‘I’m a chronic oversharer,’ understates Catherine Bohart, taking a micro-pause to sip her coffee, inhale very quickly, then share some more. ‘Do I use my live performances to process real things happening in my life? Oh, 1000 percent! I love gossiping: my own gossip, other people’s gossip. When I’m writing material, I figure “shall we just do that?”’

The night before, during her show at Edinburgh’s Monkey Barrel, the Irish comedian couldn’t resist leaking a conversation she’d heard earlier through the toilet cubicle wall. It wasn’t anything particularly shocking, nor even especially interesting for that matter, but it draws nervous howls of laughter from the women in the front row when they recognise their own banal comments being roasted onstage. 

Bohart is part mischievous imp, part wise owl; a bold and charming mix of confessional, forthright, questioning and queer. Very queer in fact. That part of her identity usually sits front and centre in her writing and TV appearances, and you may recognise her from stints on Live At The Apollo, Mock The Week, The Mash Report and Celebrity Mastermind. Or maybe you saw any of three solo stand-up shows that she’s taken to the Edinburgh Fringe:  Immaculate,  Lemon and  This Isn’t For You, with Immaculate now showing as a comedy special on Prime Video. 

The previous night was an excellent work-in-progress version of her fourth show, Again, With Feelings, where Bohart speed-talks articulately through topics including her liberal Irish-Catholic family, lesbian procreation, and the strange things that straight people do. ‘It’s fortunate that a lot has actually happened since my last show two years ago. And I’m not just talking innately boring stuff, like things I notice on the London Underground. I mean big life stuff.’ Namely, beginning a new relationship and finding herself in a problematic London house-share.

Bohart previously dated fellow comedian Sarah Keyworth, with whom she made the BBC Sounds podcast You’ll Do. The couple jousted playfully in a savage Roast Battle on Comedy Central, judged by Jonathan Ross, Jimmy Carr and Katherine Ryan, but the pair split during lockdown. Bohart’s new love interest, affectionately referred to as ‘The Current Girlfriend’, has coincided with the comic contemplating motherhood.

Again, With Feelings discusses rainbow families (‘surely when a son is raised by two gay mums, that is just a little bit too supportive?’) and whether she’s ready to start one. As a 35-year-old bisexual who came out aged 19, long before gay marriage was made legal in Ireland, she is well placed to deep-dive into the complexities of queer culture and poke fun relentlessly at it. ‘I grew up in Ireland around people obsessed with timelines: for owning property, getting married, accidentally getting pregnant; all of that. I’ve not hit any of those milestones yet, so the show is about me, lost in the weeds.’ 

She’s certainly not lost in the weeds professionally, having just announced her own BBC Radio 4 series for later in the year, a topical comedy entitled TL;DR. And she is one of ten contestants, alongside Jason Byrne and Aisling Bea, in LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland, a new Amazon reality comedy show which has aired in over 200 countries. ‘That was one of the greatest jobs I’ve ever had,’ she enthuses. ‘These are Irish comedians I’ve bought tickets to see when I was much younger, or had a crush on, and now I’m on a show with them, being a grouchy queer.’

If you’re thirsty for more Bohart (that stage name was pinched from an ex, as she confided over a Monkey Barrel mic), there are plenty places where she can be found musing on everything from her OCD, a love of stealing toilet roll, and her penchant for butch dykes. Trusty Hogs is her brash, chummy podcast alongside the raucous stand-up Helen Bauer and they’ll be touring it to Australia in April. For wonky takes on the dos and don’ts of queer sex and romance,  Shared Baggage is her moreish relationship podcast with Glasgow’s delightful Larry Dean, a gay comedian also raised in Catholicism who, like Bohart, doesn’t have much of a filter when it comes to his own personal life. 

‘Doing the podcasts always helps with my solo material. When I’m chatting on Shared Baggage about bad first dates or great ways to have non-penetrative sex, or whatever, it always helps for writing jokes. Then I’ll take some of that onstage and figure out what works and what needs deleted. It’s all about finding the lines, where to push the limits and figuring out how weird and edgy a particular crowd will let you be. I’m always figuring out so much onstage.’

The line between being eminently sensible and mildly evil is one that Bohart treads very skillfully, generally with a megawatt twinkle in her eye, flicking her mane of auburn curls confidently over her shoulder, as she segues smoothly from taxidermy to rimming, or gas leaks to incest. As Graham Norton himself put it, while presenting LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland, ‘Catherine does this sweetness and light thing, but I’ve seen her material and even I blushed.’ 

With a portion of the recent Edinburgh gig devoted to unpicking the demographics of Bohart’s mixed-sexuality audience, what would happen to her lesbian-centric set if she found herself once again dating a man? ‘Oh god, it would have to be some kind of a miracle of a man!’ she snorts, with wide eyes, before adding immediately ‘although if I dated a man, that would be an easy show to write. At the same time, when a bisexual female friend dates a man, I’m also kind of like “oh right”’, she adds, with a theatrically disdainful eye roll. ‘I guess I’m part of the problem. In fact, it’s taken me to age 35 to realise that the common denominator in all my problems is me: “hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” Taylor Swift was right.’

Catherine Bohart: Again, With Feelings tour runs Monday 4 March–Thursday 10 October.