And now this free speech culture war has even infiltrated our comedy shows, with a man from Manchester claiming that he was ’treated like a terrorist’ for being asked to leave a Peter Kay gig after he repeatedly shouted the words ‘Garlic Bread’ to the point Kay asked for him to be removed.
As a working comedian who will never be given the opportunity to play rooms like the O2, and a comedy fan, I genuinely feel for both Kay and Mr Peters in this situation because, put simply, this isn’t how comedy was meant to be performed.
I’ve seen some of the best comedians the UK has ever produced suffer in large venues, struggling to deal with an audience of adoring fans who have gone too early, arrived drunk, thought that they were helping their hero on by shouting out their favourite bits, then putting the comedian in the tricky position of having to ask someone to essentially stop enjoying themselves so much.
And in an era where most people watch stand up comedy through the prism of viral crowd work clips on TikTok and Instagram, it’s fair to assume that a lot of people think this is the point of a comedy gig.
The man, Philip Peters, told the Daily Mail he couldn’t understand being removed from Manchester’s AO arena, and is now demanding an apology from Peter Kay himself after he was apparently left bruised by the door staff who evicted him on the car share star’s instruction.
