I’ve been trying to diet for 48 years but had to shed weight after shameful moment, says Peter Kay amid fat jab rumours

FIERCELY private Peter Kay has lifted the lid on his childhood, love life and his battle with weight during an astonishing moment of honesty.

Fans adore the comic as a master of his craft, raising laughs by deep diving into a working-class upbringing in Bolton.

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But rumours have swirled that his obvious weight loss in recent years was the result of an intervention such as a gastric band or fat jabs.

Peter stops short of revealing exactly how he shed what looks like four or five stone, but he reveals in detail the desperate lengths he went to in the past in a bid to slim down.

At an In Conversation With . . . event hosted by Sara Cox at The Lowry theatre in Salford, Peter answered her questions in his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style.

But there is no doubt he was opening his heart like never before.

Asked directly if he had ever tried to lose weight, the 52-year-old comedian said: “Only for the first 48 years of my life. Yeah I had to, eventually, because you start thinking about your health and things like that, don’t you?

“I tried everything. Good God in heaven. I mean, you go to flaming weight-loss groups and stuff like that. I joined Slimming World and WeightWatchers. I did all of them.”

During the honest discussion, which will be broadcast at a later date on BBC Radio 2, Peter recalled a defining moment when he realised he may not have the willpower to use conventional dieting methods.

‘Hide the biscuits’

He was at the cinema in his beloved Bolton with wife Susan.

They were watching Tom Hanks blockbuster The Green Mile when he was hit by a sudden hunger pang during the three-hour epic.

Peter admitted: “We were sitting there and I thought, I fancy a hotdog. So I said to Susan, ‘I’m going to the toilet’ and I nipped out, went down and bought a hotdog.

“I was doing really well with this diet, but I’m so bad with willpower. I had this hotdog and I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in, ironically, a framed poster for Babe.

“I thought, look at you — what are you doing? You’re doing really well on this diet, you should be ashamed of yourself.

“And I got it and threw it in the bin — and just as it was about to hit the binliner, I grabbed it and still ate it.”

Peter also revealed at the event, which was held to raise funds for Bolton Hospice and the town’s Crescent Food Bank, that his bad eating habits date back to when he was a baby.

He grew up with his mother, Deirdre, in Farnworth, Lancs, in the Seventies, and recalled: “Even when I was in my pram, apparently my mum used to get a meat pie from the market hall and put it on my knee, and I’d be there eating it.

“My mum used to bring pies in for me at primary school. She’d go in and she’d say to the dinner ladies, ‘Can you give this to Peter?’

I threw a hotdog in the bin and just as it was about to hit the binliner I grabbed it and still ate it

“Everyone would be queueing up and the dinner ladies would be like, ‘Your mum’s been in with a pie’.”

Despite making sure young Peter was well fed, the comedian says his mum is now fixated on people eating too much and what they weigh — particulary family members.

He explained: “My mum is obsessed with people being overweight and she proper judges everybody by it.

“I’m like, ‘Mum, what does it matter how big people are?’. Because she really does judge everyone by how big they are. She’s like, ‘I think they’d better be careful’.

“She used to hide the biscuits in our house, but I knew where she’d hid them. I used to have me mates round for a brew and I’d reach inside the tumble drier and get a packet of digestives out, like it was normal.”

Although he didn’t have much luck losing weight in his younger years, Peter’s efforts eventually saw him make a lifelong friend in Paddy McGuinness, his co-star in Channel 4 sitcom Phoenix Nights.

Peter, who is about to release a new memoir, Peter Kay’s Diary, started doing aerobics at his local leisure centre, where Paddy was a fitness instructor and gave him classes.

They knew each other from school, but this cemented their friendship — even if it did get off to a rocky start.

Peter said: “I came out one day and the front wing of my car had been hit. I’d been in the gym with Paddy and I thought, ‘Paddy will know someone who can get this fixed’.

“He was just coming out of the leisure centre and I drove up and said, ‘Paddy, I just want to ask you something’. He said, ‘Just pull up in front of me’. And he was just getting out of his car, so I pulled up and I caught his door of his car and I ripped it right round.

“Then I stopped and I got out and then we both looked at each other and his door just fell to the floor.

“And he said, ‘What did you want to ask me?’. I said, ‘I wanted to ask you for some help with this little dent here in my car’.”

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Not surprisingly, Peter was never short of pals — though he didn’t have as much luck with the opposite sex. He has been happily married to Susan for 24 years and they have a teenage son together.

But the path to true love was not an easy one for the comedian.

He recalled: “I had a few girlfriends. Not many. It was always that thing about being your friend — friend-zoned, that’s the thing.

“Then I got my heart broke by a girl who went off to university.

“Anyway, she came back six months later and said she’d made a mistake. Inside you’re like, ‘Yes!’.”

But this time Peter wanted to make a bigger impression, so he borrowed a load of skater clothes and a skateboard and decided to turn up with a joint — even though he’d never really smoked weed in his life.

When I was in my pram my mum used to get a meat pie from the  market and put   it on my knee

He said: “I think I’d had one puff of one, once, and I tried to take me pants off over me head.

“So I got this joint — £4 it were — and I went and met her.

“I couldn’t get it lit, and then I gave it to her and she had one puff and coughed her guts up.”

Peter also struggled at school, only leaving Mount Saint Joseph’s with a single GCSE in art.

‘Kept back by nuns’

Though he found lessons tough, he had already learned that the one thing he wanted to do in life was entertain people.

He said: “I just always used to feel comfortable making people laugh and I was never good academically at school.

“I used to be good at nodding and acting like it was going in, and thinking, ‘I don’t know what’s being said here. I don’t know what is going on’.

“I swear to God, in 90 per cent of my lessons I felt really thick. I don’t know, I just felt like . . . I lived for the bits in between lessons and I liked making people laugh.

I think I’d had a puff of a joint, once, and I tried to take me pants off over me head

“I always used to get kept behind at the end for another b******king by the nuns who taught us.”

Somehow, while doing various menial jobs to pay the bills, Peter got a place at university — though he admitted it was not by entirely legitimate means.

He said: “I’ve never said this publicly before, but I lied about my grades. We had these forms for university back then, and I filled them in when I was working in an Esso garage with Abdul, and we got a thesaurus and Abdul wrote my references and signed them.

“And I sent them off and got an unconditional offer.”

While there, Peter met an eccentric drama tutor who gave him another brush with drugs.

He recalled: “He got us all round and he went, ‘The Company Spliffs’ and he got four joints out. I couldn’t get over it.”

Taking straight roles in serious plays, Peter realised, was not for him.

He wanted to be like Ronnie Barker doing comedy characters.

I lied about my grades, filled the forms in, (my pal) Abdul wrote my references and I got an offer

He said: “That’s all I ever wanted to do.

“For me, stand-up was just a stepping stone to comic acting, which is funny because stand-up is the thing I’ve ended up loving the most, though it was always a way to doing acting.”

That led to him playing Max the bouncer and Brian Potter in Phoenix Nights, as well as dressing up as a woman to portray Geraldine — a transsexual singer from Northern Ireland — which would probably be frowned upon these days.

“When I did Geraldine,” he said, “I used to have to come in four hours early to get dressed up.

“And you think, ‘I just want to turn up and do the gig’ and not do all those prosthetics.

“That’s why, when I did Car Share, I could just go straight into the car and be myself, and all I’ve ever wanted to do with me life is make people laugh.”

• To back the causes Peter supports, see boltonhospice.org.uk or crescent foodbank.org.uk.