Patrick Kielty: HELP!

Komedia, Gardner Street, Brighton, Thursday, October 15

AT first glance Patrick Kielty seems to have it all.

He has houses in London, LA and his native Northern Ireland. He has the income to service his love of fast cars. He's married to television presenter Cat Deeley, with a baby on the way.

But he wants to write a modern rulebook on love, life and happiness – with the audience deciding which piece of advice goes into his book at the end of the night.

Not that he thinks the end result could ever be published.

“I thought it would be a good idea for a book – Britain gives you advice,” he says. “I could write a little chapter about each place I had been and then put in the advice.

“Then I started to do gigs - and the random nonsense that has come up. Somebody tried to get me to buy a Robin Reliant they had for sale. I was asked if I wanted a share in a racehorse. And I got told never to take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

“I felt like I just poured my heart out to you for an hour and this is what you’re sending up? It’s not a book!”

He finds HELP! quite a weird experience – as it is the most personal show he has ever done.

“Previously I did satire and political satire,” he says. “People would say: ‘It’s edgy and dangerous to do’ but essentially you’re just discussing the outside world. You’re not revealing much about yourself.”

Perhaps it is understandable why Kielty has shied away from talking much about his early life in his stand-up. His father John Kielty was murdered by an Ulster Freedom Fighters volunteer in 1988, when Patrick was in his teens, after becoming involved as a key witness in a trial against an alleged protection racket.

“I wanted to write something about how I feel at the moment, revealing the stuff I had gone through, and how I feel about stuff which I have never really done before on stage,” says Kielty.

“Then at the end I wanted to ask the audience what they think.”

At the centre of the show is his fear about contentment.

“Happiness is something you can stumble on,” he says. “But if you can stumble on it, you have an equal chance of stumbling off it. They say comedy is tragedy plus time, but you could say the same for contentment plus time. Once you start from a position that this couldn’t be any better, then the only way to go is down.”

This new show has seen him take part in the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time – although he admits it was only for the final week.

“It’s the equivalent of basically coming on in a football match in the last 15 minutes,” he says.

“I remember going up into a bar on my first night and seeing all these other comics who had been there for the full month.

"I’ve never seen a bunch of people look worse in my life. It was like the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. They were completely drunk out – for me it was a breeze, I had a couple of nice lunches, played a bit of golf...

“Mick Perrin, my promoter, asked if I wanted to do a full month next year – I had to tell him if you wanted me to agree to a month he shouldn’t have brought me into that bar!”

Support from Adam Hess.

Starts 8pm, tickets £18/£16. Call 01273 709709.