Peter Kay made the news last weekend when he kicked two hecklers out of his show at the Manchester Arena.
Kay defended the move afterwards, saying he’d done his “best to address the situation and made light of it, as any comedian would, but unfortunately their interruptions continued”.
One heckler was removed for loudly ordering the Bolton comic’s favourite “garlic bread” one too many times. He went on to tell the Daily Mail he felt he’d been “treated like a terrorist”.
Another had announced “we love you, Peter” in the aftermath, resulting in Kay calling her Lisa Riley as she was ejected, because of her resemblance to the actress.
The woman later said on TikTok that she felt “humiliated” and thought his reaction was a bit “over the top”.
BBC News journalist Ellen Kirwin told the BBC the “vibe was good” in the place before the red cards, which “seemed unjustified”.
The incidents prompted a week-long discussion about when piping up can be fun, and how it can quickly get out of hand.
WIth this in mind, we asked an English, a Welsh and Scottish comedian – almost a joke in itself, if they were to walk into a bar together – for their thoughts on the subtle art of dealing with hecklers.
‘Most brutal heckle ever’
Larry Dean, who starts his UK tour on Wednesday 19 February in Cardiff, tells the BBC he “felt sorry for the audience, not just Peter Kay”.
“It’s a really hard thing to do because no one wants to see a comic go serious, you feel like a teacher sometimes,” he says.
“It changes the atmosphere when a heckler goes too far, but it really is about gaging, do the people around me want me to keep going?”
Last year, Dean found himself the victim of what he has described as “the most brutal heckle ever”.
When discussing the topic of ghosts, he overheard a woman loudly talking to someone else in the audience and decided to ask if she was okay.
“My dad bought me these tickets because he’s dying and he wanted me to have a laugh,” came the reply.
“We’re not laughing”, she added, “so I’ve said to my pal we’re going to leave.”
Dean recalls his shocked response.
“Obviously I’m not gonna make fun of that,” Dean tells the BBC.
The Glaswegian looked so discombobulated by the heckle that another audience member asked him if he was okay.
“Looking at it, perspective wise, Chris Rock [who was slapped on stage at the Oscars by Will Smith) and Peter Kay – who have the two most famous show interuptions from the past few years – they’ve have had it easy!
“They need to get this woman from Dundee to know what a heckle really is.”
His second-worst heckle involved a man on the front row repeating the same whispered swear word at him, so low that only he could hear it. “I just had to ignore it,” he says.
Arenas, like the ones Kay performs in, bring in more people but they can also bring problems for stand-ups, he says.
“They’re harder to play than a theatre or comedy club because the laughter goes up, it doesn’t come towards the stage,” says Dean, who has played support slots in arenas.
He says it’s difficult for comedians in Kay’s situation to hear what audience members are actually saying, and that their interjections are also distracting for others watching in different parts of the arena.
“People say, ‘he should have said this…’, but usually people who say that have never been on stage before and they don’t know how hard it can be thinking that quickly in the moment about what the best thing for the show is; because you just want everybody to have a good time.”
Another British comic James Acaster last year released a special entitled Hecklers Welcome. Not because he particularly enjoys the experience, but in order to face his biggest fear and, as he told GQ, “run towards the thing I was scared of”.
Dean feels that “nothing will ever catch people’s attention more” than watching a comedian get heckled.
But, he warns, if you’re going to take a pop at a professional then you have to expect something to come back your way.
Heckling versus crowd work
Abi Clarke, who has almost a million followers on TikTok, thinks most comedians will be on Kay’s side of the argument.
Crucially though, the Bristolian notes: “There’s a difference betwen heckling and crowd work.
“With crowd work a comedian is inviting it, you’re asking a question, you’re wanting a chat and that’s very different from somebody shouting out a random thing.
“Once is fine, or twice but if the comedian stops engaging with you or says that’s enough, then at that point you’re ruining it.”
New comic superstar Paul Smith made his name roasting crowds as an MC/compere in Liverpool, while Jimmy Carr is also famed for inviting and actively engaging with interuptions.
For Clarke, heckling comes into its own when comics are workshopping new material. If someone joins in, it can create new “source material” that can be used as a fresh joke at the next gig.
“I’ve had hecklers who have interupted multiple times but if they’re engaging, joining in with what you’re saying and being positive, I don’t mind that, it’s quite fun.
“If they’re just derailing the gig because they like the sound of their own voice, then I think you should just chuck them out!
“‘Garlic bread’ – there’s not much you can do with that.”
‘Spontaneous moments’
Clarke thinks if you’re going to someone’s headline show that they’ve honed and crafted – “they’ve perfected the rhythm, set-up and punchline” – then the time to interject has passed.
“I promise you, It will be a better show if they get to perform it how it’s meant to be performed.”
The other time that heckling comes in handy, she says, is for promotional purposes online, as comics don’t want to give away their best written material for free, when a great bit of crowd banter will show off their skills just as well.
“The ones we will post are the wonderful one-off spontaneous moments because they’ll never happen again, so they won’t ruin the show.”
She’s “quite lucky so far”, she says, having had only “two or three horrible instances” of bad heckling, and in those cases the audience had her back.
“It’s easy to win an argument against a person that no one in the room likes.”
Her new tour, Role Model, which kicks off on Thursday 17 April in Southampton, finds her keeping a humorous tally of bad behaviour, while questioning if she herself is a bad person for doing certain things.
During these moments she finds other girls will supportively offer, “no, it’s fine”, which she really appreciates on a human level, but “that’s not what the joke is for!”.
‘Chaos and magic’
Welsh comic Paul Hilleard, who won the BBC New Comedy Award last year, believes that dealing with hecklers is “part of the job” and that Kay – a finalist in the same award in 1997 – may have “thrown his toys out of the pram” a bit.
Especially given he was playing to a room of “people who love you”, he says.
It’s a bit different from some of the venues – or “bear pits” – that he currently plays as an up-and-coming comedian in Bristol, while also working as a teaching assistant.
He sometimes performs in back rooms of pubs, where people don’t always know that comedy is about to take place around them.
“Heckling is just part of the game, it’s not fun… but it can be,” he adds, mischievously.
“I’ve always been taught you’ve got to play the room. If it’s chaotic, it doesn’t matter if you’ve written the best 20 minutes ever, you’ve got to control that room of people who are intoxicated, and show them that you’re funnier.”
Stag and hen dos, which tend to gravitate to comedy nights, can bring such chaos.
Hilleard says he has spoken with other comics who agree that audiences “are a little more feral” since returning from the Covid lockdown, “heightened” by social media.
“One guy was on magic mushrooms, we found out, and it became part of the show, you lean into it,” he says. “That’s the best thing you can do, until they become very abusive.”
“There’s a line,” he continues. “If you’re ruining the show, that becomes the venue’s problem.
“But it’s our job as a comic to make that heckle part of the show, as that’s where the magic is.”
He will perform at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival in May, and said there are “tricks of the trade” including certian “jokes and comebacks” that experienced comedians can lean on to deal with such situations.
But it’s all worth it, he says, “if you can turn something on the fly that wasn’t planned into something hilarous”.
“That’s when people are like, ‘oh my God, how did you do do that?’.”
Nine out of 10 hecklers, he believes, are not trying to ruin the show, they just think it’s “part of the fun” or “want to be acknowledged”.
And the one that does, “might have had a bad day, drank too much or they might just be an [idiot]!
“I think it’s something within people, we like a bit of drama.”
