How Peter Kay changed British comedy

In a well-publicized speech at a seminar in London in 1999, Prime Minister Tony Blair proselytized that he wanted those “traditionally considered working class” to join “a new, larger, more meritocratic middle class’. During these early years of New Labour, however, Bolton comic Peter Kay – born 1973 – became a national phenomenon through comedy and stand-up work that was almost exclusively a nostalgic reflection on traditional working-class culture. Comfort food for a changing nation, Kay was rewarded by becoming the UK’s highest-grossing stand-up comedian by 2010. His catchphrases and routines have stuck in the popular memory.

This month, when Peter Kay announced his return to live performance after an 11-year hiatus, it was a flagship newsletter of BBC News at ten. Kay previously pulled out of all planned stand-up and TV projects in 2017 due to “unforeseen family reasons” that remain undisclosed. For most of the past half-decade, he has only been seen sporadically and briefly at charity fund-raising appearances. When tickets went on sale on Saturday 12 November, up to two million people joined the digital queue for tickets in Manchester alone and the O2 Priority app crashed. The arena tour’s scheduled end date of August 2023 has now been extended to at least July 2025.

“I’m very into comedy. I always studied that,” Kay emphasized in a 1997 television interview at the dawn of her career, citing non-modern figures such as Ronnie Barker and Victoria Wood as formative influences. In one of his first live performances, he beat out more established acts such as Johnny Vegas for Northwest Comedian of the Year in 1996. Kay’s technically dazzling stand-up would be honed through tape recordings and a close examination of each of his own club sets. A coveted Perrier Award nomination in 1998 was followed by series commissions.

Ricky Gervais The office is often praised for pioneering a naturalistic, mockumentary format, but in 2000. That Peter Kay thing did the same 18 months earlier. Drawn from Kay’s lived experience working in highway gas stations and bingo halls, he often played multiple characters—his real gift being private tyrannical all-around entertainers.

In response to this comeback, Kay was known as “big-hearted” – a reputation largely built on his sentimental sitcom from the mid-2010s. Car sharing – but his best work was anything but. Phoenix Nights (2001) observed a fictional working men’s club in decline. Darkly funny and often shockingly blue, it has never been repeated on British television, nor has it been licensed to streaming services. Cast member Daniel Kitson broke ranks to (correctly) label a storyline about migrant workers as “lazy and racist”, while co-writers Dave Spikey and Neil Fitzmaurice publicly fell out with Kay in a dispute over authorship. In 2001, Channel 4 had to issue an on-air apology after Kay unflatteringly called a real-life Bolton professional in the same job a fire safety hero.

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Kay’s work broke through at an odd time for an hour on British screens. As Natalie Ola notes in her book Steal as much as you can (2019), programs like Ground forces and Changing rooms were exercises in purging British homes of their symbols of the working class. Peter Kay, with his merciless memories of televised darts, package holidays and quayside performances in Blackpool, won huge public affection by doing the opposite. His only major advertising campaign was for John Smith’s bitters, and it’s easy to forget that his famous garlic bread routine was a reflection of Britain’s rapid culinary evolution and those left behind.

In 21st century British comedy, binaries have by default become the twin poles of personal confession and “saying the unspeakable” shock and awe. Kay does neither. His Mum Wants a Bungalow tour in early 2000, with its machine-gun fire of traditional jokes, was a back-to-basics moment for British comedy. Rejecting the previous two decades of alternative comedy, Kaye engaged in a formal traditionalism that would lay the groundwork for stand-up’s unlikely return to primetime in the form of the Saturday Night Comedy Program Live at the Apollo.

Like the populist who can campaign but not govern, however, Kay’s campaign for true comedy would yield diminishing returns. His 2010-2011 tour broke records – performing to 1.2 million people – but as the comedy website Chortle reports, “noticing what he’s actually used before and what you just think you’ve heard before , is a fool’s errand’. Kay’s distance from the rawness of everyday working life manifests itself in what can often feel like a steely maintenance of the brand.

In 2019, Alexey Sale criticized Peter Kay for his supposed “obsession with money”, lamenting that “one thing we could never have realized when my generation revolutionized stand-up comedy was what a huge business it would become”. Possibly apocryphal, stories of Kay’s alleged skinflint tendencies are legendary in entertainment.

Part of this is a reflection of a vacuum created by Kay’s intense solitude. Rarely giving interviews, the extent of information available about the performer is that he lives with his wife Susan and family in Lancashire. Outside of being friends with broadcaster Danny Baker – whose father he played brilliantly on screen in the 2015 series. Cradle to grave – Kay is quite far from the contemporaries of show business. Kay’s success in his rare chat show appearances is leaving the studio without a single flashy revelation, instead opting for anarchic moments that can come off as domineering and jarring. Kay gives nothing.

The last time Kay was on tour, Labor was in government and represented the majority of seats in his native North West. You’ll hear a bit about these changes in Kay’s set, though. With comedy that can be claimed by both the left and the right, it’s a reflection of the universality of the mood that Kaye signed off her recent public thank you to fans with “PS: Matt Hancock is a proper star”. What might Kay’s new material look like? Only ticket holders will likely find out soon enough. Kay has not provided any media distribution, while the lucrative streaming and home entertainment market is unlikely to be seen until after the tour is over.

In this chaotic moment, it is difficult to predict what will happen in two years. But whatever else happens, we can be sure of one thing – come the summer of 2025, Peter Kay will be in a packed arena, cracking jokes you might think you’ve heard somewhere before.

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