Bolton-born ‘clean’ comedian and Guinness world record holder Peter Kay is reported to be worth £43 million.
Peter Kay was born in Bolton to Michael John Kay and Margaret Dierdre O’Neill on July 2, 1973. This British comic, actor, film producer, screenwriter and director is very fond of his hometown, which dominates his TV shows.
His standup act began while studying at Salford University and he is now counted among the UK’s top comedians. Kay has had innumerable jobs, from a factory packing toilet rolls, in a video shop, in a supermarket, at a cash and carry, at a bingo hall, as a mobile disc jockey and at a garage for six years. As a youngster, his favourite job was in a cinema because he ‘got to see all the movies for free.’ His experiences in 1996 as a steward at the Manchester Evening News Arena formed the basis for The Arena episode of Channel 4 TV series That Peter Kay Thing.
Kay’s big break came in 1996 at the North West Comedian of the Year audition where his act was voted the best. The next year saw him winning the competition. In his autobiography, The Sound of Laughter (2006), he spoke about his performance: “Other comedians talked about sex, drugs and drink, but I didn’t drink. I’d never done drugs and if I talked about sex my Mum would have battered me senseless out of embarrassment. So I talked about what I knew best, myself, and it proved to be a breath of fresh air.” Kay seldom curses on shows and most of his witticism is clean family entertainment. His memoir is allegedly a calculated dig at The Sound of Music, as Mount St Joseph, his school, was managed by nuns.
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Kay soon got into TV comedy with That Peter Kay Thing in 1999 and then Phoenix Nights, which won him a BAFTA for best comedy. He also bagged the prestigious Rose d’Or award at the Montreux Television Festival.
The Bolton-born standup’s projected earnings from ticket and DVD sales in 2011 were estimated at £20.34 million, equal to what the Beckhams earned that same year. Kay returned to standup after a seven-year break in 2010, with The Tour That Didn’t Tour Tour. It sold over 1.04 million tickets and 1.02 million DVDs, earning him more than £20 million. In February 2012, Kay became a Guinness record holder as the most successful one-man standup comedian. His tour of 140 shows had a total audience of 1.2 million.
With over ten million DVD sales under his belt, including the Mum Wants a Bungalow tour, That Peter Kay Thing and Phoenix Nights, his current net worth is reported to be £66 million. According to 2013 Companies House figures, Goodnight Vienna and Hussein Traders – Kay’s two companies -showed collective profits of £32.8 million (almost £45,000 a day).
Kay, also a successful pop satirist, has four top ten UK singles to his credit. Since 1997, the comedian, who is a ‘qualified comedian’ with a BTEC in Media Performance Studies, has been supporting Comic Relief and Children in Need in their charity campaigns.
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Kay still lives in hometown Bolton with his ten-year-old son Charlie Michael Kay and wife Susan Gargan, to whom he proposed outside Andy’s Records on one knee, because ‘it was the first place where they kissed’.
Despite his involvement in several beer advertising campaigns, Kay is – in fact – a teetotaler in real life.
