On the first night of this mammoth comeback tour – which began in December 2022 and will run until February 2026 – Peter Kay broke down in tears. Visibly moved by a lengthy standing ovation from the crowd in Manchester he said: 'Oh Jesus, look at me, I mean what's that all about?. 'How am I supposed to do bloody comedy now? Lovely Manchester, you made me cry. Where did it come from, all that emotion?'.

Where indeed? After 11 years out of the spotlight for 'unforeseen family' reasons which he chose to keep private – and against all odds managed to do just that – it looked that night as if Kay might have doubted the true extent of his popularity. Yet as much as he is loved, the critics have been divided. He's not the man he used to be, some say. The jokes are almost all old, his voice is weaker, and he is, for the first time, including more risqué material, away from the gentle whimsy and warm nostalgia of his working-class Bolton childhood, which made him one of the UK's greatest ever comedians.

'Plenty of people left early, not waiting for the encore... wish we'd joined them,' said one disappointed audience member this month. A noticeably slimmer comedian Peter Kay in a rare sighting in London this week. The star has lost an enormous amount of weight during the two years his tour has been on. Physically, he is changed, too. On a rare sighting in London this week, it was clear that Kay, 51, had lost an enormous amount of weight during the two years that the tour has been running. He was trimmer when it started, but is near-unrecognisable now. Nothing was explained, or even mentioned, of course.

Tickets for Peter Kay: Live have sold in unprecedented volume. By the time the tour concludes, it will have broken (his own) record for the biggest-selling stand-up show of all time. Not that he needs the cash; financial records quietly filed on December 28 show that he has £25.8 million in equity in one company and £11.5 million in another. He is, according to a number of Rich Lists, the most successful funnyman in Britain – way ahead of even Ricky Gervais or Michael McIntyre.

Yet curiously, there's nobody who lives more modestly than this intensely private man. Locals in Bolton, where he still lives, use the word 'reclusive' to describe him. One neighbour said this week: 'It's sad but we never see him. You see his wife going out and about in her car and sometimes her sons. But you never see Peter – he just stays in the house. I think I have seen him once in four or five years.'.

Another said: 'He's a bit of a recluse these days. He just seems to stay inside his house. There's cameras everywhere and the security gate is always closed.'. Worth around £900,000, Kay's home in Bolton is a simple property, screened from the road by trees and a high fence. He and his wife don't drive new cars and there is no apparent ostentation. Neighbours say that they've lived there for around 15 years and in the early days did a lot on the house.

Kay with his wife Susan. He met the former Boots worker as a teenager before finding fame and they married in 2001. Inside the home is Kay's extensive collection of video tapes of old shows, such as Mork & Mindy, and the Christmas special editions of the Radio Times and TV Times, which he has collected since he was seven. Plus, of course, all the TV theme tunes he taped from the TV, and which form part of his act.

His neighbours describe him a great ambassador for Bolton, and 'proud of his roots'. He undertakes community fundraisers: in 2017 he performed at the Blackpool Opera House in aid of the Polly Haydock Appeal – a cancer treatment fund which aimed to send a mother from Bolton to Germany for pioneering immunotherapy treatment. Sadly she died a few months later. The following year he hosted a charity screening of his show Car Share to raise money for The Lily Foundation, which helps children with mitochondrial disease.

In an interview in 2009, he explained: 'I like to be low-profile and keep my head down. I still go up to the Co-op Late Shop for a bottle of Tizer. Staying in Bolton has been hugely important for me. Every street is a memory or a story for me. This is my home.'. He said: 'Sometimes your work can become your life and real life can take a back seat but, for me, it's the other way round; where I live and my family are my life.'.

The family home where the Kays live with sons Charlie, 20, and Finley, 18, is less than ten minutes' drive from the house he was raised in and which he so lovingly describes in his stand-up shows. Wife Susan is his pre-fame sweetheart and they were married in 2001, just after his hit show Phoenix Nights started transmission. They met as teenagers, and she used to work in the local branch of Boots. And it's family which really drives him. It was revealed in 2011 that a helicopter was booked to bring him home every night to Bolton after he had performed in The Tour That Didn't Tour – Tour, whisking him home from London, Newcastle and Birmingham so that he could do the school run in the morning.