Alex Kealy

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Friday 31st March 2023

It was the first of times, it was the worst of times. And this week we reinvestigate the onstage life/times of Alex Kealy, who's currently on tour with Winner Takes All. No, it's not an in-depth discussion of the old Jimmy Tarbuck game show - look out for Ben Alborough and Sean Morley's new Terry Wogan extravaganza if that's your bag - but takes on a very 2023 topic.

So how would he describe it to the average person on the street, reading this on a really old phone, probably not watching where they're going?

"My show is about Silicon Valley big-tech monopolies," Alex explains. "For anyone not tech-savvy, it's as much about power and economics as it is tech.

"A lot of the technology itself that these corporations are developing is either helpful or neutral; it's more that it is often developed in a way that naturally concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few. It's up to government regulation to change that - it's not looking good given who we've got in The US Senate overseeing tech corporations.

"So, yeah, it's comedy about that but also with lots of silly jokes about my personal life and other observations neatly slotted in (I hope) as well."

Definitely not Tarbuckian in tone then. But is it wise to take on big tech? Has Alex's phone/laptop/Alexa started doing any weird, sinister stuff? Or more than usual, anyway?

"Yes, there are probably risks writing a Q&A in Google Drive where I'm attacking Google," ponders the comic. "So far, all I've had is an Amazon employee at my Cambridge show talk about how Alexas are 'listening to you', but they said it in a way that made it sound more targeted specifically to me than I'd have liked (I'm 96% sure they were joking)."

That whole paragraph has probably just made an algorithm explode somewhere. Now let's find out if Kealy's own joke delivery reached its intended targets.

Where was your first headline set, and how did it go?

I genuinely can't remember the answer to this; it almost definitely went terribly. Although I think opening is harder than headlining, or at least opening more regularly represents a more stressful career step-up. You have to set the entire tone for the night, and a chunk of the audience will be judging you as the very first live comedy they've ever seen. Whereas headliners are at least arriving on stage at a point where the audience has been warmed up.

What's the best advice you've ever received about doing comedy?

A successful comedian needs to be two of punctual, pleasant to work with, and funny on stage.

Was there a big breakthrough show for you, where everything suddenly came together?

Probably this one; helps to have three years rather than 11 months to write something, so big up the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 I guess?

What's the worst stage you've ever played on?

I remember performing at an open-mic where the stage had the unusual distinction of not being connected to any kind of wall, it was just sort of in the middle of the room and people could walk behind it. I always think a wall, just one wall, a crumb of wall is vital for an audience's respect. The stage is like a bed - it shouldn't be in the middle of a room.

The greatest set you ever saw?

Discover Ben Target by Ben Target at Edinburgh 2012. He got nominated for Edinburgh Best Newcomer for it, and I'll never forget its ending which left the audience blinking in the sunlight having been removed from the venue as part of the show's climax.

The oddest audience member?

I laugh like a maniac in other people's shows, to the extent that it's not clear whether I'm a net-positive addition, so maybe it's me?

Is there one gag/routine that worked a lot better than you expected?

Any joke that requires a big build up of tension / head of steam and then is undercut with a quick bit of bathos always lands with an audience much more than my writer-ly brain thinks it should (I'm always partially thinking, even as I'm doing the bit, "but comedy is surprise and surely it's rhythmically obvious I'm about to do a quick little short undercut after this big old speech").

Your worst gig-travel experience?

2014, a megabus from London to Stockton-on-Tees, with the return leaving at midnight to arrive back in London at 7am, all to perform at a gong show I lasted three minutes on-stage for. 14 hours of travel for three minutes of comedy, easily the worst travel/stage-time ratio I've ever experienced, and hope never to recreate unless I'm the first comedian to perform on Mars or something.

Who would join you on your dream bill, dead or alive, and what slot would you take?

Let's have a weird one if it's a dream gig.

MC: Jean Smart in character as Deborah Vance from Hacks.

Opener: dead 19th-century Ukrainian author and satirist Nikolai Gogol doing stand-up for the first time. He's new to the genre but it's all very promising.

Middle: me doing my tested club 20, I get overconfident and do a bit of new, too, which I just about get away with but later regret not sticking to the tight Plan A in front of so many of my idols, real, dead and fictional.

Closer: Ed Aczel but I force him to spend his whole set doing an extended version of the 4,000 year-old Sumerian joke about a dog walking into a pub.