Comedian Adam Kay slams audience member at sellout Sydney show

A top UK comic’s huge Sydney show was ruined by one front row audience member last night - and he absolutely let the person have it.

British comedian Adam Kay couldn’t hide his frustration with one front row audience member during his Sydney show on Monday night - and he’d reached breaking point by the end of the night.

Kay, a former doctor turned comedian and author of the best-selling book This is Going to Hurt, performed the first of two sellout shows at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre last night.

But within minutes of taking to the stage, Kay was breaking away from his set to chastise an audience member in the front row who was repeatedly using their phone.

A message before the performance had reminded the audience that use of phones was strictly forbidden.

As Kay performed songs and hilarious anecdotes about his time as an NHS doctor, the phone use persisted - and his frustration grew with each new request for them to obey the show’s one rule.

But it was in the moving final minutes of Kay’s performance that things really went awry.

Comedian Adam Kay tells real-life stories from his time as a doctor.

His show has a strict no phones policy. Picture: Getty

Until then very much a comedy show, the mood instantly grew sombre as Kay recounted in harrowing detail the tragic event that left him so traumatised, he left the medical profession for good 14 years ago.

The audience was hushed as Kay detailed the high suicide rates among those working in the medical profession.

Visibly emotional, he encouraged everyone in the audience to check in with their doctor and nurse friends who may be struggling – before breaking from his train of thought to bellow “PUT. YOUR. F**KING. PHONE. AWAY” at the same front row audience member.

From there, Kay quickly wrapped the show, clearly rattled.

“You’ve been a wonderful audience … except for one person who’s really f**ked me off,” he announced, gesturing back at the front row again before leaving the punter with some parting advice: “Seriously: DON’T go to the theatre.”

Elsewhere in the show, Kay made a quip about this week’s Aussie comedy main character, Arj Barker, who courted controversy when he booted a breastfeeding mother and baby out of his Melbourne show on the weekend for distracting him.

Kay finished his show by telling one particular punter they shouldn’t go to the theatre.

Fellow comic Arj Barker had an audience run-in of his own over the weekend.

Pointing out a mother and baby in the crowd, Kay asked how old the infant was.

“Three months? Awww. If I was Arj Barker you’d be f**king out of here,” he laughed. “What about that?”

On Monday night, the mother who Barker booted from his show because her baby was crying embarked on a TV media blitz to share her side of the story.

But Trish Faranda’s appearances on Channel 9’s A Current Affair and Ten’s The Project didn’t quite go to plan – due to her crying baby.

“There’s something really really funny about The Project host asking for the baby to leave for being disruptive during the interview and then going right back to empathising with the mother about being asked to take her baby out during a comedy show for being disruptive,” one person tweeted, after The Project host Sarah Harris politely suggested Faranda pass the infant over to its father so they could continue the interview in peace.

Faranda told 7News that the experience at the Athenaeum Theatre on Saturday night had been “intimidating and humiliating”.

Originally published as Comedian Adam Kay slams audience member at sellout Sydney show