I’m Grand Mam’s Kevin & PJ On Loneliness, LGBTQ+ Slang & Being In Their Author Era

“Early on, we got a DM on Instagram, one girl said that she was suffering with chronic back pain right,” Kevin Twomey tells me. “She hadn’t slept, she was in an awful way, it had impacted her life so much. She couldn’t go up the stairs, so she had to sleep downstairs! She admitted to us that she was just feeling like such a poor version of herself, and then she listened to us for the first time, and she spent the night laughing and listening to two or three episodes in a row, and she said she had the best sleep of her life, because she had laughed and cried and was so exhausted – trying to keep up with our Cork accents probably – that she finally had a daycent sleep and I was like… isn’t that just class?!” he smiles. “Forget your ASMR and your NyQuil, I remember sending it to my mam and I was like ‘I’m helping people sleep god dammit!’’

This is the power of I’m Grand Mam, the podcast. “Forget Lourdes, tune into I’m Grand Mam!” Okay, they might not be able to cure back pain… directly, but my God will they make sure to cheer you up when you’re feeling down. The premise of the pod is two friends chatting and catching up, it originated when they were both living in London, almost like a reassurance to their mammies at home in Cork. Two friends chatting might seem like an overused concept for a podcast, but when it’s done right, there’s no reason it should be anything else. Kevin and his BFF co-host PJ discuss everything from how their week went, pop culture, LGBTQ+ culture and just make an absolutely winning team.

Adding to my question about the type of feedback they get, PJ tells me: “It’s so varied too, the messages that you get, we’re not just helping the queer listeners, there are people who feel lonely because they moved away from home, or they feel down so they go out for a walk and stick it on, so it just feels like, worthwhile, yknow?” The podcast first aired in 2019. “It was born out of working in a creative industry where we didn’t have too many doors open to us.” Kevin shares. “I was working in a restaurant when we started the podcast, it was that need to be fulfilled creatively. We wanted to start a club night but the podcast just felt very achievable… from what we had seen online anyway!” he laughs, ”We were mad to do something together, we had all these ideas so we said let’s just give it a bash.”

PJ adds: “We were recording a second episode with a friend about his coming out story, but then when we listened back it was kind of all over the gaff, sure, we didn’t know what we were doing! And also, we were like, these people don’t actually even know us yet, we haven’t even told our coming out stories, so we parked that.” They decided instead, to share their own coming out stories. Kevin recalls: “After that so many people messaged us to say that it helped them, people who weren’t out of the closet yet, people who had friends who had recently come out, people saying ‘this has helped’, so we felt there was this direction to keep things honest and talk about our experiences as gay men.” The podcast has tackled all sorts of issues, while remaining fun, relatable and addictive.

“If we feel like we’re performatively talking about something we won’t do it,” PJ says. “So we wouldn’t be like ‘oh it’s time to do a big political episode’ but I would come to Kevin, or Kevin would come to me, and be like ‘I really feel passionate about this’. We did an episode on loneliness recently and that just came from me and Kevin talking about it.” Kevin chimes in, giggling. “PJ actually wanted to do that two years ago, and I was like… I’m not that lonely…” He says with a smirk, before PJ adds: “Then life hit him”. The boys laugh, with Kevin adding: “I had to come back with my tail between my legs to PJ and be like… I’m actually pretty lonely now!” 

The popularity of the podcast has led to brand deals, a Late Late Show appearance and many live shows attended by adoring fans, as well as their latest venture, a book. The I’m Grand Mamual is part hilarious, emotional memoir, and part guide to life. The podcast is riddled with delicious internet-isms and LGBTQ+ vernacular, so I wonder if the book editors had trouble understanding everything they wrote. Both cackle with laughter when I ask, and nod enthusiastically. PJ confirms: “The notes were so funny!” In one story, Kevin writes about his mother asking him for outfit advice, even though his sister was ‘right there’, “So I wrote ‘my sister found rotting’ and one of the publishers was like ‘I looked online, everywhere, but I don’t know what this means!’’ he laughs. “There were, like, niche gay ones… I said I was the ‘Lea Michele of the choir,’  but I said ‘only I could read’ and the editor was like… ‘what?!’ I was like oh it’s this running internet joke that Lea Michele can’t read!”

PJ also had to provide some explanations: “I said ‘I was serving’ and she was like ‘serving what?’ she thought I was like serving someone something. We both made a decision early on that we weren’t going to change ourselves and people could figure it out. I hope that’s part of the charm that we don’t change our Cork slang or gay vernacular. Now, [the editor] was an absolute godsend because my grammar was a mess, but in some cases it was actually on purpose!” It’s why the podcast works so well, so why change? Though, new fans will be helped by a glossary at the start of the book with Cork slang and Irish mammy-isms.

The book documents things like their coming out stories, the importance of self-expression, and moving away from home, all while providing helpful, gentle advice if you’re figuring any of these things out yourself. So who do they hope will pick this book up? “I have a tiered system right,” says PJ, “It’s for the girls, gays, theys and of course, the Irish mammies, they’ll be loving the book, I hope. But then, and it happens with the podcast too, there’s straight men, whose girlfriends or friends listen to us and they’re in the background listening too and they actually love us! When we see them on the streets they’re like ‘my girlfriend loves you…’ so I think their girlfriend or sister will buy it and they’ll be reading a few chapters on the sly and they’ll love it! They’ll come up to us and be like ‘I had a small read of it there when the Mrs was out and I couldn’t put it down like!’”

Kevin agrees, “There’s people then like my brother, pure lad, plays football but then I’m his gay brother and he’s pure mad about me! He would even get further insight from it because some of the stuff I wrote in the book I wouldn’t have shared with him, that’ll be nice I think. But I do feel it’s for anyone, gays, girlies, theys but like the idea is that it’s some kind of… it doesn’t have all the answers, but maybe some kind of road map. Like if there’s a young Irish person struggling to come out, because we didn’t have anything like that growing up. It’s just to show you’re not alone, these lads felt like this as well, and now they’re having a great time!”

PJ adds: “I think it’s a really nice gesture, if a parent or friend doesn’t know what to do when someone comes out, give them the book. And really, when they are people fucking protesting against queer books in libraries in Cork, more queer books out there is just a good thing!” 

The I’m Grand Mamual is on sale now 

This article originally appeared in the December 2023 issue of STELLAR magazine. 

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