Joanne McNally has revealed she had a “horrible” anxiety attack during her stand-up gig in Cork last week.
The popular comedian, who recently kicked off her Prosecco Express tour, opened up about the “outer body” experience on The Ryan Tubridy Show on Wednesday morning.
The Dublin native told the host that she contemplated stopping the show as her hands started shaking and she “lost her words” in the middle of the set.
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Joanne said: “I’d had half a bottle of white wine and three cans of energy drink in the space of 40 minutes before I went on stage. So I’m guessing that was also part of it.”
“And so I took a turn where I felt like I was kind of not in my own body and I didn’t know what I was going to say next.”
“It was on stage. I could kind of feel it coming on and then my hands start shaking and I lose my words and I don’t know where I am in the show. It was horrible. And at one stage I was like, ‘Will I leave? Will I go?'”
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Joanne was then heckled by a member of the audience.
She said: “Obviously I have been heckled but not to the point I’ve really taken any notice. I’ve always been able to deal with it like. I was in the middle of this completely outer body experience.”
“I didn’t know what I was going to do, didn’t know what I’d said, what was going to come next. I was trying to power through. I didn’t want them to see that I was struggling with this going on. And then this young one shouts out, ‘Where’s this going?'”
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“I was genuinely about to go, ‘I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine because I have no idea what’s happening now’.”
Joanne continued: “So when she shouted that out and I was having this – I call it a turn – I was having this weird turn and some woman shouted out ‘space gins!'”
“I talk about having gins in the sky a lot. And then we just kind of carried on. This woman kind of saved it.”
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“I usually do about 65 minutes, I think that night I did about 50 and I was like, ‘I need to get off the stage.'”
“But I learned my lesson. I have a lot of shows to do, I’m pretty much gigging every night and so the energy drinks are gone now so I’m learning as I go,” she added.
You can buy tickets to the Prosecco Express here.
