Kevin Day: A New Day Dawns

It was on a visit to last year’s Fringe, during a typically tipple-fuelled debate, that Kevin Day resolved to re-enter the fray. Fellow comic Terry Alderton was the antagonist: “For a couple of years I’d been telling him about an idea for a show, and he kept saying ‘I don’t believe you’ve got this idea',” Day recalls. “He said to me ‘You’ve got to stop swanning about. You either come up here as a comedian, or don’t keep coming up here.’”

Which sounds a bit harsh, but his old mate had a point. Day hadn’t done a full-length Edinburgh show since 1996, and was starting to feel a fraud for calling himself a comic. “People would say ‘Where can I see you perform?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, I don’t really,’” sighs the South Londoner, now nursing a tomato juice in a Waterloo watering hole. “Football fans come up and ask what I do for a living, what my day job is.”

The main Day job nowadays is writing for pretty much every major panel show, notably Have I Got News for You, while he’s been most visible onscreen as Match of the Day 2’s roving reporter – hence the oblivious supporters. For clued-up comedy folk, though, Day remains a mighty influence, the man who introduced many to the idea of an issue-based, revealing hour.

His 1993 show I Was a Teenage Racist is still one of the Fringe’s most eyebrow-raisingly honest moments, documenting a brief, regrettable flirtation with the National Front. The title of his new one, Standy Uppy, may suggest frivolity; and there are theatrical flourishes—lights, sound effects, a big ghost story—but there are also more personal insights. It’s the show he intended, coloured by crisis.

“My wife’s been very ill this year, so a theme has emerged that wouldn’t have done. It’s changed the perspective,” he explains. “I explore the idea of why I thought making jokes throughout the process and subsequent diagnosis was a good idea, trying to explore the notion of whether or not I genuinely can’t articulate emotion without humour.”

Thankfully the deeply worrying prognosis has taken a hugely positive turn recently, meaning that Day can fret about the show again. In truth his "swanning about" at the Fringe was often work-related—he directed Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen Volume 2 last year—but a full hour of his own is a different ball game.

“I’m terrified of doing it, terrified of it, but really excited,” he smiles. “I’m terrified about how it’s going to be received. It’s a long time since I’ve been reviewed.”

You do wonder, after such an intense year, why he didn’t push it back another 12 months. But shortly after our own lengthy pub debate, Day emails, and sums up the mood. “I have actually felt guilty at times about neglecting an art form that I adore,” he concludes. “It’s also the first thing for ages I’ve consciously decided to do.”