Podcast Summary: Great Company with Jamie Laing –

"JOANNE MCNALLY: The Identity Crisis of Being Adopted, Finding Success In My 30s and Why I’m Single"

Episode Date: November 26, 2025
Host: Jamie Laing
Guest: Joanne McNally

Episode Overview

This episode features comedian and podcaster Joanne McNally in a candid, funny, and often moving conversation with Jamie Laing. The discussion dives into Joanne’s experiences with adoption, her battles with an eating disorder, finding career success in her thirties, her approach to relationships, and the origins of her comedy career. Joanne’s trademark humor is present throughout, even when sharing emotional or difficult topics. The conversation is engaging, self-aware, and will resonate with listeners who have faced identity issues, late-bloomer success, and struggles with self-acceptance.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Adoption & Identity

Joanne’s Adoption Story

• Joanne describes adoption as “like just being spat out of a spaceship naked. You’re like where did I come from?” (00:00)
• Her adoptive parents always handled the subject with openness, turning her adoption story into a “bedtime story” filled with love and reassurance.
• As a child, she believed everyone was adopted, thinking “we were all just being passed around like little gifts” (07:51).
• Joanne acknowledges the sense of lacking context for herself, referring to adoption as a “kind of identity crisis.” (11:22)
• “There is a lack of context for yourself. And I think...that’s just part of the human condition. I think we all need that. It’s like...why everyone’s back into Jesus...everyone’s religious again. Because you need meaning and purpose.” (25:06)

Exploring Her Origins

• Joanne attempted to find her birth mother in her early twenties but was cautioned by a nun at the adoption agency: “Look, whatever you think about you...this is like throwing a hand grenade into this woman’s life.” (22:08)
• The reality of learning her birth mother’s name struck her deeply: “Up to that point, it had been a fantasy...then it was like, she’s a human being with a name. And the name just completely threw me.” (23:23)
• It took another ten years before Joanne pursued her origins further.

Eating Disorder and Recovery

The Struggle

• Joanne openly details her long battle with an eating disorder: “I’d been tinkering around the plug hole of an eating disorder for years and then it really kicked in.” (01:05)
• It forced life changes: “I had to leave my job and move back to my mum’s.” (13:13)
• Joanne describes the ordeal: “Recovery had to be like my full-time job.” (27:48)

Openness & Humor

• She dissects her journey with her classic wit: “As I sit there in my white, one of those mental coats, you have straight jackets from eating disorder...‘Absolutely grand. This hasn’t affected me at all!’” (21:17)
• Talks about the ‘double life’ of someone with an eating disorder: “The lies involved in an eating disorder...We should work for the FBI.” (31:20)
• The onslaught of honesty after recovery: “Once I admitted it was a problem...I was telling everyone because I lied about it for so long...It was like a release.” (38:34)

On Using Her Experience for Others

• Joanne recognizes the impact: “So many women look up to you, by the way...and men who have been suffering, will go, ‘Oh my God, if I’m suffering, I can still be successful. I can still get through this because Joanne McNally has done that.’” (36:38)
• Tackles the burden of ‘being the voice’ for people with eating disorders: “I was like, this is actually a bit heavy now… you’re like in this gang, this club of women.” (37:09)

Late-Blooming Career and Comedy

Becoming a Comedian

• Comedy was not Joanne’s initial plan: “I was a publicist...did sociology at Dublin...but then the eating disorder meant pressing pause on everything.” (26:03)
• Her blog “Eat the Pastry,” started during recovery, led to a magazine column and then a play, “Bite Me,” about eating disorders. (30:21)
• On starting stand-up: She did her first open spot in 2018, crediting someone else for giving her the push she needed: “I needed someone to tell me to do it...and then that happened.” (29:18)
• Joanne describes the comedy world’s tough love: “You’re not going down to do five minutes in the store...Those days are gone, you’ve made your bed, now you’re just gonna line yourself.” (29:13)

On Irish Comedy

• Joanne and Jamie discuss how her Irishness adds an extra dimension to her comedy: “I think Ireland...we do...we’re funny...culturally...UK audiences trust Irish comics because we have such a great legacy.” (59:22–59:47)

Relationships, Love, and Single Life

Breakups and Intensity

• Joanne’s love life featured a series of intense relationships and dramatic breakups:
  • “I used to say, like, I don’t fall in love, I fall insane...the worst of times and the best of times, breaking up all the time.” (00:00, 45:29)
  • Recounting her first heartbreak at age 10: “I’ll never forget the pain.” (42:18)
  • On breakups during her eating disorder: “Three months in, they’re all like, you could literally set your watch by it.” (41:57)
• Humorously admits to tracking down an ex: “I got a train out to his house, I tried to doorstep him...His mum was like, he’s not here. Do you want to ring him off the landline? My eyes lit up because I was like, well, he’s never going to know that’s me.” (43:16–44:34)

Her Approach to Love & Independence

• On marriage and kids: “No, I wouldn’t...I realize now I was never going to be the person who got married at 25.” (46:40, 49:25)
• On dating: “I downloaded a dating app last night for the first time in I don’t know how long...five minutes in I was like...no.” (48:40)
• Potential for single motherhood or a “genetic collab” with her gay friend Ross. (49:25)
• On her type: “A little bit of trauma seems to be my jam. Where are your wounds? Let’s rub wounds together.” (51:21)

Sex & Dating Anecdotes

• Hilariously describes awkward one-night stands and post-sex dynamics:
  • “He didn’t take his anorak off the whole time...That is so lazy!” (52:20)
  • On being judged for going home with a date: “He was like, ‘I’m just hoping this isn’t how you normally behave.’” (54:14)
  • “A man are like...I call the ejaculate—they ejaculate, they hate.” (56:16)

Career Highs: “My Therapist Ghosted Me” & Touring

• Joanne recounts how her hit podcast with Vogue Williams began – from a tanning video to the globally successful “My Therapist Ghosted Me.” (57:03)
  • “I was making small talk with the programming dude, and I said, my therapist ghosted me. He was like, oh, let’s just call the podcast that.” (62:12)
  • On the viral title’s visual mishap: “Global put us on these posters...and it was just me with ‘rapist’ over it in the tubes.” (62:20)
• Discusses her stand-up tour “Prosecco Express,” and new show “Pinofile” (named after a funny Peloton username story). (63:41)
  • “Pedos can’t own file. File just means you like something...they’ve ruined File for the rest of us.” (65:00)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Adoptee Identity:
  “Adoption’s like just being spat out of a spaceship naked in the woods. And you know, you’re like, where did I come from?”
  — Joanne (25:04)

• On Recovery and Self-Acceptance:
  “You’re just a product of everything that’s happened to you...if I didn’t have that eating disorder, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
  — Joanne (32:40–33:03)

• On The Importance of Openness:
  “Once I admitted it was a problem...it was like a release. I was telling everyone because I lied about it for so long.”
  — Joanne (38:34)

• On Breakup Insanity:
  “I don’t fall in love, I fall insane.”
  — Joanne (00:00, 45:29)

• Comedy Career Origin:
  “I think there was a creative side of me that was not being met at all...I needed someone to tell me to do it, and then that happened.”
  — Joanne (28:39, 29:18)

• On Resilience:
  “I’m very like, let’s get on with it now...If you pull a string the whole thing will fall apart. It’s just like, keep going.”
  — Joanne (15:11–15:29)

Timestamps to Important Segments

• [00:00] — Joanne's introduction; adoption and early experiences
• [05:33] — Raised as an adopted child; bedtime story approach
• [11:22] — The “identity crisis” of adoption
• [21:17] — The humor and denial around her eating disorder
• [25:04] — The search for belonging and meaning
• [28:39] — Creative dissatisfaction and finding comedy
• [31:20] — Living a double life with an eating disorder
• [36:38] — Inspiring others by public honesty
• [41:10] — Relationship patterns and earliest heartbreaks
• [52:20] — Awkward and hilarious dating stories
• [57:03] — The podcast origin story: My Therapist Ghosted Me
• [63:41] — New tour and the “Pinofile” show title story
• [67:32] — “Quick Fire” life questions — best compliment, turn-ons/offs, guilty pleasures

Tone and Style

Joanne’s style is authentic, unfiltered, and self-deprecating, using humor as a coping and storytelling tool. Jamie Laing’s warmth and openness allows the conversation to be vulnerable and free-flowing. Even in darker or heavier moments, laughter is never far away.

Conclusion

This episode offers an enlightening, irreverent yet insightful look at the way formative experiences—adoption, loss, eating disorders—can shape but not define a person. Joanne McNally’s journey to self-acceptance, career fulfillment, and independence culminate in comedy that is as compassionate as it is hilarious, making her story both relatable and inspirational.

For More

• Joanne’s tour dates for "Pinofile" at joannemcnally.com
• Her podcast: “My Therapist Ghosted Me” (with Vogue Williams)

Note: Advertisements, intros, and non-content sections have been omitted for clarity and conciseness.