Peter Kay reportedly referenced his ‘Lisa Riley heckler’ joke as he returned to stage on Friday night.
The comedian, 51, hit headlines earlier this month when he ordered one audience member in his Manchester gig to be removed for repeatedly shouting out ‘garlic bread’.
Another attendee was then removed from the audience after shouting, ‘We love you Peter Kay,’ with the actor calling out in response: ‘Go on, off you go Lisa Riley,’ in a comparison to the former Emmerdale actress.
After the controversy, Kay issued a statement on his Instagram story saying he had to ‘take action’ to avoid disruption for other audience members, adding: ‘The lady who was escorted out did bear a striking resemblance to Lisa Riley, though I don’t see how that’s an insult.’
‘As a comedian, you never want to eject anyone, but when repeated disruptions make it impossible to continue, it’s important to consider the experience of the rest of the audience, who’ve paid to see a show without interruption,’ he went on.
It has now been claimed that Kay made light of the situation during his gig on Friday night in Birmingham.
According to Mail Online, he opened his set by telling the crowd: ‘Good evening, how are you? Can I just say thank you very, very much for coming tonight. I really do appreciate it. Thank you.
‘Some of you have been waiting years for this and I hope you enjoy it, I really do.
‘So I promise I won’t throw anyone out. I hope you have a good time. Well unless you f***ing start – I’m only kidding.’
At one point during the show, a microphone was handed out to audience members for their involvement, and Kay reportedly mentioned the Lisa Riley comment.
Speaking to a woman who said she’d been to his show four times already, he joked back: ‘You’re kidding? Thank god you don’t look like Lisa Riley.’
The publication notes that there appeared to be more security at the Birmingham event than in Manchester, and that audience members remained respectful, only speaking out during participation segments.
This comes after the woman who was removed from the Manchester gig was identified, and said she was left feeling ‘humiliated’ by the incident.
Myar Curran, 25, told Good Morning Britain: ‘I didn’t mean to cause any harm, I was just showing my love because he kicked someone out. “Oh, I’ll stand up and say, we love you Peter,” but he just obviously didn’t like it.’
She added: ‘I feel like what I said was not abusive or aggressive, it wasn’t antisocial, I wasn’t drunk. I was just standing up chanting “we love you Peter, we do”. I feel like it’s just been taken a bit overtop and overboard, his reaction.’
Curran claimed she had shouted ‘we love you Peter’ and was in the same section as the heckler, but said she had nothing to do with the repeated interruptions, and that the situation left her in tears because she felt as though the comparison was a jab at her weight.
She continued: ‘I did have a cry about it after I got to the hotel room. I was just so upset. It was just a very rubbish situation. My whole family was disgusted by it.’
The man who was earlier ejected from the show, Philip Peters, 54, also told MailOnline: ‘I just can’t understand it, all I said was garlic bread.’
He said he was left ‘disgusted’ by how he was treated with his son, and wanted an apology, claiming: ‘In the first half of the show, I shouted out ‘garlic bread’ and they zoomed in on the camera on me. And I put my thumbs up and thought everything was okay. I got no warning or anything, people around us were laughing and joking.
‘Then in the second half of the show I said it again, “garlic bread”, and that’s when the security guards came over to me and said “you are going to have to leave – Peter Kay doesn’t like people shouting out”.
‘I said are you joking as I thought they were going to warn me off but they stood me up, brought me to the stairs, which were dead steep.’
Witnesses previously told MailOnline that the man who had been shouting ‘garlic bread’ was doing so repeatedly at a high volume, and Kay initially saw the funny side but became increasingly impatient when it continued to disrupt his act, and eventually stopped his routine to ask if the two hecklers were annoying the other audience members.
When the audience shouted back to Kay that they were indeed irritated by the unexpected interruptions, both Curran and Peters were swiftly ejected by security after Kay apparently brought the house lights up inside the arena.
Addressing the interruptions earlier this month, Kay wrote in a statement on Instagram: ‘At the show on Saturday night, February 8th, in Manchester, I had two hecklers disrupting from the very start. I did my best to address the situation and made light of it, as any comedian would, but unfortunately, their interruptions continued.
‘I then tried to ignore them, hoping they’d settle down, but when the disruption persisted into the second half of the show, l asked the audience around them if they were being bothered by the noise. They all shouted “yes,” and when I asked for a show of hands, at least forty people raised theirs.
‘At that point, I had no choice but to take action.
‘The lady who was escorted out did bear a striking resemblance to Lisa Riley, though I don’t see how that’s an insult.
‘This was only the second and third time I’ve had to ask someone to leave during my 114 shows over the past three years of this tour.
‘As a comedian, you never want to eject anyone, but when repeated disruptions make it impossible to continue, it’s important to consider the experience of the rest of the audience, who’ve paid to see a show without interruption.’
He previously said in a statement shared with Good Morning Britain: ‘I didn’t realise it was an insult.
‘The lady who was ejected did look remarkably like Lisa Riley, I don’t know how that is an insult.’
He added: ‘There comes a point where dealing with repeated hecklers simply isn’t enough.
‘It’s not something you ever want to do, but there comes a point where it really isn’t fair on the people around them.’
The Phoenix Nights star is currently in the middle of his Better Late Than Never (Again) tour, which is an extension of his Better Late Than Never tour that started in 2022.
He has returned to the stage after a hiatus of almost six years, following the abrupt cancellation of his planned 2018 tour Have Gags, Will Travel.
‘Garlic bread’ is one of Kay’s famous catchphrases and has followed him around almost since the very beginning of his comedy career.
Metro has approached Peter Kay’s rep for comment.
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