Update - Re below, Kay's book is out now and he plays the Soho Theatre on 18 & 19 Oct. Details here.
People talk about the likes of Simon Munnery, John Hegley and Malcolm Hardee as being alternative comedy legends but Phil Kay is one of comedy's true genius mavericks. And hopefully he is about to get a bit more recognition. Kay has written his autobiography and all he needs now is for someone to publish it. And that someone seems to be…Phil Kay. With the help of fellow wayward free spirit Bob Slayer there is a Kickstarter campaign up and running to raise the money to publish the book. You can contribute here – and if you contribute enough Phil will come and do a gig just for you and your friends.
The wild-eyed ex-philosophy student could so easily have taken the easy route and been a bigger star. For a brief moment it look as if he could have been the biggest comedian to come out of Scotland since Billy Connolly. They even looked a little similar, although apart from the mad hair, beard and boundless energy Kay had little in common with the Big Yin. It certainly looked like he was on the road to conventional success at first, picking up a Perrier Award nomination at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993. But I've heard a story that even then his style was, ahem, problematic. There was a rumour that too much of his set was improvised and different and unpredictable each night for him to be considered to be a potential Perrier winner.
I was not a judge that year but when I saw Kay in Edinburgh around that time he made a big impression on me. I've got an image of him surfing on an ironing board seered into my brain. i also remember him playing a brilliant trick on a punter who went to the toilet that I've seen done since by others but never as well. When the fan left the room mid-gig Kay said to the rest of the audience that later in the show he would ask if anyone had ever done a poo on a dinner plate and examined it and we should all put up our hands. About 15 minutes later when Kay came out with the line we all put our hands up and, slowly but surely, the "victim" put his hand up too, not to feel left out. It was an intriguing insight into crowd psychology. Maybe this was how fascism started.
After Edinburgh Kay landed the inevitable C4 seres. Phil Kay Feels made a splash very quickly when Kay appeared naked on it. Not a big deal now, maybe, but back in the mid-nineties C4's Right to Reply show had a busy time dealing with the matter. The series did not signal a premature end of Kay's TV career, but it was probably his high point so far. He cropped up on other shows, but – and maybe the book will explain why – his performances becomes more erratic.
There were still inspired moments though. I saw him when he was one of the comedians who took part in the Cat Laughs Festival's enterprising if daft attempt to stage gigs on a bus touring the tiny city. Kay (pictured, © Bruce Dessau) had a radio mic on and not only ran around the open-top bus telling gags, he also jumped into a car behind the bus, helped an old lady mow her lawn while telling jokes and, at one point, borrowed a window cleaner's ladder to climb up onto the top deck, which was terrifying when it looked as if the bus might move off mid-climb. He also nearly garrotted himself when he failed to duck as the bus went past some banners strung across the road, but that's another story.
Kay never seemed to choose the easy option. One night around 2000 I saw him at the Amused Moose Club (on a bill with Ricky Gervais as it happens, who was doing an early version of 
what you could say turned out to be Derek in the end). Kay was not, it should be said, on the best form that night. He explained that he had come down from Glasgow on the night bus, spent the early morning on London buses sleeping as he had nowhere to stay and had ended up losing some of his possessions. I was going to review the show but thought it best not to. I expected I'd have another chance to see Kay on better form soon.
In fact it was probably a decade before I saw him again. He was living in Brighton by now and a bit more together and did a nice, relatively relaxed show at the Soho Theatre, He was still a bit improvised, doing a mixture of music and comedy, and he kept his clothes on. He has also doing children's shows, where he also, sensibly, kept his clothes on. He also appeared in the cabaret show, The Crack, roving around the audience making up songs as he went along like an unhinged latter-day troubadour.
In comparison with his early days Kay seems to be fairly stable now, though there have still been stories of onstage meltdowns and occasional nudity. But I always enjoy seeing him. Spontaneity is never very far from the surface. He was doing a similar walkabout troubadour routine in the Spiegeltent in London a couple of years ago, lost one of his sandals in the audience and ended up doing an entire ad libbed song about his disappearing footwear. I don't think anybody else but Kay could get away with this.
I doubt if these stories will appear in the book. I'm sure Kay has some much better ones. I just hope he can remember them. Go on, give him some of your money or he might end up taking his clothes off again and we don't want that do we? Here's that link again – it also contains details of his various activities at this year's Edinburgh Festival. Go and see him too.
