6. Gráinne Maguire

More controversial than Gerry Adams

Hello and welcome to the year 2025! I hope your hungover heads are ready for some political prattle. Today, I’m talking to another friend of mine and as I’m not currently feeling too hot myself, I’m just going to jump straight in...

This week’s guest is comedian, comedy writer and podcast host, Gráinne Maguire. Gráinne has written for The Last Leg, Channel 4's Alternative Election Night, the BAFTA Film Awards and Hannah Waddingham's Home for Christmas. She is also the co-host of The Way They Were, a podcast about famous celebrity splits. Gráinne still believes that Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley will someday get back together.

… Oh god, Amy, I’ve been in England for so long and I’m really frightened I’m going to get an English accent.

There's no way you'd get one suddenly now, surely?

I don't know. I'm just so scared that it’ll suddenly creep up on me. That would be horrific.

Ha ha. Would you ever move back to Ireland?

I often think, ‘I'm moving back, fuck this shithole.’ It would be so nice to live in a modern European country and not have to think about King Charles for once. But unfortunately, there is no work in Ireland.

Listen, full disclosure, I usually tell guests when I’m turning the recording on, but then you started shitting on England and I immediately pressed ‘record’ because I knew I’d want to put it in.

I love slagging off English people. It's my favourite thing in the whole world.

Please do, this is a safe space for that and I’ve not had any Irish people on so far. Now if there was a version of the political spectrum where -100 is fascist and +100 is as far left as you can go, where would you place yourself?

This is where it gets tricky. My instincts are probably 100.

Wow! Top score!

No, but it’s not good. I can be a bit totalitarian in my views. I always think that I’m right and I really struggle with people who don't agree with me. If you were to give me any power, I would try and start the revolution today and it would not be good. I’d struggle with the pragmatism required and to see things from another point of view.

But overall, I do consider myself to be very much on the left side of things.

That surprises me because when we were spending the most time together while gigging in our 20s, you were such a fan of Ed Miliband [then leader of the Labour Party]. You often talked about joining the Labour Party just to meet men.

Ha ha. I did!

So one of the reasons I wanted to get you on was that I haven’t spoken to many centrists yet and I assumed that you were one. But I was clearly wrong. So when did you first know that you were left-wing?

Growing up, I came from a very political family. My granddad on my mum's side fought in the Irish Civil War.

On which side?!

Ha ha. He fought for the anti-treaty side, he wanted to continue the Civil War until they got freedom for the entire country. Both my parents were very Republican and mistrustful of Britain and the BBC.

You seriously rebelled by moving to London then.

That was because I absolutely loved Tony Blair. In the 1990s, he was basically a Britpop character. I just thought he was so cool. I used to have a poster of him in my locker.

He was your Damon Alburn!

He really was! Because Irish politics in the 90s was so fucking depressing. It was all about the Good Friday agreement, you know? And then over in England, you had Tony Blair playing his guitar and hanging out with the Gallaghers. I was like, ‘Tony Blair is really cool and he really loves gay people and he was really sad when Princess Diana died.’

I used to have such huge rows, especially with my mum. She used to say, ‘You can't believe the BBC!’ and I used to say, ‘Gerry Adams [then president of Sinn Féin] is a terrorist. Tony Blair? That's a statesman.’

That's so funny.

What's funnier is that I've since met Gerry Adams in real life. I once did a gig in my hometown and he was in the front row. I did some jokes about the Magdalen Laundry and a priest walked out halfway through in protest.

Was the priest angry that you were criticising the church in general? Or was he like, ‘No, the Magdalene Laundries were good places’?

I think he was like, ‘Do you know what, some of my best friends were paedophiles.’

Ha.

And it was so crazy that afterwards when I was talking to Gerry Adams, it was me who was the really controversial one.

That's amazing.

He’s got false teeth. He kind of looks like a Bee Gee now.

What an arc! Ok, so how do you feel about living in England now that we have an at least ostensibly left-wing government?

I just don't see Keir Starmer's Labour Party as a left-wing government. I see them as more competent conservatives. I find their politics so repulsive and miserable, really uninspiring and scared. I left the Labour Party over the summer because I was like, ‘You don't represent my politics and you don't care about my vote.’ All their talking points in the election were targeted towards Tory [conservative] voters. They really disdain left-wing people, like we’re these embarrassing relations that they still have to meet at Christmas.

What is the moral point to Starmer’s Labour Party? The child benefit cap, their equivocation on trans rights… I just thought, ‘You're stupid. You haven't thought this through and it's cruel.’ And the Gaza thing too. Well, it feels so bad to say, ‘the Gaza thing’ when we’re talking about tens of thousands of kids that were being killed.

I’d totally agree that they’re socially conservative. But I’ve recently spoken to a few people who’ve said that economically, the budget has given them some hope. Do you think that they are economically left-wing at all?

Amy, I won’t lie, when it comes to the budgets, I pay attention, I try really hard. I read the newspapers and I listen to the bloody political podcasts, but I still find it hard to understand. I still have no idea what the budget was about.

That’s so refreshing to hear. Because I’m like you, I know I’m not stupid or ignorant, but there’s still a huge amount that I don’t understand. One of the reasons that I wanted to start this newsletter was to learn from other people. And you probably noticed that when I made a counterpoint, I did so by repeating what other people had said to me.

It’s fine to confess to being dopey when it comes to budgets and admitting that it’s not your area.

Could you have a go at summarizing your views in a sentence? I've never asked anyone that before — the question only just occurred to me — so if you can't do it, that's very reasonable.

I think everybody should be given the same opportunities and respect as everybody else.

Nice job! Tick. Have you ever been attacked for your beliefs?

When I was in Ireland repealing the eighth [the eight amendment made abortion illegal in Ireland], I was trying to do as much as I could and a lot of the response was very, very vicious.

I did this thing where I was tweeting updates about my periods to Enda Kenny [the then Taoiseach].

Oh, yeah, I remember that!

What was so mad was that for the first week, everybody got the joke and the point. But then the first interview I did in Ireland was such a shock. Because the interviewer — a man — was just like, ‘Oh you’re just doing it for attention. You're disgusting, you've no shame.’ And then he read out messages that listeners had sent in saying the same thing. And I was totally unprepared for it because everybody else had thought it was a brilliant way of highlighting that the government shouldn’t be involved in women's bodies.

It's such a satisfying way of making that point.

But it was funny because as a comedian, we hustle so much for ourselves but this time I was hustling not for myself, but for this belief that women should have equal rights. And so in a way, it was liberating. They couldn't hurt me because it wasn't about me.

If someone says, ‘You're not funny,’ that can feel bad. But if somebody shouts at you, ‘Abortions are murder!’, you can be like well I'm right and you're wrong

You did warn us that you always know you’re right. But also, you are right and you did win the vote. Could you name a politician who you admire?

Mary Robinson was the first female president of Ireland before she went on to join the UN and now she does loads of work fighting climate change. She’s amazing and completely normalised the whole idea of a female president. After her, there was Mary McAleese, another female president who then became an activist lawyer. So, both the Mary-s.

Now, I think I know the answer to this but I'm going to ask you anyway, have you ever dated or slept with a conservative?

Yeah, but I've since changed him.

This is your husband we’re talking about...

Yes. So before he met me, my husband joined the Conservative Party. It was for two reasons: firstly, he really liked David Cameron and George Osborne —

My enemies.

— and secondly, he thought it'd be a great way to meet people.

He's like you joining Labour to meet men. But the other way around.

He's the upside-down version of me, yeah. He also voted Brexit.

Oh yikes.

I like to claim that I helped him change his mind, but what really happened was that he started following football writers on Twitter and they were retweeting loads of articles about the repercussions of Brexit. So it was basically sports journalists who changed his mind.

And actually, in the last election, I didn’t want to vote for Labour so I voted Green. But then I got scared the Tories might sneak in, so I made him vote Labour to cancel out my protest vote.

Talk about compromise in a relationship. Would you have married him if he’d stayed Conservative?

I think that, especially in the early days, I secretly loved the drama of how he had voted Brexit.

When he first told me, we’d both been drinking and I'd been really annoying him. So he told me he’d voted ‘Leave’ because he knew it would piss me off. Which it did: I cried like I was Julianne Moore in Magnolia. I was just heartbroken.

But I think if he was like, ‘Boris Johnson, what a lad,’ then no, we would not have walked down the aisle together.

Now it’s your turn, so Gráinne, do you have any secret conservative ideas?

Yes. I don't think polyamory is real, sorry.

I'm not going to say whether or not I agree with you to avoid upsetting any of my spicier friends. Now, I'm trying to get the left to take the piss of itself more. Could you please make up a marginalized community that you belong to and would like justice for?

People with no common sense.

I’m also a member of that community and it’s really hard!

It’s so, so hard. We desperately need more empathy. It’s a true miracle that I haven't been scammed more than I have been.

Do you feel optimistic about the future?

I think it was Einstein who said, 'I think I’d rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.' And I agree with that. I think you have to be an optimist, it’s necessary. And it’s a muscle — like being creative — you have to work at it. You have to get better at being optimistic because life is going to carry on. Babies will be born, times will change. It’s a form of arrogance to be like, ‘Oh no, this is the worst time in history ever and I'm just gonna tap out.’ You have to get on with it. Think, ‘Okay what can I can do? Can I donate some money directly to a charity? Can I sign up for something?’

I can't change the US election, but I can do what can I do in my little sphere of influence.

That's such a lovely way of thinking about it and I’ve now added optimism to the long list of muscles I hope to work out more in 2025. Lastly, could you recommend some left-wing reading or documentary or something for people to check out?

James Baldwin’s, ‘I am not your Negro.’

Great call.

It's amazing. It's changed my views. Ok, that makes it sound like I was a KKK member before. But I mean that he expressed some obvious things in ways I’d never thought about before.

Happy New Year and thank you for talking to me, Gráinne!

How warm and funny is Gráinne? I finished our conversation feeling quite desperate to be invited over to dinner with her and her husband. If she reads this and does invite me, I’ll make sure to interview him too. Meanwhile, you can read about their relationship here and find Gráinne on Twitter/x and Instagram. Her podcast The Way They Were is so funny and stuffed with relaxing nostalgia. I did an episode talking about George Harrison and Pattie Boyd because my mother suggested them and I couldn’t think of anyone else.

Also, while you’re all hot for podcast chat, there’ll be more episodes of my satirical comedy podcast, FeMAnism coming soon. For all the #notallmen men out there.