Joanne McNally: From Struggles to Stardom

There is a moment in every Irish entertainer’s career when Britain stops being a market, that proverbial nut they have to crack, and starts being a place that is coming looking for them. For Joanne McNally, that moment has well and truly arrived.

The influencer and comedian, 43, has been confirmed for the second series of Celebrity Traitors on , joining a cast that includes Welsh actor , star and legend . 

It is a show that needs no introduction. The first celebrity series averaged 14.8million viewers during its run, making it the biggest TV audience of 2025, and the announcement of the new cast sent the internet into a frenzy.

The fact that McNally’s name featured alongside very famous faces tells you everything you need to know about how far the stand–up comedian’s career has come.

With over a €1million in the bank, a spanking new bachelorette pad in the beating heart of London town, and a slot on prime–time telly, it’s safe to say McNally has well and truly cracked that nut.

But rewind 20 years, and the picture looked very different indeed.

Born in Co. Roscommon on May 7, 1983, Joanne was adopted as a baby and raised by a family in Killiney, Co. Dublin. 

After studying English and sociology at University College Dublin, she found herself working in public relations, a career she was good at but one that was slowly suffocating her. 

She had originally intended to go into journalism but, as she once recalled, someone told her she’d need to be ‘prepared to sell your granny for a story’. It’s fortuitous for Joanne that she transitioned from tropes to jokes.

But it was what was happening behind the scenes that would ultimately define her. 

During her twenties and early thirties, Joanne struggled with an eating disorder, battling both bulimia and anorexia, which deeply affected her life and confidence. 

It was a dark period that she has spoken about with the kind of brutal candour that has become her trademark. She sought treatment, she got better, and, from that turning point, everything changed.

Writing and performing became therapeutic outlets. 

Through blogging, newspaper columns, and eventually stage work, she began turning personal experience into sharp, candid humour. And it turned out she was very, very good at it.

Her comedy breakthrough came almost by accident.

In 2014, after her recovery, director Una McKevitt invited Joanne to perform in a stage show called Singlehood, which brought together a group of people discussing their love lives.

At the time, McNally was unemployed but agreed to do it. It was there that a joke landed, beautifully blunt and unfiltered, and something clicked. 

Comedian PJ Gallagher was so impressed that he suggested they collaborate on a new project together, which became Separated At Birth, a show about their respective adoption stories.

Separated At Birth sold out Dublin venue Vicar Street in May 2015 and went on a national tour around Ireland.

And just like that, Joanne McNally was a comedian.

She followed it with Bite Me, a one–woman show about her experience with bulimia that was as darkly funny as it was searingly honest. 

It sold out its five–night run at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre and was nominated for four awards in the Dublin Fringe Festival, including Best Performance and Best Production. The Irish Times reprinted an excerpt from it. People were paying attention. 

Television work followed. She became a familiar face on RTÉ as co–host of Republic Of Telly, appeared on The Late Late Show and The Tommy Tiernan Show, and began picking up panel show credits across the water. 

But it was live comedy where she truly excelled, and the crowds kept getting bigger.

Her Prosecco Express tour in 2022 was the moment things went stratospheric. 

She clocked up a record–breaking 78 sold–out nights at Vicar Street in total. 

Dates at the London Palladium sold out. The Adelaide Fringe Festival beckoned. Joanne McNally, the girl from Killiney with the bruising early years, was becoming a bona fide star.

And then came the podcast. And with it, Vogue Williams.

The two women have been close friends since they were teenagers, confidantes since the age of 19. 

But it was in April 2021 that they turned that friendship into something that would change both their lives. 

Their podcast My Therapist Ghosted Me was born out of the fact that Joanne’s actual therapist had done exactly that, ignoring her calls, refusing to answer the door at the clinic, and declining to speak to her even after she had tracked him down at a crematorium in Enfield as he scattered his aunt’s ashes. 

A mildly amusing anecdote that could be both testament to Joanne’s indefatigable tenacity or borderline obsession. 

But the recounting of this tale was to be Joanne’s origin story.

The format was deceptively simple. Two Irish women, one famously married and settled, the other famously and colourfully not, talking about their lives with refreshing honesty and absolutely no filter. 

The show has since grown to average over 2.5million monthly listeners, making it one of the most downloaded comedy podcasts in the UK and Ireland. 

It spawned live shows that sold out arenas, an E4 television special, and a level of fame that neither woman could quite have anticipated.

Joanne has spoken many times about what Vogue means to her, both personally and professionally. ‘It has changed my life, it’s changed both our lives,’ she has said.

 When Vogue went into the jungle for I’m A Celebrity last year, Joanne was bereft. ‘It’s like she has gone into a witness protection programme,’ she laughed. 

‘I keep texting her, knowing the messages are sitting in her WhatsApp until the phone gets switched back on.’ 

And when British tabloids began running speculation about trouble in Vogue’s marriage to Spencer Matthews, Joanne came out swinging. 

‘I feel very protective of her,’ she said. ‘Vogue is a really lovely person. She has done wonders for me in my personal life and has been so supportive of me.’ 

It is one of the great Irish female friendships of their generation, and their audiences feel every bit of it.

The financial rewards have been considerable. The company behind the podcast, Prosecco Pig Limited, tells its own remarkable story. 

By December 2024, with Joanne as sole director and employee, the firm was sitting on €1.36million in cash and retained earnings of €856,349. Not bad for a woman who was once unemployed and saying yes to a stage show just to fill the days.

In a move that signals her intent to put down roots in the UK, just last month Joanne announced to her merry band of social media devotees that she had just bought a swanky apartment in London city.

Her profile in Britain got another enormous boost in 2024 when Joanne appeared on the 17th series of Taskmaster, finishing in second place and walking away as the undisputed breakout star of the show. 

British audiences fell for her immediately and have barely let go since. Which is, of course, precisely why Celebrity Traitors came calling.

Now, if only love had been as straightforward as the career. Because for all of her considerable professional triumphs, Joanne’s romantic life has been, to put it kindly, something of a revolving door. 

She has spoken openly and with characteristic wit about the fact that relationships have tended not to last, and that despite all the success, the right man has proven rather more elusive than a sold–out arena.

Her most recent relationship, with Alan Byrne, ended in March 2024, and she subsequently took a year–long sabbatical from dating entirely, a decision that will have delighted her listeners far more than it pleased her. 

As of 2026, she remains single and, by her own admission, is back on the dating apps.

There is something both funny and quietly poignant about the fact that Joanne McNally, one of the most in–demand and entertaining women in Irish showbusiness, has found herself navigating her forties alone.

She knows it, she laughs about it loudly, and then she builds another sold–out tour around it.

And rather than wait any longer for a man to complete the picture she has built for herself, Joanne has decided to have a baby with her gay friend Ross, cheerfully describing the child as a ‘gayby’. 

It is exactly the kind of unconventional, take–life–by–the–scruff move that her audiences have come to expect and adore.

Her comedy has always explored the idea that life does not have to follow traditional milestones of marriage and children, and it turns out she means every single word of it.

Her current tour Pinotphile has taken her across the UK, Ireland, America, Australia and New Zealand, with a remarkable 23–night run at Dublin’s 3Olympia already behind her.

In December 2026 she will make history as the first Irish female comedian to sell out the 3Arena for a solo show.

Her book of essays, Femme Feral, is due out in August. And now, Celebrity Traitors beckons.

From the Roscommon girl who was adopted, to the Dublin woman who battled back from an eating disorder, to the comedian who turned her trauma into triumph, and built a multi–million–euro empire. 

The men may have come and gone. But the audiences, it seems, are here to stay.