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Peter Kay isn’t the first comedian to deal harshly with hecklers – but will this incident be one of the most damaging? His eviction on Saturday night of two overenthusiastic audience members has raised more stink than most such encounters. Why? I think it’s because of the brutality of this kicking-out – and how jarring that is in relation to Kay’s lovable image, and to the nature of his comedy too.
The prime offender at Kay’s gig on Saturday night was a man shouting out the comic’s most famous catchphrase, “garlic bread”. This is not an unusual thing to do at a celebrity comedy show, where joining in on the catchphrase is often encouraged as all part of the communal fun. I’ve seen the show in question, which Kay premiered – after a long absence from the stage – more than two years ago. It is, in a sense, more catchphrase than comedy, fashioning TV themes, advertising jingles and the most popular routines from Kay’s career into one intense hit of relatability and fellow-feeling. If you don’t find yourself joining in, Pavlov’s doggy style, you’re not watching it properly.
No doubt this particular punter went too far – and Kay is well within his rights to eject an audience member who is ruining others’ fun. But did he have to do it so cruelly? “There was a nastiness to his voice,” one of his two victims protested afterwards. This woman was thrown out for chiming in with a “we love you, Peter” while the previous heckler was being dealt with.
“It was like he was trying to get the crowd against me,” she later complained. “It just wasn’t nice, to be honest.” She’s not wrong. Video of the encounter (illicitly filmed, of course – another example of audiences going rogue!) reveal Kay gloating over his hecklers’ eviction, encouraging security to be as rough as possible, and rallying his crowd to jeer the evictees.
This is where the story turns from your regular comic v heckler fracas to something uglier – the more so because Kay’s brand is bloke-next-door homeliness, not Jimmy Carr malice. “It’s not something you ever want to do,” Kay told reporters afterwards – and this would be a non-story had he seemed, onstage, to not want to do it. That’s usually how comedians deal with these situations: with a joke or two, but businesslike, and with a tinge of regret. It’s the sadistic relish that’s shocking here. Perhaps there’s an element of glee in the coverage, too, that the mask has slipped, that the steely Peter Kay, long suspected as lurking behind the cuddly facade, has finally been revealed.
It’s hard not to consider this incident in the context of recent developments in live comedy – developments which may have crept up on Kay, so distant now from the grassroots of standup. But the status of heckling, of comedians’ interactions with their crowd, is never settled. Dealing with interruptions used to be a badge of honour. Then, as the art form gentrified, heckling fell out of favour. But now, thanks to social media – where comedians sell their shows on the strength of their “crowd work”, and indeed orchestrate audience participation for just that purpose – the cut-and-thrust of comic/crowd backchat is back in vogue.
In a world where younger comics study how to do it just right, this crass instance of crowd work on Kay’s part looks all the more of a misstep. He will survive it. We’re not in Michael Richards territory here – the Seinfeld star having sabotaged his standup career with a racist riposte at hecklers at a gig in 2006. But Kay’s man-of-the-people reputation – the comic we’d all love to break bread with, garlic or otherwise – will be tainted.
