Peter Kay: best jokes, the secret to his success and what makes the Phoenix Nights comedian so special

There can be few in show business full stop who can disappear from the spotlight for over a decade, releasing no new material whilst shunning almost all media attention who can then cause the O2 switchboard to meltdown as tickets for his latest tour went on sale.

Karae-jokey: what’s black and white and eats like a horse? A ZEBRA!

But as the now host of the BBC’s Top Gear says: Peter Kay has a gift and ever since he shot to fame from the lofty heights of the Blackpool Tower ballroom, he has enjoyed a special relationship with the nation.

So what’s his secret? What is it about this seemingly jolly lad from Bolton who scrapped and scraped to make ends meet on the factory floors, bingo halls and cinema complexes of Lancashire? Well, it is precisely that. His material is steeped in the experiences of the working-class northerner.

In his debut ‘video’ (VHS, probably) running late for his own show, Kay laments that it isn’t being shot in colour but in black and white. He asks: “How much is colour?” and is told £44.50 he fires back an ‘“ow much!?” (the like of which you’ll hear in every shop across the working class north) and pleads poverty with the production crew - just like, perhaps, any other hard-up down-on-your-luck northerner might have to do. He was one of us.

Having coppered up the shrapnel from his own pockets he realises he’s a few quid short. Why? “I had me tyres tracked and balanced this morning and now I’m not going to be able to give me mum ‘er keep!” In those quick-fire lines he’s telling us he’s utterly skint and living with his mum but, crucially, he gives us a taste of what it is that makes him so relatable. The complete and utter mundaneness of the car tyres reference is an early nod to the way he watches people - observes everyday life - with the dead-set intention of holding it up to us as a mirror.

In many ways, the audiences are laughing as much at themselves as they are at him; the little quirks and foibles of life. His first laugh at the top of the tower comes from simply taking off his coat and trotting out that eternal mumism we all had shot at us as kids: ‘I’ll take my coat off, otherwise I won’t feel the benefit when I get outside.’ It’s a saying parents and grandparents have scolded young children with since God were a lad (or lass) and yet in Kay’s hands, it’s comedy.

Karae-jokey: man goes into the doctors with a steering wheel down his underpants. Dr said, ‘what happened?’ He says, ‘I dunno but it’s driving me nuts!’

In fact, if you take a step back and analyse his techniques, he actually manages to subvert the traditional stand-up comedy routines that went before him - the ones he no doubt saw in the workingmen’s clubs at home and on holiday. Karae-jokey, as he calls it - jokes you can join in with - isn’t just a bit of fun. It is Peter setting his own performance apart. He is not asking us to sit and watch a comedy act, he is inviting us into his space to share common ground. It isn’t a coincidence that during his recorded performances his mum and sometimes aunt are there. In the opening moments of the Blackpool performance where he is noticeably nervous, sipping constantly from a bottle of water, he says ‘sorry, mum’ after mild swearing on stage. We’re privileged to be at a Kay family gathering where it is OK to laugh at and with one another as the conversation flows.

His next ‘joke’ is not really a joke but the turn of dads to look in Kay’s mirror. “Did your dad ever do that thing where he gets you in a headlock as the police drive by? HE’S HERE! I’VE GOT HIM! Here you go, they’ve come for you, look.” It is clear-sighted observation, played back to us by a master craftsman.

Dinner ladies. Pink ladies. Pink women. Pink skin, pink hair, pink tabards. I don’t know about you but deep down in the bones of the child I once was I know exactly who he is talking about and the names of the playground enforcers come flooding back to you.

Karae-jokey: William Shakespeare walks into a pub. Landlord shouts, ‘get out you’re Bard!’

And that, too, is a key part of the tapestry that is Peter Kay’s comedy. Nostalgia, particularly in popular culture. He weaves, beautifully, references to 1980s and 90s TV, music, food, drink and more. He wants those sitting in the audience to know that he knows them. To feel that he’s been there, walking the walk of someone without the comfort of millions and millions of pounds in the bank.

And guess what. That mirror he likes to hold up, he isn’t allowed to look away from it. Little self-deprecating flashes: “Oh, I tell you what. If you think I’m fat you wanna go over to America. It’s like It’s A Knockout over there!” Again, he doesn’t want us to marvel at a performer; he wants to sit with us and make us all feel comfortable in his company. To enjoy his company. And enjoy it we must, because we will never see the like of him again.