The last time I saw Janine Harouni, it was the sweltering summer of August 2023, and she was performing stand-up while eight and a half months pregnant.
Her show, Man'oushe, was running six days a week for the month-long run of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. When I saw the show, it was August 18th, and her due date (the last week of the festival) was looming large.
The 100-seater venue was as filled with comedy fans as it was actual fans, with the audience seemingly determined to prevent an early labour for the performer.
Soon, though, the frantic fanning slowed as the comic delivered a pitch-perfect performance.
Putting everyone at ease, the then 35-year-old didn't miss a beat throughout her one-woman show, delving into her experience with pregnancy, her complicated feelings towards motherhood, and the mixed Lebanese, American, Irish and Italian heritage she would be passing down to her child.
Man'oushe earned the stand-up a Edinburgh Comedy Awards Best Show nomination, and thankfully did not end with her giving birth on stage. Her son, Miles, arrived in early September.
Less than three months after that, Harouni was back on the mic.
As a self-employed performer, the London-based comic says she continued to tour the show around the UK for much of 2024. And while working as a new mum is no mean feat, as time has gone on, she insists that gigging has been a joy.
"I partly feel like I'm escaping my parental responsibilities for a brief moment every evening," she laughs. "Everything is easier than looking after a screaming toddler, so I kind of feel like it's slightly a cheat code.
"I recommend all moms become stand-up comedians," she says, adding that her husband, a fellow creative, has been "super supportive".
"He's definitely a millennial dad in that he knows how to take care of the baby when I'm not around, which I'm so grateful for," she notes, explaining that her mother's generation probably couldn't say the same.
These generational differences and familial observations are the making of Harouni's new show, This is What You Waited For.
She'll be bringing it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for two weeks before touring Europe in 2025 and 2026. However, Irish audiences will get a chance to see the comic at work beforehand at the Paddy Power Comedy Festival, taking place in Dublin's Iveagh Gardens from July 24th - 2th7.
With her husband hailing from Ireland, and laying claim to some Irish roots herself, the comic says she's excited to play to a familiar audience.
"My favourite crowd to play to is an Irish crowd because I think that the people have a better sense of humour. The UK is a very tough audience, and America is almost a very easy audience because they need a laugh right now, whereas in Ireland it feels like I'm telling jokes to my friends."
"A lot of my shows have a storytelling element," she continues," and I feel like, just culturally, Irish people have a great appreciation for that."
Thankfully, the last two years have been rife with material, with both her husband and her child giving her plenty to work with.
"This show is about the time in my life where you become a parent while you still have parents," she explains, joking she's been learning how to "emotionally regulate both a toddler and a boomer."
"It's kind of about the lovingly neglectful parenting of the 90s. It looks back on that and, hopefully, reframes it. Once I became a parent, I was like, 'Oh, I get it.' They were younger than me, they were raising three kids under four years old, they were broke, and they did the best they could."
"I feel like I've learned a lot from my parents, but it took me becoming a parent to understand that," she muses.
You can catch Janine Harouni at the Paddy Power Comedy Festival, running in the Iveagh Gardens from July 24-26. She will tour her new show at Dublin's Sugar Club in February 2026.
