Patrick, who often draws on his heritage with jokes such as: “My dad’s Irish and my mum’s Iranian so we spend most of our family holidays in customs,” won after receiving 60 percent of the public vote.
Along with his £100,000 ($160,000) cash prize, he has his own DVD, which will be released in November. The prize also includes a nationwide comedy tour, which began this week.
Parents Eugene and Elham, who run Elham Market Gardens, a trailer park outside of Stokesley in northern England, couldn’t be more proud of their son’s success.
Eugene met Elham when he worked in Iran as an oil pipeline welder for British Steel.
Elham watched the show where her son won top prize and said she burst into tears when Patrick’s name was read out.
Patrick was born in Iran but came to northern England with his parents when he was two in 1979 because of the revolution.
Patrick’s success didn’t happen overnight. He’s now 35 years old and has been working the comedy circuit for 10 years.
He decided to embark on a comedy career after getting a business and marketing degree at Liverpool’s John Moores University.
“When he said he wanted to go into comedy, I told him he wanted his head examined,” Eugene admitted to the Evening Gazette, the local daily in their part of northern England.
“I was surprised,” said Elham. “There’s no one in our family who is a comedian.”
In the final of “Show Me the Funny,” Patrick played to an audience of nearly 2.5 million TV viewers. But his first brush with the limelight had a much smaller crowd. “There was literally a dozen people there, and three were bikers who sat facing the bar,” said Patrick.
After asking the emcee of the open mike event if he “could have a go,” he was given five minutes, but told to feel free to stop sooner if need be.
“I was quite nervous beforehand,” said Patrick. “But when I got on stage I remember just talking and really enjoying it. As I was talking, all I could see was this man’s hand waving frantically. I looked at my watch and I had been on seven minutes.”
He began turning up at comedy clubs around London to see if there were any spots free, and was soon working seven nights a week.
He lived with his brother and sister, “learning as he went along,” and supplemented his income with a few marketing jobs.
Patrick added: “It’s that classic Norman Wisdom saying: it takes a bit of luck, but the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
