Kevin Twomey and PJ Kirby: 'We were surrounded by British people who weren’t as funny as us'
PJ Kirby and Kevin Twomey of I Am Grand Mam. Pictures: Miki Barlok
As a longtime fan of Kevin Twomey and PJ Kirby Galang’s hit podcast, I’m Grand Mam, interviewing the two Cork ‘legends’ is a treat.
We are on Zoom. PJ is in his sitting room, a beautiful coffee machine visible just behind him. “I love ‘her’ so much,” he says of the birthday gift. He’s still perfecting his latte-making skills, but says his creations are “open to interpretation”. Perhaps he could make a career out of abstract latte art?
We chat about my recent travels and whether I “found myself” in Southeast Asia, while we wait for Kevin. “If you came to my apartment and I made you a coffee, the latte art would have a plane on it,” says PJ.
Kevin joins from London, where he is “firing on all cylinders”, he tells me with a smile.
I remind them of the first Instagram message I ever sent them, when they started out: A DM explaining how becoming a fan cost me an iPhone.
Trying to rewind an episode of their podcast, I had pulled my phone from my pocket by the headphone wire; it disconnected and plummeted down through a roadside grate into a puddle below. My devotion had been sealed with a sacrifice.
The idea for the podcast, which their devoted fans will all be well familiar with, came on a wine-fuelled flight to Budapest, the two scribbling notes on the back of an airsickness bag. They arrived in the city drunk, sans local currency or a travel adapter, but with a plan. To quote PJ:
The duo, who first met at a dance class in Cork, became housemates when they both found themselves in London, recording episodes between auditions. “When we moved in together, we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to take on the East London queer scene. We relished in any opportunity to have people over for pre-drinks and stuff,” says Kevin fondly.
“We were surrounded by rooms of British people who just weren’t as funny as us, and maybe that worked in our favour. We leaned in to it,” he laughs.
“We felt like we weren’t being creatively fulfilled,” says Kevin, encouraging everyone to give podcasting a go. “There are so many barriers to entry with so many other different forms of entertainment… we’re not nepo babies here. My mom worked in a card shop, and my dad was a salesperson for Tatty Teddy for Carte Blanche. We kind of made a direct route for ourselves in to what is essentially considered a revered form of broadcasting now.”
They invested €50 in to the podcast in its first year — along with their time, of course — and the dividends have paid off. The show has grown from a kitchen-table recording to a multi-platform success, boasting over 50k weekly listeners, and they’ve gone on to score brand deals, television appearances, and have even written a book together, .
Their live shows — which sell out venues across Ireland and the UK — combine stand-up, storytelling, and theatrics. Having been to many of them myself, I can tell you they’re a hoot.
I spoke to them a couple of weeks before their new tour, , kicked off. “I was just pulling raw vocals from Nelly Furtado’s , because, in the show, we’re saying she’s kind of chasing us through the forest,” says PJ. “I think the unexpectedness of that kind of sums it up a small part.”
Unlike other live podcasts, where co-hosts sit on a nice couch and have a chat, their shows can only be described as raucous. “We come from performing-arts backgrounds. We both love dancing and performing. So it’s just an opportunity for us to have a laugh,” says PJ.
PJ moved back to Ireland in 2022, while Kevin still lives in London. “We tried remote records over Zoom when I first moved away, but we talk over each other too much. We couldn’t be coping with that!” says PJ. “Thankfully, we can still do it together, because London and Dublin aren’t that far away.”
A bit more planning is needed, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “When we were living together, it was easy for work to bleed in to the evening… doing it this way allows us more time to meet up.”
For now, Kevin is content in London, though he does “naturally prefer Irish lads to British boys”. The thought of moving to Dublin, where the pool of eligible bachelors is smaller, stresses him out, he jokes. “I’d end up going on dates with half the lads my friends have already dated!”
“I really, really do love London,” he says. “I feel like it’s only been the last few years, when I haven’t been working in a restaurant, that I’ve been able to enjoy London.
My first five or six years here, I was kind of living paycheque to paycheque, and that’s not to say that I’m living a lavish lifestyle in bloody Kensington or Mayfair, but I’m seeing more of London now that I’ve found my footing.”
In Dublin, PJ keeps busy with a myriad of creative outlets, including hosting dance classes at The Liffey Trust Studios, alongside his husband, Jose. His only rule is that people can’t be mean to themselves. “Just dance around the gaff like you would when you were five years old, and you sat your parents on the couch, and you were like, ‘Watch me do this routine’... don’t overthink it, because I do think we’re our worst enemy sometimes.”
The podcast resonates with international audiences, Kevin says, because it’s like everyone is “in the same WhatsApp group together”. Listeners feel like they could be the third person in the conversation, whether they’re au fait with the Irishisms and humour or not.
Much of the appeal lies in Kevin and PJ’s own dynamic, too, which sways from fond friendship to merciless slagging — always with the easy rhythm of two people so close they could be siblings. Listening in is almost like playing a long voicenote from an old schoolfriend.
Things have naturally evolved with them over the years, but despite a growing audience, they still share as much from their personal lives as ever.
“I worry less now than I did at the start,” says Kevin, who admits to being “really anxious” back then. “Over the course of the last seven years, I’ve realised that people aren’t necessarily listening to me as their only source of information.
They’re not looking for me to say something profound — even though I might do, on occasion,” he says, a mischievous sparkle in his eye.
But listeners’ familiarity with them can come with its own downsides — particularly when they’re out and about. “Sometimes, when I’m in Dublin, particularly when I’m with my friends, I find it a small bit overwhelming.
Especially if there are a few people coming up and I’m trying to have a catch-up with my friends, who I don’t see that often. But, for the most part, I don’t mind it. We’re still at a level of fame that’s manageable,” says Kevin.
They’re just two lads from Cork having a skittybang, but they’ve also become leading voices in queer Irish culture — something they never take lightly. “I think we both felt that responsibility, basically, from the second episode we did,” says PJ.
“We ended up telling our coming-out stories and the amount of messages we got from that… yeah, we’re having a laugh, but we are also normalising conversations that people are kind of afraid to have.”
“When the ‘yes’ vote happened, it was like a love letter [telling me], ‘Oh, it’s safe to come home. We accept you.’ It was a public vote, so that meant a lot to me when I was away. I didn’t come out until I was 20, until I had left the country. Last year, I married the love of my life in West Cork.”
As for their dream podcast guest? It remains fellow Rebel, Roy Keane.
”Look, there are a lot of straight people who end up listening to us by way of their girlfriend or just randomly coming across us on Instagram, but I feel if we were to have an episode with Roy Keane, we could have a laugh, we could take the piss, and it would also encourage some Roy Keane followers — some of the lads, lads, lads — to come over and give us a listen,” explains Kevin. “I reckon they’d be listeners for life.”
Should that crossover ever happen, PJ says he’ll wear the famed Pellador ‘Roykini’ (a bikini with the Irish footballer’s likeness emblazoned across it) in honour of the occasion.
I await that most iconic of Cork reunions patiently.
- Limited tickets for the ‘Happy Campers’ tour are available via box offices and ticketmaster.ie.
- You can follow Kevin and PJ on Instagram, @kevin2meytarget="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> and @pj.kirby, and listen to ‘I’m Grand Mam’ wherever you get your podcasts
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