{"id":50711,"date":"2026-06-27T13:06:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T13:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=50711"},"modified":"2026-06-27T13:06:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T13:06:04","slug":"comedian-joanne-mcnally-looks-back-in-my-20s-my-bulimia-was-spiralling-out-of-control-my-breakdown-was-the-making-of-me-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=50711","title":{"rendered":"Comedian Joanne McNally looks back: \u2018In my 20s, my bulimia was spiralling out of control. My breakdown was the making of me\u2019 | Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Joanne McNally in 1986 and recreating the image in 2026<\/span>Joanne McNally in 1986 and 2026. Later photograph: P\u00e5l Hansen\/The Guardian. Styling: Andie Redman. Hair and makeup: Liv Davey. Archive photograph: courtesy of Joanne McNally<\/span><\/p>\n

Born in County Roscommon in 1983 and raised in Dublin, Joanne\u00a0McNally is a\u00a0standup comedian and writer. Her breakthrough came with the one-woman show Bite Me, and her subsequent tour, Prosecco Express, included a 78-night run at Dublin\u2019s Vicar Street. She co-hosts the hit podcast My Therapist Ghosted Me with Vogue Williams. Her standup show Pinotphile is touring Ireland and the UK until December. She hosts Unacceptable with Ed Gamble and Richard Ayoade on TLC.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m three and in the garden<\/strong> of my Aunty<\/strong> Joan\u2019s house in Dublin<\/strong>, in knee-high socks with those little black crossbar brogues everyone had, a\u00a0white polo neck and little bows\u00a0in my\u00a0hair.<\/p>\n

I was always very well turned out. Much like Joan. Joan is dead now, but she was ahead of her time \u2013 a single, child-free woman who wore fur coats and pearl earrings. No one really knew what her job was. She just flew a lot. I\u00a0used to feel sorry for her because she had no children. Little did I know she was leading an incredibly glamorous, aspirational life.<\/p>\n

My mother says that I was very flirtatious as a child \u2013 giggling at strangers, a little bit charming. I\u00a0was\u00a0loud and loved to tell stories \u2013 I\u00a0remember standing on the rockery in\u00a0the yard in school, as if risen, with a\u00a0horseshoe of little girls round me, telling everyone my origin story. That my birth parents had been killed in an airplane crash, and that I was the sole survivor, which is why I was adopted. All of which was untrue. But it was my first little one-woman show and I liked the feeling of having an audience.<\/p>\n

As far back as I can remember, I\u00a0always thought I was fat. Some kids grow up and turn into little beanpoles, but I was a bit bigger. When we played mummies and daddies, I was always the daddy. When we had the school musical, I played the boys\u2019 roles. It\u00a0didn\u2019t help that I had a fringe that looked like it had been sewn on from a\u00a0horse\u2019s arse.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t an attractive teenager, either. I didn\u2019t look like the back of a bus, and I did some good numbers when it came to lads, but they were not exactly chasing after me. I felt like more of a personality hire and, because of that, I wanted to be more desirable. For a young girl, there\u2019s a quickfire way you can do that, and that\u2019s to shed weight.<\/p>\n

double quotation markIf you told the insecure 18-year-old me I\u2019d be doing comedy for a living, her jaw would be on the floor. But the little girl version of me in the photo would not be surprised<\/p>\n

Once I hit my 20s, I went foot to the gas.<\/strong> Me and my friends were big drinkers and loved going clubbing and doing three-day benders. I don\u2019t regret a\u00a0minute of it as I made some of my best friends in Dublin. I was working as a PR for a youth agency and we were\u00a0living the brand \u2013 partying all the\u00a0time, wearing bicycle locks as necklaces, backward baseball caps and\u00a0huge tortoiseshell glasses. But in the background to all the fun, my bulimia was spiralling out of control.<\/p>\n

In my late 20s, I went to work for a mental health charity. I thought it would help. There is often denial involved in mental illnesses, and I\u00a0thought if I could just get out of the PR job, my headspace might change. I\u00a0went from super-busy and sociable to\u00a0one email a day, and it sent me absolutely nuts. In that solitude, I let the eating disorder take over.<\/p>\n

In my early 30s, I decided I would totally succumb to the mental breakdown so that no one would expect anything from me. I quit my\u00a0job\u00a0and moved into my mum\u2019s attic, cocooned at the top of the house and living like a mental patient. I\u00a0wouldn\u2019t wish it on anyone \u2013 bulimia is really bad for you, and I still get teeth pulled out and filled in because being sick messes you up \u2013 but it was the making of me. In my breakdown I was presented with a big fork in the road. I\u00a0had no mortgage, no kids. While I\u00a0wasn\u2019t in a position to be earning, I\u00a0had the financial freedom to explore what I should be doing with\u00a0my life.<\/p>\n

Aside from wanting to be desired, the other reason I became bulimic was\u00a0that I was deeply unsatisfied. I\u00a0tried to get a sense of validation or achievement from being thin, as there was this other part of me I wasn\u2019t expressing. That changed when my\u00a0friend Una wrote a play called Singlehood. She asked if I would be in it. This sounds wanky, but once I\u00a0stood on stage, it felt as if I was home. The play was going well, then I got a column in a newspaper, based on an anonymous blog I was writing at the time called Eat the Pastry, about bulimia. Suddenly I was in a play and making a teeny bit of money writing. I\u00a0had a real reason to get better.<\/p>\n

Initially I thought I\u2019d go into theatre<\/strong> but then I crossed paths with a\u00a0comedian called PJ Gallagher who was very sure that I should try standup. I\u00a0was ambitious and driven but I\u00a0lacked confidence \u2013 and still do. Had he not been so encouraging, there\u2019s no\u00a0way I would have stepped on stage at a comedy club.<\/p>\n

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I started my podcast with Vogue during lockdown. We had this trapped audience, everyone was inside and on\u00a0their phones and needed company. It\u00a0wasn\u2019t until the restrictions had lifted and I was doing a gig in a\u00a0club in Greenwich, south London, that I\u00a0realised that it wasn\u2019t just my bubble listening to it. Four girls had come down to see me and asked for a\u00a0photo afterwards. It wasn\u2019t like I was Paul\u00a0McCartney at the height of the Beatles, but it was the first sign that something was happening.<\/p>\n

The version of me on stage with a mic is feral<\/strong> \u2013 and so are the audience. The crowds at my gigs are boozy, because I\u00a0am a boozer, but in spite of how mad the energy is, everyone is respectful. I\u00a0have had a couple of stage-stormers, however, and there have been kerfuffles \u2013 mainly handbags falling off balconies by accident, and the crowd telling whoever dropped it to shut up while they\u2019re trying to retrieve it. In\u00a0general, they are funny and sweet. I\u00a0get a lot of single people, which I love, and there\u2019s a\u00a0woman in Kilkenny who comes to my Christmas show every year, takes a\u00a0photo of us together, and the following year presents me with a\u00a0snowglobe containing the picture.<\/p>\n

Comedy does attract a certain type\u00a0of character, and I\u2019ve met a lot of\u00a0adopted comics over the years. I\u00a0always thought there was no connection between the two things, but there is probably something in the\u00a0huge effort to prove yourself and your worth, and being put up for adoption. Really, though, doesn\u2019t everyone want to be accepted by the tribe? I had always wondered if my birth parents were the reason why I\u00a0wanted to be an\u00a0entertainer. When I met them in my\u00a0late 20s, I\u00a0was preparing to discover I\u00a0was part of some massive showbiz dynasty, a\u00a0long line of pantomime performers. Of\u00a0course, I\u2019m\u00a0not. My birth father was, like, \u201cI\u00a0think you\u2019re just your own\u00a0thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you told the insecure 18-year-old me I\u2019d be doing comedy for a living, her jaw would be on the floor. But the little girl version of me in the photo would not be surprised. She was obsessed with Annie the orphan and\u00a0knew her destiny was treading the boards \u2013 being loud, telling stories on\u00a0stage, where I belong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joanne McNally in 1986 and recreating the image in 2026Joanne McNally in 1986 and 2026. Later photograph: P\u00e5l Hansen\/The Guardian. Styling: Andie Redman. Hair and makeup: Liv Davey. Archive photograph: courtesy of Joanne McNally Born in County Roscommon in 1983 and raised in Dublin, Joanne\u00a0McNally is a\u00a0standup comedian and writer. Her breakthrough came with the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[23548,4247,24860,10812,97,2906,24858,167,24859,20352],"class_list":{"0":"post-50711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-20s","9":"tag-breakdown","10":"tag-bulimia","11":"tag-comedian","12":"tag-control","13":"tag-family","14":"tag-joanne","15":"tag-making","16":"tag-mcnally","17":"tag-spiralling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}