I'm Grand Mam: "It’s a seven-year-old child that we’ve nurtured from the ground and been co-parenting – and we’ve been very good at it"

“When you stop and take stock it is fully bonkers,” says Kevin Twomey from his London flat. “It’s a Cinderella story, girls. Rags to riches. Not to say that we’re rich by any stretch, but I was definitely poor when we started.”

Swap the pumpkin carriage for a piss-up on a plane, and you’re not far from the truth.

The origins of Kevin and his co-host PJ Kirby’s I’m Grand Mam are well-known by now. Here’s the summary: they became friends after meeting at a hip-hop dance class in UCC and, after realising their comedic chemistry, ended up sketching their ambitions for a podcast on the back of a sick bag during a boozy flight to Budapest.

Since launching the pod in 2019, there have been over 250 episodes, a memoir/life guide titled the I’m Grand Mamual, roles co-hosting Help Me Buy A Home on Virgin Media, and a number of tours, including their latest Happy Campers show, which they’ll bring to Australia at the end of the year.

It’s a body of work to make any mammy proud. But what’s really got the people around them excited is… a Sky broadband ad. Well, it’s not just an ad. It stars Roy Keane after all, who sits across from the duo while hooked up to a lie detector.

“It’s been a very famous week for our mams,” says Douglas native Kevin. “They might have friends who don’t listen to podcasts, but when they see that we’re doing something with Roy Keane they’re like, ‘Jesus, isn’t Kevin doing very well for himself?’”

Beneath the Keano cameos and glamour is graft. It can be intense work; years of travelling, projects, planning, and broadcasting much of their personal lives. That the two have done all that and come out of it still best friends is perhaps the real achievement.

“We’re really good at communicating with each other,” says PJ, who hails from Blarney Street in Cork City. “I know they say don’t work with your friends, but if you can communicate with them, you can make loads of money and get really famous. And you get to go to Australia together and have a laugh.

“Kevin gets what I’m on about. I know that if I flop, Kevin will be next to me to pick up the pieces. We worked really hard to get here as well. It wasn’t like we started recording and then we were touring Australia, you know. There’s an element of luck, but there’s another side of me that’s really proud of the work we’ve put into this. We’ve sacrificed birthdays, meeting up with people, and going home to our families because we were working.”

“It’s a seven-year-old child that we’ve nurtured from the ground and been co-parenting and we’ve been very good at it,” Kevin adds. “So we’re very, very protective of our little I’m Grand Mam baby.”

On the subject of protective parents, a shoutout must be sent the way of the mams. The title of the pod comes from the duo’s close relationships with their mothers after all, as the boys’ standard, reassuring response to their mams checking in on them in London.

“I think a lot of gay lads are really close to their mothers just because we’re a bit more feminine growing up,” says PJ, whose mother Nuala still regularly puts a few bob into the Credit Union for him. “They might give us a bit of extra love because they see we need it or whatever. When I came out, my mam was terrified because she knew my life would be harder for me as a gay man in this world. But she didn’t tell me she was terrified until two years later.”

“I do think there is a thing as well of the matriarchy in Irish households,” Kevin continues, reflecting on his relationship with his own mother Phil. “My dad couldn’t cope on the day that I came out to him. He found it a bit overwhelming. My mam was the pragmatic one, because she had to be that person. The mams are the ones who have to keep the show going.

“I think if I was to shoot someone on the street, my mam would say, ‘What did he do?’ She’d probably help me hide the body. I’ve really learned the level of unconditional love that my mam has for her kids.”

Rebel City

Perhaps the only thing they come close to loving as much as their mams is where they’re from – and the lads are as openly Cork as they are gay. Kevin takes us through how he’d show a first-time visitor around his hometown.

“I’d start out at Léas at the Glucksman in UCC, just because it is such a gorgeous campus,” he says. “Then you’d walk out the Western Road into town. You’d have to go into the English Market, to Farmgate Café for a soup and a sambo. It’s this mezzanine area, so you can sit there with a book and watch as people are coming in. There’s also a new sandwich place in there called Uncles, which is class.

“You probably have to walk out as far as the Marina Market because it’s the lifeblood of Cork City at the moment. It’s a bit busy, but if you’re going during the day it’s nice, and you can have a bit of a wander round all the different food stalls.

“For coffee, you go into Some Dose and you have to get a Tim Tam as well if you’re there. Or you go into Three Fools. Paperboys as well is really good.

"And if you’re going for a drink, anywhere on Coburg Street is really good, especially if you’re taking a buddy who’s never been to Cork. If you want to take them to proper old man Irish pubs, you can take them maybe Sin É or The Corner House. And if it’s a Wednesday night or a Sunday night you’re getting a bit of trad. Ask for the snug.

“And then at the end of the night, you gotta get a slice of pizza in Fast Al’s to seal the deal.”

And what about PJ’s ideal day out?

“We’re going to Good Day Deli for brunch,” he begins. “Chatting to all the girls in there, having a laugh. Then strolling into town, getting another coffee in Three Fools, maybe walking through the English Market. Then walk down to the Marina Market for a sauna. There’s a new sauna place, Hot Box Saunas, that’s unreal.

“If it’s a Saturday and if it’s sunny I might go for an Aperol and sit outside Impala. Then we might be getting a bit peckish. So I’ll go to that Japanese place that I always forget the name of at the end of Barrack Street [Miyazaki]. You can bring it to O’Sho across the street, which is a bar, and they let you eat it there. It’s such good Japanese food!”

Miyazaki

These days PJ is living in Dublin. Is there anything the Dubs do better?

“You have a Luas. I’ll let you have that one,” he says begrudgingly. “I won’t be let back into Cork if I say anything else… But we’re getting a Luas in Cork and it’s going to be better.

“I suppose there’s more options for queer people in Dublin. In Cork you have one queer bar and then one or two nights. Whereas in Dublin there’s much more choice, you have PantiBar, Street 66, The George.”

Irish in London

They might bleed red and white, but it took a move away to find themselves. London was where they’d gone to chase careers in the performing arts, and the friendship they built there became the foundation the whole show stands on.

Has Kevin’s time there changed how he views where he’s from?

“Living away gives you a fondness and appreciation when you come back,” Kevin says. ”I adore London, I’ve been here twelve years. But because it’s such a big city and people don’t have the best reputation for talking to each other, when you do go home and then you get a taste for that… that’s always really lovely. When my mam comes over to London, she just slips into her everyday musings and people think she’s bonkers because she’s trying to chat to them.

“I could be in a cafe and there could be someone sitting in the corner on the laptop on a call and I’ll hear an accent and my ears would prick up. Or even dating an Irish fella is so much easier, oh my God. I’m done with dating the British lads, no thanks. Where’s the craic, girls?”

Living abroad also offered the anonymity and distance to come out, something that wasn’t offered back home at the time. Ireland is a different place now though, and few felt that more than PJ when he married his husband Jose at the Inish Beg Estate in West Cork in 2024.

“If you look at the wedding video, I’m just crying for the whole thing,” he says. “And I’m not really a crier, sure I’m not, Kev? When I moved away when I was twenty, I was in the closet. I didn’t feel there was a place for me. When I did come out at twenty-one, I still didn’t feel like there was much of a place for me back home as a gay man.

“When I did end up getting married in Cork, it was this full-circle moment: my mam giving me away and all my family seeing me marry the love of my life. The day was just full of love. If my twenty-one-year-old self saw that, he would have been blown away I’d say.”

Pride Is A Protest

June, being Pride month, is when that progress – and lack thereof – comes into focus.

“It’s exhausting! Sick of it, take down the flags!” PJ laughs. “We’re booked and busy, girlies, we love it. We’re booked socially and in a business sense, because we do a lot of Diversity and Inclusion talks with companies coming up to Pride. But it’s also the time of year where we’re going to a Pride party every weekend.

“For me, Pride is a celebration of how far we’ve come, but it’s also a time to check in on what else needs to be fought for. There’s still people within our community that need our help.”

“Pride is a protest,” Kevin agrees. “I think more gays, as well as the partying, need to do bit of extra work, like standing up for our trans brothers and sisters. They’ll go for trans people, and when people feel that they’ve shut them out enough, that’s when they start pushing back on our rights as well. The rise of Reform UK candidates – if that’s not a big enough indicator that we need to be pushing back and fighting for ourselves, then I don’t know what is.

“We’re buddies with Ranae Von Meding, who does a lot of work with Equality for Children, and talks about the disparities when it comes to being a rainbow family, and the inequalities with trying to have kids and looking after your kids as queer parents. So things like that, or even queer refugee centres who’ve been struggling for so long in Ireland.”

And the I’m Grand Mam podcast has also done real work, especially regarding visibility.

“After the second episode we got so many messages,” PJ says. “Not just from people who are in the closet and struggling with their own sexuality, but also parents to queer kids, or siblings. We realised that obviously as we’re doing the podcast we’re having a laugh and having fun, but it’s also a good representation.

“A lot of times growing up I remember watching EastEnders or Coronation Street. Any gay storyline was about somebody being bullied, or struggling, or cheating on their wife. Now, it’s just nice to show two gay lads who are really happy and just living their life.“

Kevin nods his head.

“There are probably some people in Ireland who don’t have any gay friends,” he says. “When I was growing up, you had to cheat peeks into the gay world. Like if Sex And The City had a gay storyline or character. I used to even be embarrassed watching Will & Grace because I was just looking at it for a glimpse of what it was like to be gay.

“I used to think growing up, ‘Oh like, my sexuality doesn’t define me, I’m more than just a gay man’. And then I’m like, ‘No, but it also does dictate so many of my life experiences, so it does mean something’. But it also means nothing. It’s really crazy. I’m really proud of being a gay man and from the podcast you’ll get that.

“There’s two gay boys at the heart of it and we talk about a lot of gay stuff. But also it’s just one facet of it. If there was a young fella who wanted some kind of access or insight, or just to listen to two gay voices, the fact he can just pick up his phone and find a bit of comfort – there’s great power in that.”