The standup is returning to the stage to welcome us back into his lovably parochial world. But will we ever know the man behind the homely persona?
It can’t be easy to become the nation’s favourite comedian. Harder still to remain so. Consider the achievement, then, of Peter Kay, who got there, broke every popularity record going, then gave public life a decade-long swerve – before returning, after years of only intermittent visibility, to find himself more popular than ever. As I write, the 02 Arena’s website has crashed under the weight of thousands of fans jostling to book for the Bolton man’s new tour, announced last week and his first since 2010. That last standup tour is still ranked by the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest-selling of all time. Who would bet against its 2022 follow-up raising the bar even higher?
So what’s behind this colossal love-in – and will these gigs justify the hype? For most of his fans they probably will, because no one does relatable observational comedy better than Kay. His genius, strategic or otherwise, has been to appeal across the tribal divides of British comedy – or to short-circuit those divides by good nature and good jokes alone. Early success with Channel 4’s That Peter Kay Thing (a mockumentary before the genre became ubiquitous) and its spin-off Phoenix Nights (featuring Kay as wheelchair-using club impresario Brian Potter) bought him cachet with the alternative comedy crowd.
