A father has slammed Peter Kay for being ‘out of order’ after the comedian compared his daughter to Emmerdale actress Lisa Riley.
Myar Curran, 25, shouted ‘we love you, Peter’ during his gig at the AO Arena in Manchester on Saturday – only to be ejected by security.
As she was escorted out of the 23,000-capacity venue, the 51-year-old funnyman shouted back at her from the stage: ‘Go on, off you go Lisa Riley.’
The crowd burst into laughter – as they had when another heckler was thrown out for shouting ‘garlic bread’.
Care worker Ms Curran was left in tears by the comment and believes she was cruelly singled out because of her weight.
Backing his daughter Michael Curran, 64, said: ‘There’s no excuse to talk to a lady like that, she wasn’t doing anything wrong.’
He added: ‘(Kay) was out of order, he hurt her feelings.’
Mr Curran had paid £250 for tickets as a family trip before his wife tragically passed away.
‘It was a very emotional night for all of us, but what happened just ruined it. I could understand if Myar had said something abusive, but all she was doing was telling Peter we loved him.
‘To get that reaction from him when she’s lost her mum and grandad in the past three years is terrible. That’s not the Peter Kay I know’, he said.
A father has slammed Peter Kay for being ‘out of order’ after the comedian compared his daughter to Emmerdale actress Lisa Riley. Myar Curran (pictured), 25, shouted ‘we love you, Peter’ during his gig at the AO Arena in Manchester on Saturday – only to be ejected by security
As she was escorted out, the 51-year-old funnyman shouted back at her from the stage: ‘Go on, off you go Lisa Riley’. Pictured: Kay during his gig on Saturday
Ms Curran was compared to Emmerdale actress Lisa Riley (pictured in 2024) as she was escorted out of the show
Care worker Ms Curran was left in tears by the comment and believes she was cruelly singled out because of her weight
Mr Curran, a driver from Kendal, Cumbria, hopes Kay will learn from the ‘badly handled’ situation.
Ms Curran told MailOnline that during the build-up to her ejection the comedian was ‘getting annoyed’ by a man shouting ‘garlic bread’.
She said: ‘When it happened for a third time, he just said “We’ll get him kicked out.”
‘He asked the audience what they thought – at that stage it just felt like part of the show. We were a few rows back from the man who got thrown out.
‘So after that I just called out “We love you Peter”. It’s true, we did love him, he was my favourite comedian.
‘I was so excited to see him live for the first time, even though it was also really sad that my mum couldn’t be there too.
‘I was trying to show him some love as a fan of his.
‘But for some reason he got annoyed with me as well and asked the audience whether I should be kicked out as well.
‘Then he called out “Off you go Lisa Riley”.
Ms Curran said the comment made her feel ‘targeted’ and thought it was said in a ‘nasty way.’
She explained: ‘People have said it wasn’t anything to do with my weight – but if I was skinny he wouldn’t have said it.
Myar Curran (pictured) told Mail Online that during the build-up to her ejection the comedian was ‘getting annoyed’ by a man shouting ‘garlic bread’
‘I’ve got nothing whatsoever against Lisa Riley, I think she looks amazing.
‘But I know he was targeting me because of my weight. I hope he feels a bit ashamed now. I really wasn’t doing anything wrong.
‘Peter wouldn’t have said something like that in his prime, he’d have had a laugh about it.
‘Maybe he was having a bad night. But he shouldn’t have taken it out on me.’
Ms Curran thinks she spent up to £1,000 on the weekend including travel and hotels and had expected it to be ‘a special time’.
‘I do think I’m entitled to an apology from Peter Kay – to be shouted at like that for no reason was really gutting. I was just showing my love,’ she said.
It comes as the heckler, Philip Peters, 54, who was attending the gig with his son, 26, has since claimed he was treated ‘like a terrorist’ by security staff and left with bruising.
It comes as the heckler, Philip Peters, 54, who was attending the gig with his son, 26, has since claimed he was treated ‘like a terrorist ‘ by security staff and left with bruising. Pictured: Kay during his gig
A video has revealed how Kay urged his security team to ‘knock the f*** out of him’ and ‘drag him out by his pubes’ while calling for Mr Peters to be removed
But video obtained by MailOnline shows Kay’s audience applauding him as he ridicules and ejects the hecklers with humorous jibes.
MailOnline understands that Greater Manchester Police was made aware of an ejection on Saturday night but officers concluded there had been no criminality.
Now, a video has revealed how Kay urged his security team to ‘knock the f*** out of him’ and ‘drag him out by his pubes’ while calling for Mr Peters to be removed.
The four-minute clip begins with Kay saying: ‘Garlic bread? Kick him in the f***ing face, will you? Everyone around you is thinking ‘p***k’. Next time someone says ‘penny for your thoughts’, sell, k***head. We get it! We get it! ‘Garlic bread, Peter’.
‘Keith, go and knock the f*** out of him will you? He’s up there. Go on, Keith. Just drag him out by his pubes. Go on. Watch this lad here… everybody point to who he is. Oh I’m loving this, go on. Put light on Mick. F*** him, come on.’
Kay then explains to his security guards that it is not the man who they think it is, pointing out that he’s ‘up there’ – and asking his team to ‘put light on’.
When Kay had identified the heckler, he continues: ‘There, give us a wave, k***head, go on. Yay! You’re going out! He’s taking him out! Go on, take him out!
‘Syd Little’s got you here, go on. Look at him! He don’t even know where he is. It’s not a joke, you’re going! You’re going out!’
Kay then begins to chant: ‘You’re going out, you’re going out, you’re going out, you’re going out.’
And he adds: ‘Look they’re all coming for you, you pr**k. Whey! Film that! Film that you. Film this. Film this, this is what you want.’
He then makes a reference to ‘Garlic dead, that’s what they’ll have now. Garlic dead.’
Kay continues: ‘Brain him! Brain him. He’s not happy. He’s not laughing now is he? Go on, let me get my chair. Here we go. Let’s have a – have we no chocolate left? Oh here we go.
‘That’s it! Yes! Oh look at him. He can’t see colours. He can’t see colours. Go on. ‘What?’ he’s saying, ‘what?’. What? What?’
Kay then advised the heckler to ‘go and get last train from Victoria’ – a reference to Manchester Victoria station.
He continued: ‘Seasick Steve’s nicking you out here, go on. There you go. Seasick Steve’s got you. He’s not, look at him, he’s shocked! He’s saying ‘what have I done?’.
‘What have I done?’. See you son. Garlic bread, buddy. Out you go. Throw him off there. A leg and a wing, a leg and a wing.’
Kay then starts to resume singing before another member of the audience can be heard shouting – and the comedian replies: ‘Garlic bread. Another one here!’
Ms Curran from Scotland – then begins to chant: ‘We love you Peter, we do. We love you Peter, we do.’
Kay asks ‘are you not one of them?’, adding: ‘We love you, love.’
The chant then ends with: ‘Ohhhh Peter, we love you’ – and Kay replies: ‘Oh Christ almighty. Bloody hell. I love Saturdays. Is he gone now? Alright love I’ve heard you. Take her out and all while you’re up there will you? Take her out.’
Some cheering can then be heard, and Kay adds: ‘Yeah, is she a nightmare everybody? Is she a nightmare? Oh right, Keith get her, Keith, Keith. Keith, take that other woman up there, they’re all complaining about her and all. Go on.
‘Yeah they’re all at – her there in that black and white top from, erm, Debenhams, Blue Cross, get that. Blue Cross top on. You’re going flower and all, you’ve upset every b*gger around there. Go on, out you pop now.
‘Go on, you’ve missed the ending and everything, what a shame with your f***ing big gob drinking de-icer. Out you go. Go on, Lisa Riley, f*** off. Go on. Out you pop flower, go on. See ya. You’ve upset every b*gger.’
Kay then tells the crowd: ‘Put your hand up round there if she’s f***ing annoying.’
Just before Ms Curran is removed, Kay says: ‘Oh there’s about 40. You can’t argue with that. Out she goes. Ooh I love this, it’s alright now look at this.
‘Go on is she going and all… you shouldn’t have stood up and shouted. There you go. Ta-ra darling. Thanks very much. No refunds. Out you pop.’
The video emerged after Kay broke his silence over the incident in a statement to ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
The comedian said there becomes a point where it’s ‘no longer fair’ to the crowd who have paid to see him and also defended calling Ms Curran ‘Lisa Riley’ before evicting her too.
He said: ‘I didn’t realise it was an insult. She did look remarkably like Lisa Riley, I didn’t realise that was an insult.’
Hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls revealed that Kay had told them that ‘he felt he had no option but to remove the hecklers as they were spoiling the show’.
They reported that the rest of his statement read: ‘There comes a point when dealing with repeated hecklers simply isn’t enough. It’s not something you ever want to do but it becomes a point when it’s no longer fair to everyone around.’
Riley has shown her support to Kay, writing on Instagram: ‘Please draw a line under this now, I am not offended, never was offended. I love Peter Kay to pieces. Laughter is my favourite medicine.
The soap star also shared a picture of the quote ‘keep calm and laugh’ and wrote in the caption: ‘It’s a laugh, it’s funny!’.
While some attendees slammed heckler Mr Peters, claiming he was ruining it for others, he has hit back – telling MailOnline: ‘I just can’t understand it, all I said was garlic bread’.
One of the hecklers, Philip Peters, 54, was evicted for shouting ‘garlic bread’ at Peter Kay
Mr Peters said he was left with bruises allegedly caused by security guards while being evicted
Initially his shout out allegedly earned him a warm reception from Kay, whose cameramen zoomed in and panned the driver’s face out to the crowd.
But by the second half of the show, Mr Kay had seemingly lost his patience, quickly ordering the lights to be turned on and for the heckler to be led out of the building.
Mr Peters, whose tickets were bought for him by his 17-year-old daughter for Christmas, said he was left ‘disgusted’ by how he was treated and is now demanding an apology from Kay.
He told MailOnline: ‘It was me who shouted out ‘garlic bread’. I was there with my son and they dragged us out like ragged dolls and I am now covered in bruises. A lot of people just stood up and walked out when they saw how we were dragged out.
‘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. I have massive bruises in my leg. I haven’t been able to walk properly at work today. My arms are all covered in bruises.’
Mr Peters claims six security officers handled him while another three took his son.
Once Mr Peters and his son had been taken out of the stadium, police officers approached them to ask what had gone on.
But after speaking with the pair, as well as security staff, officers told the father and son to head home.
‘I said [to the officers] we have just been thrown out brutally and I said all I have done is shout garlic bread,’ Mr Peters added.
‘If we had done anything wrong the police would have arrested us, I just can’t understand it, all I said was garlic bread. That’s my favourite joke of his.
Peter Kay has been performing his Better Late Than Never tour at venues across the UK
In another interview with the Manchester Evening News, Ms Curran said she was ‘disgusted’ and thought the ‘Lisa Riley’ quip was a jibe about her weight.
‘I do feel he was on about my weight,’ the mother-of-one said. ‘I know Lisa Riley has lost a lot of weight and looks great but she used to be a bit bigger.
‘I didn’t used to be this big, I have put a bit of weight on, I’ve had a child. I’m self-conscious about that so to go to a show and feel like you’re having the mick taken out of you because of your weight, I was just a bit shocked.
‘I’m annoyed and upset about it. The whole arena was laughing, I think they thought it was part of the show but there was a nastiness to his voice.
‘It was like he was trying to get the crowd against me – it just wasn’t nice, to be honest.’
Ms Curran said she had ‘a cry about it’ when she got back to her hotel room. ‘It was just a very rubbish situation. My whole family was disgusted by it.’
She added that she believes that Kay ‘knew exactly what he was doing’.
Ms Curran said: ‘If I was a bit skinnier, he wouldn’t have made the comparison. There was no pussyfooting about it, it was definitely about my weight and how I looked.
‘You don’t need to take the mick out of somebody for their weight, it’s just out of order really. He used to be a bigger man. It was like he was being a bully – there was a lot of anger and nastiness to it.’
Peter Kay is pictured at The O2 in London on January 27 ahead of a performance at the venue
She said she wouldn’t want Riley to feel she was ‘offended by being compared to her’ – but insisted she would never watch Kay again.
‘It’s just really gutting,’ she explained. ‘I might have understood it if I was shouting an insult but I wasn’t. He didn’t need to make it personal.’
One audience member, sitting just a few seats away from the hecklers, claimed that both ‘absolutely deserved’ to be removed – so much so it was met with loud cheers from those sitting around him.
‘The guy he chucked out absolutely deserved it,’ Jo Llewellyn told MailOnline.
‘He was extremely drunk even before the show started and continued to make a nuisance of himself as the show went on.
‘For those of us who sat beside him he ruined the gig. And as for the lady, she was a few seats behind and the people she sat next to also commented that she had been a huge pain and was disrupting the show for others.
‘I am glad Peter took a stand and removed them as the show was being spoiled for a lot of people… And if people were so offended at the hecklers being chucked out, why did the crowd near them cheer loudly when they were removed?’
Some audience members had decided to leave the show after Kay ordered security to turn on all the lights when a skit about kidney stones was interrupted for the third time by the man shouting.
Once the bright lights were on, Kay pulled up a chair on stage and directed his security to remove the man as well as his friends.
Peter Kay on The Jonathan Ross Show in London in 2017 ahead of his dramatic weight loss
At this point the heckling man, along with his son, allegedly got very abusive towards the security guards’, according to witnesses.
The man was then taken out by four security guards – ‘one on each leg and one on each arm’.
‘It wasn’t a case of escorting him out, it was a case of physically removing him,’ one audience member said.
While some accused Mr Kay of a ‘nasty and bitter’ approach to hecklers, those sitting closest to the noisy crowd applauded the decision.
Another audience member said: ‘I was seated near the people, and they were a pain in the backside.
‘They were asked several times to be quiet as the old people near them could not hear over their heckling ‘garlic bread’ not just once but many times.
‘We all clapped when he got rid of them and Peter in his own manner dealt with it very well. I thought he gave us what we wanted; it’s what we all waited over two years for.’
A third said: ‘My daughter was at that show and was glad that the people shouting were removed.
‘Peter Kay did ask if the people shouting were annoying the rest of the audience first upon which the audience said that the people were.
‘Shouting repeatedly garlic bread was not banter but disruptive in not a funny way. Bravo to Peter Kay, they spent a lot of money on those tickets and had waited two years.’
Others sitting further away from those disruptive members of the audience, however, were left less than impressed by Kay’s ‘outburst’ – before claiming his ‘performance was poor’.
Another woman, who also asked to remain anonymous, said Kay, who was using the show for a live recording, seemed in a ‘bad mood’ from the offset.
‘It seemed like he was in a bit of a bad mood from the off – I don’t know why,’ she told MailOnline. ‘The way he was telling his comedy was different to how it used to be, he would start on a joke and then go off on a tangent.
‘A lot of the humour was very crude and lewd – I didn’t expect to hear about his penis as much as we did, didn’t expect to hear about erections.
‘This is a family show, there are young teenagers there up to people in their 70s and it didn’t feel like a lot of people expected.
‘If you want crude humour there are other people you can go and see. If you are going to see Peter Kay you expect a wholesome, family show.’
It was Kay’s decision to evict the hecklers, however, which was the final straw for the woman and her friend, who decided to leave the show after that.
‘The person who shouted garlic bread shouted it twice before but with engagement from Peter. After the interval, he returned and was making a joke about kidney stones,’ she added.
‘The guy then shouted garlic bread and Peter said ‘Nick, Nick, put the lights on’. Then the arena lit up and they instructed security to go get rid of him.
‘Now if this guy was getting on his nerves, he could have quite easily during the interval – which was quite literally just minutes before – said to his staff this guy is getting rowdy can you please deal with him. But he didn’t.
‘Instead, he did it in front of the whole arena. There was a bit of confusion from the guy, asking if they were being serious.’
Kay then asked for the woman to be removed after calling her Lisa Riley.
Riley is best known for portraying Mandy Dingle in the ITV soap Emmerdale and has been open about her own battle with weight, shedding 12 stone in recent years.
It came after Kay was pictured ahead of the tour having lost a great deal of weight himself.
‘I just thought it was really cruel as he shouted ‘oh ay Lisa Reilly’ the woman added. ‘There was no need to call this woman that. She shouted ‘we love you Peter’ . It wasn’t offensive but she got thrown out.
‘It was just really mean to that woman. It was totally uncalled for calling that woman Lisa Riley and getting her removed from the show. It just makes no sense to me.
‘And I used to love Peter Kay like everyone else but I just think if that’s who you are it is such a shame.
‘The way he treated that woman, I thought gosh what has happened to him? He is very different from how he was.’
Audience members had paid almost £200 for tickets to see Kay’s long-awaited comeback tour – with many spending even more on transport and accommodation costs.
James Featherstone, from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, had travelled to see the show with his wife and daughter.
And while he has been a fan of Kay’s since the 1990s, he was left disappointed with the show and the comic’s treatment of the hecklers.
He told MailOnline: ‘When we first bought the tickets there was a lot of hype, expectations and excitement but on the actual night I could tell straight away from the beginning that he wasn’t himself.
‘I always imagined he would only deliver his own material and would never go near anyone else’s material and if something isn’t good enough, he wouldn’t present it but it didn’t feel like him at all. Some of the jokes were old jokes I heard years and years ago from other comedians.
‘And the thing about the hecklers, the guy shouting garlic bread, I imagine if you have a catch phrase someone shouts that at you every day of your life – it’s something that has made you millions and millions of pounds.
‘I can imagine only having shouted it three or four times was a lot lower than I would have expected. And the person who shouted it, I don’t think did anything wrong.
‘Peter Kay’s reaction was completely over the top to have them physically removed. At a push, ask them politely to leave. Having four people taking the guy out was overkill and not dignified either.
‘At one point, it wasn’t clear that Peter Kay wasn’t joking about him being removed. ‘It wasn’t a case of escorting him out, it was a case of physically removing him.’
Mr Featherstone also said it was ‘hypocritical’ for Mr Kay to call the woman Lisa Reily and said the jibe ‘wasn’t even funny’.
The long-standing fan of Mr Kay added that the comic had always been a ’10 out 10 performer but this felt more like a six out of 10′.
Another individual who attended the Manchester leg of his mammoth comeback tour on Saturday wrote online: ‘I’ve lost a lot of respect for Peter Kay after the way he treated the heckler at the end of his Manchester Feb 8 show.
‘Having him removed by force by his entourage and cracking jokes about it over the three or four minutes it took. No manners. Huge waste of money.’
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