"I thought I was doing stand-up but it's actually dark comedy theatre," says Joanne McNally about her show documenting her struggle with anorexia and bulimia, Bite Me.
"I struggled with bulimia and anorexia for a long, long time…It slowly spiralled and spiralled and then I ended up in a mental institution so I wrote a show about it," she tells Róisín Ingle on the latest Róisín Meets podcast.
McNally lost jobs, friends and boyfriends as well as weight during her illness and eventually, she lost her mind.
“I felt like my body was what I had to offer to the world. That was what I was going to be judged on and how I was seen and nothing else really mattered unless that looked the way it was supposed to look,” she says.
During her stint at a mental institution, McNally started to write things down. She flirted with spoken word “for about 14 minutes” before finding her feet writing comedy.
McNally's show, Bite Me is the result of that creative period and she is currently on a nationwide tour with it after a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year.
Also on the podcast, McNally talks about how Louis Walsh helped her through her eating disorder, finding inspiration in the ordinary, young women and body image today and her upcoming TV3 documentary about parents who regret having children.
You can catch Joanne McNally's show Bite Me At The Lyric Belfast on November 7th, the Axis:Ballymun November 9th and at the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire November 10th.
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