ticket sales,’ she quipped, withknee-jerk wit that takes a few seconds to catch up with.

But no fear, because as one half of the uproarious podcast My Therapist Ghosted Me, which she co-hosts with Vogue Williams, and as a successful stand up comedian – even if you’re not already – then Joanne is well and truly laughing.

‘We just laugh like hyenas,’ said Joanne of the podcast. And she’s not wrong. Where some might chuckle as fleeting podcasty thoughts waft in and out, Joanne and Vogue snort, guffaw, and lurch their heads backwards in delight at one another’s hilarity.

You can’t blame them though, because Joanne’s hectic, up-beat energy gets into the bones – and her recent show, The Prosecco Express, ended up providing her a string of unexpected hen dos.

The star had a unique road to the comedy scene, but boy is she glad to be there (Picture: Supplied)

Joanne is touring podcast My Therapist Ghosted Me from September (Picture: Kate Swift)

As many of Joanne’s mid-thirties gal pals were trying on rings and popping out sprogs, she noticed a theme. A bubbly one.

‘You’re you feel like you’re just on this prosecco train toasting to other people, and that was where the show came from,’ she explained.

Nodding back to her record-breaking success, Joanne admitted: ‘The show does lend itself to a bit a of a piss up. It’s got hen do vibes.’

And what’s the best hen do tale of plastic willies, wild nights, and drunken brides-to-be the Queen of the hen do Joanne has ever experienced? ‘My shows are wilder than any hen party I’ve been to,’ she retorted, deadly serious.

While many of Joanne’s feathered audience are of a similar age – and don’t so much heckle, but provide words of heartfelt encouragement – some younger souls pop along for the vibes too.

‘There was a lot of behavior in relationships that we called passion that younger women will call toxic,’ observed Joanne, when asked about what this new generation of whippersnapper women seem to know better than hers did.

‘I do think they are wiser to stuff than we were potentially,’ she said, before adding thoughtfully: ‘But then they have s**t to deal with like revenge porn – which is a nightmare.’

As for advice to her younger self, Joanne confessed she was ‘man-mad’ in her 20s – but that person isn’t coming to the phone any time soon.

‘If men saw me, I felt seen. If men stopped looking at me, I felt invisible,’ she admitted.

‘I do regret that side of myself. Because now that part of me is dead. It just doesn’t exist anymore. She’s not going to come to the phone, she’s fully dead. And I much prefer this version of myself.’

Joanne’s Prosecco Express show is the wildest hen do the comedian has ever been on (Picture: Dave Benett/Getty Images for MAC)

But while Joanne is enjoying life on her comedy throne now, she hasn’t just belly-laughed herself to the top – which it seems she never really predicted was in store for her at all. Rather, Joanne thought she’d end up doing a bit of ‘am-dram’, writing a blog, or enjoying a chummy improv course at the weekends.

‘I’d no big aspirations for myself,’ Joanne recalled of a time when her life changed forever.

‘I ended going into stand up because I was very unwell with eating disorders, so I had to leave my job,’ she explained.

‘So I was back at my mother’s house and I was a day patient in an eating disorder clinic. But I wasn’t in full time. You just went in the odd time to get weighed and told not to regurgitate.’  

Joanne met a friend called Una who was getting into theatre, and put on a show called Singlehood which would be performed by normal folk alongside stand up comics.

‘She asked if I wanted to do it because I wasn’t doing anything. I think one of the reasons I got so sick was because I wasn’t doing something creative,’ Joanne recalled.

One of the comedians in the show suggested Joanne did stand-up – and that she did.

‘It was a time of huge change in my life,’ Joanne said. ‘I knew I couldn’t go back to my old life. I needed a reason to get better, and going back to my old world was no reason. That wasn’t going to drive me forward to recover. I needed a complete pivot.

‘I didn’t think the pivot would be this severe but it just started kind of happening. It was all a very happy accident.’

Looking back on her time working as a publicist, Joanne reflected: ‘I’d just made the wrong decisions along the way, or I needed to trust my own instincts more. I would be waiting for someone to tell me I could do something before I could do it.

‘I probably lacked confidence, and then comedy kind of changed all that for me.’  

The happy accident then turned into Joanne’s first stand up show called Bite Me, which was a dark comedy about her experience of eating disorders.

‘I needed to expel the serious, dark, drama one woman show thing. And once I got that out of me I thought okay, I can just do what I want to do now and that’s clowning,’ she remembered.

At that time, comedy gave Joanne a ‘sense of purpose’, which, don’t worry, Joanne knows ‘sounds wanky’ (it doesn’t).

‘But it was like if you want to be traveling around doing gigs you need to be healthy, fit, and fuelled. And suddenly my whole world wasn’t just about shrinking my body. Now my new world was about comedy.’

And aren’t the prosecco tipplers, the kitchen podcast chucklers, the 40-something fun-lovers, and the odd ‘stray’ man who comes to her shows glad she found it?

My Therapist Ghosted Me is on on tour. All dates can be found on Joanne’s website.

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‘I do think they are wiser to stuff than we were potentially.’