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BOLTON WANDERER

BY OLLIE WILSON

EVEN in the dream-making world of comedy, Peter Kay's story is a remarkable one. A couple of years ago, he felt lucky to be working as an usher in a Bolton cinema.

Now he has had his own six-part television series, That Peter Kay Thing, on Channel 4, and plays solo tours of major standup venues.

All the same, Kay - a cherub-faced 28-year-old - is still little known down on the London comedy circuit, the rough-and-tumble training ground for most of Britain's leading stand-ups.

He leapfrogged that level, after winning the So You Think You're Funny contest in Edinburgh in 1996.

Even now, some struggling comedians go green with envy at the mention of his name, claiming his overnight success was a fluke.

In truth, Kay has quickly capitalised on early breaks, working like a trojan from his beloved home town of Bolton to fully establish himself on the national comedy scene.

It was beside a coach at Bolton West Services, on the M61, that I met him. Wearing a 10-gallon hat, tasselled suede jacket and pony-tail, Kay looked a daunting prospect. The interview was to take place on board between filming for his most recent television series on the M61.

And because the inside of the coach was in shot, I first had to don an Afro-wig and join a cast of '70s extras, who looked like Village People rejects, singing the disco anthem Le Freak by Chic.

Kay presided over this retro chaos in the guise of a grumpy coach driver, who went on to tell his passengers: "My name's Utah. There's a chemical toilet on board, but if you're going to use it, no solids . . . and no buggering around with the emergency exit. We had one lad bounce out on way to Torquay. He's now fed through a straw."

Between scenes, Kay turned into a benign figure. Supreme confidence shone out, as did his warmth and charisma.

Sitting beside me on the coach, he stressed his comedy did not stem from any childhood "tragedy, trauma or mental beating". Yes, his parents got divorced, but very amicably.

Yes, he was bullied at school, but only mildly.

His love of his roots is profound and unshakable. And he said he treasured memories from his happy past - the shrink-wrapped moments or popular songs that bring old times flooding back.

Kay was born in 1973 in the Daub Hill area of Bolton, the son of a local factory worker, Michael Kay, and a Northern Ireland-born housewife called Deirdre.

His parents brought him up a Roman Catholic, and, he says he enjoyed his days at his primary school, St. Ethelbert's, and the now-demolished secondary school St. Joseph's, both Bolton, rather too much. He left in 1989 with almost no qualifications - one GCSE in art - and drifted from dead end job to job for six years.

"Oh God, I worked everywhere," says Kay, "I had jobs in a factory packing toilet rolls, in a supermarket, in a video shop, behind the bar in a wine lodge, at a bingo hall, at a cash-and-carry, in a cinema as an usher, at Manchester Arena as a steward, as a mobile disc jockey and at a garage for six years in between all the other jobs."

He did not realise it at the time, but this vast work experience was paving the way for his career in comedy.

For Kay is the quintessential observational storyteller.

Without the enormous repertoire of true tales that he collated during those years, he would not have such a wealth of credible comedy material.

"When I was working, I would write down lots of things that were funny - things managers would say and phrases they'd use that stood out, and stories about what happened," he says. "Whenever I do stand-up, I bring the stories to life again."

And his characters - he did a total of 16 for his last Channel 4 series - are all based on people he has met. "I hated working at a bingo hall but it inspired the episode The Bingo, and The Arena episode is from my time working at Manchester Arena."

Utah - the disagreeable country and western-loving coach driver - was based on a man who drove the Kay family on a holiday to Wales in 1991.

"He made a big impression on me because he kept calling his coach 'a big girl' and said driving her through the small streets was like 'threading the eye of a needle'," Kay recalls wistfully.

During filming, he fights tooth and claw to preserve his vision of the final product, squabbling with the director Andrew Gillman about technical details. "People think we're combative together," admits Gillman, "but in fact we have a very close working relationship."

Still, the leap from Bolton odd-jobber to hands-on television comedian has been a mammoth one.

Without qualifications, how did he even get a university place? "I was wondering when you'd pick me up on that," says Kay with a cheeky grin. "I lied. I had no 'A' Levels and only one GCSE. But I told them I had 'A' Levels in Psychology and English Literature and five GCSEs and they never checked."

But his lack of academic experience caught up with him. "I was studying English Literature and Theatre Studies and found it too difficult," he admits, "So I transferred to Salford in 1994 to do an HND course in Media Performance that had more hands-on work and fewer essays to write. We did more practical drama in four weeks at Salford than I'd done in six months at Liverpool."

He acted in half-a-dozen plays and found he had a talent for performance. "For once I'd found something I really loved. I excelled."

He took stand-up comedy option as part of the course and found it the discipline he enjoyed most.

So on graduating, Kay concentrated on getting open spots at comedy clubs near his home.

He phoned the Buzz Club, in Manchester, where they suggested he enter the North-west Comedian of the Year contest, which had given Mrs Merton comedienne Caroline Aherne her big break.

He did, and won it. And in the following year, 1997, he won Channel 4's So You Think You're Funny Awards and was runner-up in the BBC New Comedy Award. And in the summer of 1998, Kay took his own hour-long show to the Edinburgh Fringe and was nominated for the Perrier Award.

On stage, his confidence and fantastic rapport with the audience is a winner, carrying material that is not as strong as his performance skills.

But success always comes with a price tag. Kay has grown used to jealous rival comedians exploiting the smallest chink in his armour.

"When I started doing stand-up a lot of comedians accused me of stealing their material," he says. "It really upset me. I was naive. I didn't know there were a thousand other comedians talking about Jerry Springer and Teletubbies.

"So I thought, 'Sod you. I'm going to talk about my family. Then comedians can't come to me and say I've lifted it, because they are my own stories and real things that happened. But there's still a lot of jealousy. Some people are bitter because they had a career plan and it just hasn't happened for them. They begrudge other people having success."

He drops his 'h's like a Cockney and could play the big London clubs every week, but prefers to stay up north. "If I can make money up here, I might as well do that instead," he says. "London has never appealed to me. I turned down doing three nights at the Comedy Store, because I had already performed there for a Channel 5 special and would rather be at 'ome."

Like a comedic version of Kenneth Branagh, Kay invited up-and-coming performers to share his success.

In the series, there are 22 other comedians that I admire and respect." Most of the extras are Bolton mates, and he got his friend Lee Pearce, a fellow ex-cinema usher, a job on the production.

"Peter looks after his friends - he really cares about them," says Pearce.

Peter's friends and family are like his umbilical cord to normality. "At every stage in my life, I've taken one or two good friends with me.

So I have about 10 really close friends. I'm content with what I've got. When I get opportunities to make new friends, I think, "I'm all right. I've got enough."

He is engaged to a local girl called Susan. "She's Irish Catholic like me," he says. "She seems very Irish to me. I don't feel Irish." They are in love, he says, and have much in common.

"If you're born a Catholic, you're not born in hospital, you're born in guilt," he says, quoting another comedian. "You're given a lot of 'God will punish you!'"

The coach had arrived in Daub Hill, Bolton, where a burglar alarm is loudly ringing and a gale is blowing.

We were in the street shooting the final scene of the day - just a few yards from the two-up, two-down where Kay still lives with his mother.

An elderly former neighbour approaches Kay and they chat like old mates.

"It's been 10 year since she died," says the pensioner out of the blue, referring to his wife.

Kay reflects: "People in Bolton treat me like they always did. It's normal, tranquil and calming. It's safe and I love that about where I live. It's nothing to do with Bolton or the north.

"If I had been born and raised in Brighton, I think I'd have felt the same. I'm not particularly patriotic towards the north. It's just that's where my 'ome is and I love being at 'ome. I'm a bit frightened of going out into the big wide world. I wanted to see what I can do round where I live."

He is not daft. When Channel 4 originally suggested calling the series, Peter Kay's Friends In The North, he strongly objected to the name for fear of alienating southern viewers. He worries his success will be short lived.

"I keep all my cuttings," he says, "for when I'm back on bins. I have a belief that it's not going to last. But at least, I will be able to look back and say, 'I lived'. All this will be frozen in time for me."


© 2000 Chris Wilson