English comedian Chris McGlade has been waging war on political correctness for a quarter of a century.
The controversial stand-up started out in his native Teesside’s working men’s clubs back in the mid-’90s, long before the PC movement mutated into the flawed cancel culture that’s now intent on rewriting cultural history.
As his career steadily gained traction, McGlade made the leap to ever-larger venues.
Not plain sailing
He has appeared at Hollywood’s legendary Comedy Store and dipped his toe into musical theatre with a major role in Billy Elliot: The Musical in London’s West End.
But it’s by no means been plain sailing for the 55-year-old.
He admits he was bullied as a child and his world was turned upside down in 2011 when his father was murdered in his own home in by a down-on-his-luck friend he’d taken in.
The shocking crime provoked a tide of anger in Chris but he says he initially managed to hold bitterness at arm’s length through laughter and his flippant outlook on life.
A confessional work
It was after suffering a panic attack on stage in 2018 that he decided to pen a show about the murder and the working class place he came from, as a processing mechanism.
It’s that confessional work, Forgiveness – a 2019 Edinburgh Fringe hit – that he’ll perform at Dundee’s Gardyne Theatre tomorrow.
“My father had the most irreverent sense of humour – completely un-PC,” he says.
“On the day the detectives told me he’d been murdered, I came out with one of the most bad taste jokes I’ve ever cracked – but he would have liked that.
“The way I reacted was how my father would have reacted and this show is his legacy. He was a funny, bighearted, inclusive, tolerant, forgiving man.”
McGlade’s passionate about bringing people of diverse backgrounds together and encouraging them to laugh at both themselves and each other – even through subject matter off-limits for most comics.
“I knew I was taking a risk with this show but the best kind of performance always involves a risk,” he declares.
‘Two lives destroyed’
“Two lives were destroyed when our old fella was murdered – his, and the bloke who did it.
“He did the crime, he’s doing the time, but I don’t hate him – life’s too short.
“My life has moved on. I’m not interested in hatred or revenge.”
His blue-collar roots loom large in Forgiveness, but “thought-provoking, thinking-man’s middle-class comedy” is how he describes its approach – and he hopes it’ll spark debate.
The working class divide
“Working class people are terribly discriminated against,” he says.
“That’s the divide that nobody wants to talk about in this country.
“Talk about racism, gender and division is setting one against the other and the whole Brexit issue really showed up discrimination towards working class people.”
Chris insists his routine use of timeworn slang on stage isn’t designed to cause offence, and defends to the last his right to learn from his mistakes.
“Today, you see comedians tiptoeing through a minefield of what they are and aren’t allowed to say, but worse, audiences have been brainwashed into thinking twice about what they can and cannot laugh at,” he adds.
Tickets are £22 via dundeebox.co.uk
