The I’m Grand Mam podcasters on unpacking the past: ‘I had to ask myself, do I need to go to therapy for this’?

Small talk tends to be the vanilla ice cream of conversation. But with performers-cum-podcasters-cum-best friends PJ Kirby and Kevin Twomey, in their Cork tones and rat-a-tat-tat loquaciousness, even pleasant chit chat feels revelatory – full of heart, joy and genuine good humour.

The pair are hosts of I’m Grand Mam, the exceptionally successful podcast now in its fourth year, that was originally conceived as a clarion call from London, where they were both living, to their mothers at home in Cork. “We used to call our mams who’d be worried sick about us over in London, and have to tell them ‘I’m grand, mam,’ to calm their nerves – we then just made that into a podcast.”

Kirby and Twomey both grew up in suburban Cork, where they met at a dance class in University College Cork (UCC) in the early 2010s and hit it off, thanks to their shared love of movement, pop music and keeping their queerness schtum. Years later, the pair reunited in London. Kirby was there to dance professionally and Twomey to attend musical theatre college. Together. They slept on couches, encouraged skimpier, nonconforming outfits and rode the wave of queerdom in a city that didn’t know their name.

When they came up with the idea for the podcast – developed on the back of an airplane sick bag – both men were working multiple service jobs and enduring consistent rejection in the dance world. They both craved a passion project in which they had full creative control, in place of the grinding audition process and poorly paid dance jobs that had book ended their lives so far. At the time, Twomey was sleeping on Kirby’s couch.

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“We’d wanted to do something for ages, like a dance class or show or whatever,” Kirby says. “I was working in PR and Kev in a gym, and it was just as we ordered red wine on a flight back from holiday in Budapest that we decided to make it work.”

Each weekly episode – of which there have been 115 so far, racking up millions of downloads – tackles a different, often difficult, topic in an approachable way, centring around a tongue-in-cheek theme like “Sports but Make it Queer”, “Thirty, Flirty and Boring” or “Corkin’ Around with Mama’s Love”. Part-cabaret, part-cultural digest, it has carved out a genre of its own. The hosts make their way through current affairs story-by-story, peppering the conversation with witty, often devastating, observations.

I meet Kirby and Twomey on an evening in late-September in a hotel in the city that raised them. They’ve both just arrived from the photo shoot for this article, lugging bags and hangers of clothes their younger selves would’ve been too fearful to wear. In person, the duo’s affect is lovable, if wry. Twomey, who is 30, is the more theatrical of the two. He handles his body with improvised precision, like a dancer on a day off. Kirby, also 30, has a more relaxed energy, and affection for genderfluid fashion (when speaking about the episode of The Morbegs – the children’s TV show on RTÉ in the 1990s – where Rossa wanted to wear a pink skirt, Twomey says: “Rossa walked so PJ could run.”)

We’re here to discuss the I’m Grand Mamual, their debut book billed as a “stunning guide to taking life in your stride”. With chapters focusing on their experiences of growing up gay, to school, emigration, work and self-expression, the book seesaws between the highs and lows of life and loss (the book is dedicated to both of the men’s late fathers), peppered with hyperbolic piquants that leave the reader wiping tears from the corner of their eyes.

At one stage, when Twomey describes his early days of life “simply existing” in London due to being so broke, he hints about becoming a sperm donor. “I’m not going to reveal whether I caved… out of economic necessity or not, but if you gave birth to a bucktoothed baby with long eyelashes and a touch of rosacea circa 2017, then I hope you’re both doing well,” Twomey says.

“Don’t get me wrong, we loved and still do love London, but we spent so long being so lonely,” Kirby says. “Like, you have this big going away, where people tell you you’re gonna smash it, and then you’re actually just sad and broke.”

[ How a Cork duo turned chats with their mammies into a hit podcast ]

“And it’s one of those things you don’t want to admit, isn’t it?” Twomey picks up. “It was only going through the writing process that I remembered and unpacked a lot of it.”

“Yeah, you’re trying to cover five years of your life in one chapter and you can’t even get into how you felt because you’ve a word count,” Kirby replies. “Honestly, after covering some of what we wrote about, I had to ask myself: do I need to go to therapy for this?”

Podcasting is now a firmly established audio medium of the masses (one that has, of late, got an unfair rap due to the high proportion of straight, white, self-confident men producing subpar content), but its popularity accelerated in recent years because of its intimacy; the experience of listening can be immersive in a way that a radio playing in the background in your kitchen rarely is. For this reason, podcasts are designed to take time, rather than kill it. Kirby and Twomey are masters of this craft, letting huge audiences into their lives in a way that feels honest and genuine.

They speak about heavier topics like death and prejudice in the same breath as recent holidays and AI-generated content, which has attracted an audience not only for their podcast, but their two comedic shows – Pure Brazen and Glory Holy – which toured Ireland and the UK in 2019 and 2021.

Kirby has since returned to Ireland from London to live with his fiance José Galang, meaning the podcast is now mostly recorded virtually, still using the microphones the pair first purchased back in 2019. Today, they have amassed a following big enough to grant them an influencer-like status, attending awards ceremonies and engaging in fashionable collaboration projects with the likes of Electric Picnic and Kildare Village.

Their track Fast Lane has been hailed as a queer-pop classic, GCN has featured them as cover stars, and, back in March, they were guests on one of Ryan Tubridy’s last Late Late Shows. “That felt so special sharing it with our mams,” Twomey said at the time, pointing to their mothers, Nuala and Phil, sitting in the front row.

It’s ridiculous that books are being banned in the first place. What I like about our book is that it’s definitely, explicitly queer

—  PJ Kirby

To the podcast hosts’ surprise, the decision to commit their life experiences to print in the form of a book was an exciting and enjoyable exercise. “What works best in the podcast is our different takes, and the different interjections or ad-libbing we do, as well as anecdotes,” Twomey says. “So we wanted to bring that into the book. And that was one of the things I really enjoyed – like, reading a chapter PJ wrote and submitting my own.”

“I loved that too!” Kirby smiles. “When we first started thinking about it, we wanted the book to be explicitly queer, because we do think that’s important for visibility, but we also wanted it to be something you don’t have to be queer to enjoy. We finally settled on wanting to write a sort of big-sister advice book. We loved the idea of someone picking it up and it being of comfort.”

“Because we’re always being messaged by listeners about how this episode made them feel less lonely, or how another made them feel empowered in a new city or whatever,” Twomey says. “So we wanted to centre it around that.”

“And we just loved the idea of people buying it for their friend or brother, or the book being passed around a friend group to whoever needs it at that time,” Kirby finishes.

Still, it’s a funny time to be writing a queer book. The last two years have seen unmitigated attacks on LGBTQ+ content in state school libraries – mainly in the United States, but across the world, too. Juno Dawson’s This Book Is Gay was among the books most requested for removal or restriction in libraries in the US in 2022, according to new data on banned books, alongside Mike Curato’s Flamer, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and John Green’s Looking for Alaska. The list of books, released by the American Library Association (ALA) to mark the start of National Libraries Week, shows that titles were challenged most often when they contained LGBTQ+ representation or content that the complainants deemed sexually explicit.

While their book only dips lightly into sexual territories – and even when it does, the moments are filled with hope – the I’m Grand Mamual presents itself more as a pamphlet, intent on guiding a reader through life, love and modern experiences in a shame-free, joyful way.

“It’s really important to put books like this out there,” Kirby says. “It’s ridiculous that books are being banned in the first place. What I like about our book is that it’s definitely, explicitly queer, but it’s also just our stories of two young Irish fellas growing up. There’s a lot of anecdotal stories in there as well about going away and emigrating and stuff like that, which someone who isn’t queer can really connect to.

“So, I think once you have that intersection of, like, ‘oh, they’re just like me,’ it’s really helpful. Like, Panti Bliss said, it’s really hard to hate something that you know personally, and I think that’s something our book does really well – showing that we’re just like everyone else.”

The Mamual closes with a list of LGBTQ+ resources, as well as tips for those who don’t exist in that spectrum on how to be a better ally. (“We’re always saying that we don’t have all the answers,” Kirby says. “So here’s the people who do.”)

The fortnight before we speak, both men were outspoken in the wake of the news that Cork’s sole LGBTQ+ bar Chambers had rebranded before UCC’s Freshers Week, removing all pride flags and cancelling drag shows to, in Twomey and Kirby’s words, make the bar “more palatable” to incoming students.

We’ve realised the power of what we’re saying and how we can use that for good

—  Kevin Twomey

“If you think having pride flags up is taking away business, you shouldn’t want those people in your bar,” Twomey says. (Chambers has since apologised, posting a video to Instagram with Adele’s song “Hello” as the soundtrack, offering a weekend-long drinks promotion.) “The font, the song, the colours, the drinks promotion olive branch – a perfect apology imho (in my honest opinion),” Twomey tweeted at the time.

Thinking and talking about the failures of systemic biases seems to energise the pair, who have become sort-of spokespeople for the long-standing and suddenly stark unrest felt by fellow liberals in the face of right-wing aggression. It is a moment well suited to their palatable brand of activism. They want to shine a light on a side of society that can be difficult to look at, and create spaces for those who have traditionally been sidelined.

Among the plans on their to-do list for the future are: to create queer club nights (“we’ve wanted to since before the podcast, even though someone’s stolen the name we had in mind”); to produce compelling television (“to show people the reality behind the clothes they wear or the food they eat”); to promote local community clubs (just this month, the pair connected with Twomey’s father’s club Tramore Athletic to sponsor the senior team); and continue to provide a platform for those who are lonely, scared, shamed and unsure.

“We’ve realised the power of what we’re saying and how we can use that for good,” Twomey says. “So we’re trying to push that forward with TV stuff, or whatever. And, as people will know from buying the book and seeing our faces on the cover,” he smiles, “we have faces for telly, not podcasts. And you can put that in print.”