PETER Kay thrilled fans when he recreated his iconic (Is This The Way To) Amarillo? video with NHS superstars for Big Night In after two years away from TV screens.
The Bolton-born funnyman is worth a staggering £43 million, counting Noel Gallagher and Eric Clapton among his celebrity fans. Big-hearted Peter, 46, has also raised thousands for charity.
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All this is a far cry from his humble beginnings in Lancashire. The cheeky comic left school with one GCSE in art and discovered his talent for performing at Manchester’s Salford College. “For the first time in my life I found something that I loved,” he says. “It just poured out of me.”
But success didn’t come overnight and he worked in a toilet roll factory, stacked shelves in Netto and washed cups in a bingo hall. “I never settled because I wasn’t meant to pack toilet rolls or stack shelves,” he says. “I was destined to make people laugh.” Soon, he was playing stand-up gigs and working as a warm-up man on Michael Parkinson’s chat show.
In 1997 he was crowned Northwest Comedian of the Year (beating Johnny Vegas) and by 2001 he found fame with the hilarious That Peter Kay Thing and BAFTA-nominated Phoenix Nights, alongside Paddy McGuinness.
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Their comedy partnership was cemented by the spin-off Max and Paddy’s Road To Nowhere and Peter lampooned reality shows as Geraldine McQueen in Britain’s Got The Pop Factor… He’s had cameos in Coronation Street and Dr Who and starred opposite Sian Gibson in Peter Kay’s Car Share.
“If my mum or my wife says that something isn’t funny, I know I’ve struck gold,” he once joked.
When he’s not on TV, Peter loves the quiet life with his wife Susan, who he married in 2001. They had a son, Charlie, the year after and have since had two more children, but because Peter is so fiercely protective of his family’s privacy he still hasn’t revealed their names. “I’m actually shy and my salvation is coming home to them,” he says.
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“For me, whatever happens there’s nothing better than family,” he said in a rare interview. “Being a dad is just brilliant and fantastic. You can’t put into words what it’s like.”
In 2017, he stepped away from the limelight after cancelling his tour, but the generous comedian still does charity work behind the scenes, raising £35,000 to help children with mitochondrial disease and put £150,000 from a gig towards a mum’s cancer treatment.
Peter made a brief comeback earlier this month to cheer people up in lockdown with an audio version of Car Share, but now fans are calling for a permanent return to our screens.
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