Express & Star

As the hapless bouncer appearing alongside Peter Kay, Paddy McGuinness has become one of the most popular comedians on television. He is now looking for local talent to support him at his shows in the West Midlands. He talks to Mark Andrews.

Bored club bouncers Max and Paddy huddle inside a phone box to make a prank telephone call to their boss in the dead of the night.

“Hello, is that Mr Potter? This is Mixu Paateleinen from the Bolton Coroner’s office.”

That scene from Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights never fails to bring a smile to Wolves fans. Paateleinen is the almost forgotten former Wolves striker who cemented his place in the club’s history by never scoring a league goal for them.

The Beautiful Game has always been dear to the heart of McGuinness, best known as half of the Max and Paddy double act, and it is a fair bet there will be plenty of football banter when the mad-keen Bolton Wanderers fan comes to the West Midlands as part of his latest tour.

“A big mate of mine is Steve Edge, he’s from Cannock and he’s a big Wolves fan. I come to the Midlands a lot, and the people are great. Wherever you go, you think how are people going to respond to this sort of northern, working-class humour.”

Paddy is now looking for examples of West Midlands humour - or other talents - in the run-up to his appearances in Wolverhampton and Birmingham later this year.

The comic will be without his sidekick and former schoolmate Peter Kay, and is looking for support acts from the region to take part in the shows, be they musicians, magicians, comedians or anything else.

He is asking them to send him a DVD recording of their act, with the best invited to join him on stage.

Paddy’s comic talents only came to the fore when he was invited by his old friend to appear alongside him in Phoenix Nights, and he says there were many other pupils at his school who were funny enough to make it in television.

“There were lots of lads at school who were funny, but I think Peter was the only one who had the idea of doing it for a living.”

After leaving school, Paddy studied to become a laboratory technician, but decided it was not for him. Several jobs followed, including stints as a waiter and building site labourer, a job cleaning machines at Warburtons bakery, as well as working as a fitness instructor at his local leisure centre.

There was also a spell as a holiday rep for Club 18-30, but he found it wasn’t quite what he was expecting.

“I always liked entertaining people, but it wasn’t really like that. It was all about selling the T-shirts and things like that, and I thought this isn’t what I want to do.”

After quitting Club 18-30, he returned to his leisure centre job, and it was during this time that Kay approached him about a new comedy series he was making.

“During the first series of Phoenix Nights I used to finish my shift at the leisure centre, go and do a bit of recording, and then go back to work afterwards. I never thought it was what I wanted to do as a job, but I’m glad I did it.”

It was only when a second series was commissioned that Paddy decided it was time to quit his job as a fitness instructor.

How much of Paddy the actor is there in Paddy the Bouncer, then?

“People ask me that a lot, I’m nothing like him,” he says. “There’s perhaps 10 per cent of me that is like him, a lot of it comes from people I have met around Bolton.

“I was brought up in the working class areas and you go to the Christmas parties, the working men’s clubs, and I think you have to be part of that scene if you want to do the type of comedy that I do.”

His varied work background gave him several ideas for his parts, and his time at the leisure centre came into its own when he teamed up with Kay to produce a workout video, Max and Paddy’s The Power of Two, which became the biggest selling fitness video of all time.

Although Phoenix Nights and its spin-off series Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere have made him a household name, he says his off-screen life has changed very little.

“Now when I go to the bank I’m not always overdrawn, that’s been the biggest change for me. I’ve still got all the same mates, and I still live in the same area.”

He says there is a good chance Phoenix Nights will be back for a third series, although there are no plans at the moment.

“It’s just finding the time to do it. I’m sure there probably will be a new series somewhere down the line.”

And while Paddy says he is unlikely to go back to his old jack-of-all-trades life, he has no real plans for the future.

“You never know how things are going to work out, I don’t really plan anything further than 12 months ahead.”

Paddy is clearly on the road to somewhere - he just doesn’t know where it goes to yet.

l Paddy McGuinness Plus You comes to Birmingham Alexandra Theatre on October 15, and Wolverhampton Civic Hall on November 1. Prospective support acts should send their DVDs to No Third Entertainments, PO Box 1121, Preston, PR4 5UY by May 17. Winners will be announced on the website www.patrickmcguinness.co.uk