Joanne McNally is bringing her show Pinotphile to Dublin's 3Arena on 12 December 2026, making her the first Irish female comedian to host a solo show on that iconic stage.
"It’s really exciting, and the lovely thing about the 3Arena, of all the arenas, and it’s not like I’ve done loads," she laughs, "it feels intimate, it’s just really well designed, and it will be great to be on that stage."
The comedian is no stranger to the 3Arena, as she and her podcast co-host Vogue Williams brought their phenomenally successful My Therapist Ghosted Me live show to the venue in December 2023, filling it for five nights. This time, she will be on her own, marking her 3Arena debut as a solo performer.
She is up for the challenge but said she is reluctant to describe herself as being proud of her achievements so far. "I am an Irish woman after all, and we aren’t good at the proud bit," she said.
However, she does recognise that the new show, Pinotphile, marks a new development in her career as a writer and performer.
McNally is delighted with the reaction from audiences so far, having performed the show over seventy times already across the UK, including five sold-out nights at the Hammersmith Apollo in London.
"I was a bit stressed writing this show at first, because I thought I would have more life events to talk about. I thought years ago that my next shows would be about being married with kids, but that is not my actual life," she explained.
She described the inspiration behind the show, saying: "I do think being a single, child-free woman in this day and age, with the shift in the culture, and the drop in childbirth rates and with marriage rates dropping too, and women kind of thriving on their own, women are reinventing the female experience. That’s my actual life anyway, and maybe that needs to be represented more as well, you know?"
McNally added: "I do feel like there’s some bit of a revolution happening now and the idea of the resilience required to be on your own in the world, and what comes with that, and the kind of community of the female friendship community is there now."
The famously southside Dubliner has been building her stand-up career over many years and says that doing a podcast with her friend Vogue, added the fuel which allowed her career to rocket towards arena-level audiences.
"It has changed my life, it’s changed both our lives," she said. "And I love that I get to work with Vogue and my friends on the podcast as it is a lovely way to keep us all connected too."
McNally comes to this show with rock-solid box-office success, having clocked up a record-breaking 78 sold-out nights at Vicar Street in total with her best-selling The Prosecco Express tour.
She believes that women comedians are becoming more, and more, visible because of acclaimed performers including Amy Schumer.
"I’ve discussed this with Katherine Ryan and we think Amy Schumer was the start of it all for us, women coming into comedy. We both see that she just came in and exploded on stages, and she paved the way and that does trickle down."
On the breakout success of her Prosecco tour, McNally said that "a great benefit of it was that it did get more women into comedy venues, and then that means that there is more business in the industry."
Talking about Vogue, who is currently appearing on the hit reality show I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here, McNally says that she is missing her, as they are usually in touch all the time.
"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 once she leaves the jungle, and all the ideas I get for the pod will be there, waiting!"
The comedian also spoke about the reasons she decided to address media speculation in the UK about Vogue's marriage to her husband Spencer Matthews on her Instagram account yesterday.
"As someone who has never been married, I didn’t quite understand at first why the speculation about problems in their marriage upset Vogue so much when she knows it’s not true," McNally said.
However, when Vogue explained to her that it is "like someone slagging off your marriage all the time and it’s upsetting and it bothers you, because it’s like they are rallying people up to wanting her marriage to fail," she said, "I got it and I understood."
"That’s an awful feeling, and they are using it for clickbait. I feel very protective of her. She is away in the jungle at the moment and can’t see it. I’m like that guy we used to see on the videos screaming ‘Leave Britney alone’, and I feel like that. I just want her to do her thing and let her enjoy the jungle, let her enjoy this, without trashing her in the tabloids again," she said.
On her Instagram story McNally added: "I’m now wildly offended on her behalf, I guess," adding: "I'm angry, I don’t know how I feel."
Speaking about their friendship, she said that her Vogue does not deserve any of this, adding that "Vogue is a really lovely person, she has done wonders for me in my personal life, and has been so supportive of me."
McNally believes that Vogue "deserves to win the I’m A Celeb... show", adding: "I know there are things she wants to do professionally in the UK, and I really hope this opens doors for her."
With a string of sell-out stage tours of her own, McNally is working hard to keep building on her success here and in the UK and growing her tours abroad too, with a focus on the USA, and then there is the small matter of "finally finishing the book that I keep tinkering with."
She is loyal and grateful to her audiences, explaining how she feels they are growing up together.
"When I started the Prosecco tour, it was all us girls and we were all out, drinking bottles of prosecco but I’m 42 now, and they’re talking to me about HRT which is still drugs but more socially acceptable, and I feel we have grown up together. We are probably slightly less feral than we were, which is probably a good thing for our insides, as we are getting a little more health conscious at this point," she said, adding that "we drank so much prosecco in the last tour, that if I have prosecco now, I’ll gag!"
When explaining her development as a writer and a performer, she said: "I’ve always just wanted to make people laugh, that was always the main priority, but I’ll be honest, I do also want some feeling to be had. I want them to feel something, on top of just laughing, but that’s on me."
She then looked back at past experiences at the 3Arena venue, saying: "I remember going to The Prodigy there years ago when it was The Point, and seeing so many gigs and events over the years and now, it feels like the right time for me to do it here with this show, it’s very exciting."
