Lee is The Ultimate Worrier
Pictured: Lee Kyle [right] with WWE star and former world champion Daniel Bryan.
During his decade-long run as a professional wrestler, Lee Kyle battled alongside WWE superstars like Daniel Bryan, Adrian Neville, Road Dogg and D-Lo Brown.
Now he’s rolling with the punches on the Tyneside comedy circuit, as he prepares to debut his first ever stand-up show at The Stand Comedy Club in Newcastle on Tuesday 7 April.
“The show is called The Ultimate Worrier and it’s basically about my personal anxieties and how I worry about everything,” Lee tells us.
“My wrestling career comes into that, of course – and there are lots of nice wrestling stories in there – but I didn’t want to make the show full of wrestling in-jokes.
“The important thing is that it will be funny, and if you like wrestling then that’s another layer to the show.”
The leap from professional wrestler to stand-up comic might sound ludicrous on first glance, but Lee insists the two roles are more alike than you might think – just ask wrestling icon-turned-comedian Mick Foley.
“Wrestling, as much as anything else, is about crowd work – playing up to the audience if you’re a good guy, or knocking them down if you’re a bad guy, proverbially speaking of course,” Lee says.
“Nobody thinks wrestling is a real sport. We don’t watch it to see a real sporting contest. It’s not a sport – it’s better than a sport.
“It’s a morality play, it’s theatre, it’s comedy, it’s improv – and two or three times a year, something perfect or surprising happens and it is the best thing on television.”
Lee hopes to recreate that ‘something perfect’ when he performs The Ultimate Worrier at The Stand on High Bridge.
The Ultimate Worrier is Lee’s first ever solo show following a run at the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe alongside fellow North East stand-ups Si Buglass and Jonny Pelham.
“The Edinburgh Fringe was a great learning curve,” Lee says. “You get to work on your material for a month in a pressure cooker environment, playing to all sorts of crowds – big, small, people from all sorts of different backgrounds.
“It’s costly experience but well worth it if you’re looking to develop as a stand-up.”
Tickets for The Ultimate Worrier are on sale now via thestand.co.uk, priced £5.
The show starts at 8.30pm.
