My Therapist Ghosted Me Live!
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★☆
As I take my place among the thousands of fans who have also flocked to see Vogue Williams and Joanne McNally straddle the line between comedy and decency, one can’t help but feel that the vibe of My Therapist Ghosted Me Live! sits somewhere between potently feral and deliciously female. It’s not dissimilar to how one might feel if this were the last hen party on earth and the groom, who had been caught in bed with another woman, was due for execution in the morning.
A few brave men enter the space and take a seat. Abiding boyfriends, perhaps. “What are they doing here?” a group of three says. This should come as no surprise to anyone following the cult that is the My Therapist Ghosted Me podcast. As the woman behind me in the queue astutely says: “It’s girl humour … but also vulgar.” Indeed, Irish women have gathered in droves here today with plenty of glamour, roaring and buckets of Pinot Grigio.
The show – part stand-up, part cabaret – begins with a bang, our ringmasters leaping to the fore in their ceremonial jumpsuits. (Not before Davina Devine brings three participants on stage for a raucous game of wank the paint off the baton.) They cheer the audience and swiftly go into how Joanne was once sold feline arthritic medication instead of Xanax. We’re off.
The two podcasters on the 3Arena stage have every single woman in the crowd (and the 22 men I count) in the palm of their hands. Despite occasional lapses into already-heard-on-the-podcast territory, the vast majority of what we get tonight is entirely fresh. There is the fake thrush McNally mentions when she wants to get out of sex with her partner, Alan, and the well-endowed piece that Vogue’s partner, Spencer Matthews from Made in Chelsea, is working with.
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The screaming from fans continues throughout, especially when sex and drugs are mentioned. Which is often. They jokingly slag off their mothers and mention how Ireland “does abortions now”, to applause, all the while apologising for “setting back feminism 50 years”. One gets the feeling that whatever they say would be met with raucous appreciation – the pair have honed a particularly relatable brand: overlooked women who are no longer willing to put up with it. The only time the women surrounding me seem a little off-kilter is during the 30-minute wait between support act and main stars. That said, an even bigger group is delighted to have the time for another run to the bar.
[ Vogue Williams and Joanne McNally: ‘She’s a business b*tch’ ... ‘She’s the diva’Opens in new window ]
It doesn’t always work when podcasters pivot to live performance, as we’ve seen with a number of comics, cooks and influencers. That’s not the case with My Therapist Ghosted Me Live! Three million or so listeners tune into the podcast twice weekly to hear Williams and McNally discuss the mundane and the exotic, from children’s parties to getting caught riding by your brother. Of the 10,000-12,000 people at 3Arena tonight, I can all but guarantee that no one is leaving disappointed. But they might have sore heads in the morning.
