Welcome To Wrexham star Humphrey Ker on James McClean: "I haven't met anyone who's as different on and off the pitch as Jimmy is"

At the same time as PSG are playing Inter Miami in the footballing abomination that is the Club World Cup – the Juventus squad being dragged to the White House to meet a ranting Trump sums up all that is wrong with the modern game – I’m hanging out in London with Humphrey Ker, the actor and comedy writer who in 2020 persuaded Hollywood superstars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney to save Wrexham A.F.C. from bankruptcy.

Wallowing at the time in the National League, the surreal nature of the takeover and the Welsh side’s subsequent three back-to-back promotions have been documented in Welcome To Wrexham, the EMMY award-winning Disney+ series which sums up a lot of what’s right about the modern game.

Captaining the side last season as they ascended to the Championship – their ‘25/’26 league campaign kicks off on August 9 away to Southampton – was former Republic of Ireland winger James McClean who didn’t have the best of reputations when he joined Wrexham in summer 2023.

“Whenever we sign a player, a lot of effort goes into working out, ‘What are they like, who are they really?’” says Humphrey who until recently was Wrexham’s Executive Director. “If someone’s a fantastic player but a terrible person, it doesn’t fit the bill for us. Phil Parkinson, our manager, had done his due diligence and spoken to various people at different clubs about James. Our Head of Performance and Sports Science, Ken Mulholland, also had that role at the time with the Ireland national team, knew him very well and talked Jimmy’s ear off about joining us when they were on international duty together.

“Thus far in football, I haven’t met anyone who’s as different on and off the pitch as Jimmy is. Crossing the white line, he turns from being a quietly spoken joker and family man into Brian Boru! He’s definitely one of my favourite people at Wrexham.”

Humphry Ker

In S3 E7 of Welcome To Wrexham, McClean calmly explains for the zillionth time that if you want to wear a Remembrance Day poppy, fine, but he’s not going to because of what the British Army did to his community during The Troubles.

“It’s an insanely reasonable position to take,” Ker nods. “My dad was born and raised in Belfast but on the other side of the fence. I’ve always had that connection to Ireland and totally understand where James is coming from.”

There was more tabloid outrage in April 2024 when, having secured promotion to League One with a 6-0 trouncing of Forest Green, the Derryman joined in with the “James McClean hates the fucking King” chants coming from the Racecourse Ground terraces.

A few weeks earlier Prince William, the future king who Humphrey roomed with at Eton College, had visited Wrexham and been presented with a personalised no. 9 shirt by Rob McElhenney.

Asked what William was like aged seven when they first met, Ker smiles and says, “He was a very, very sweet kid. My wife makes the observation that if you go to school with George Clooney or Brad Pitt they’re just George Clooney or Brad Pitt. You’ve no idea where they’re going to go in the future. Whereas with William and Harry who also went to Eton, they’ve had to wear being royals round their neck all the time.

“I remember at seven or eight doing this composition exercise where we all had to write a paragraph on what we wanted to be when we grew up. Going around the room it was, ‘Fighter pilot, footballer, astronaut, blahdy blah.’ When it got to William he went, ‘I want to be a policeman’ and everyone laughed and said to him, ‘No you’re not, you’re going to be the King.’ You could sense this light sadness at everything being mapped out for him, which deepened when his mum died. His ‘otherness’, if you like, became more profound. The lives they lead actually aren’t great and I wouldn’t swap places with William for all the tea in China.”

Whilst acknowledging that there were some real arseholes who embodied all of the negative Eton stereotypes, Humphrey loved his time there.

“Somebody literally tweeted me this morning saying, ‘Thanks for letting me know that not all Etonians are Boris Johnsons,’” he reveals. “Of the 256 boys in my year, six were of the Boris ilk; another fifty were staid, conservative types who very much followed the same path as their parents; and the other two hundred were quite open minded and liberal and wanting to go out into the world and do all sorts of different things. As always, the noisy minority gives a bad name to the quiet majority.”

Prince William.

Stopping the world’s third oldest football team from going out of business wasn’t on the agenda when Ker, who stands 6 ft 7 in tall in his stockinged feet, left Eton.

“I went to university in Edinburgh on an army scholarship, thinking I’d serve for a few years afterwards and then wind up working in the city or taking some other preordained path for nice, proper boys like me,” he laughs. “To try and make some new friends I went to the university theatre which was right next to where I was living. They had an improv comedy team called the Improverts who did these open workshops twice a week. I just fell in love with all of that immediately.”

And promptly forgot about serving Queen and country.

“Pretty much,” Humphrey nods. “I was lucky because Miles Jupp, my long-term writing partner David Reed and Lucy Kirkwood and Al Smith who went on to become really successful playwrights were also part of that breeding ground.”

As for his comedy upbringing prior to that, Ker says, “Blackadder was a massively important one for me as a child. I also watched things like The Young Ones, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and Dad’s Army with my parents who were huge comedy fans. Some of those series haven’t aged brilliantly, but it gave me a grounding in the sort of wordy British comedy that’s very character driven and pokes fun at institutions. A lot of the people involved with them had been in the army or done National Service and developed these quite counterculture, antiestablishment views.”

After touring with the Penny Dreadfuls Victorian comedy sketch troupe and winning an Edinburgh Comedy Award for his solo Humphrey Ker Is… Dymock Watson: Nazi Smasher! debut, Humphrey decided in 2012 to head to America.

“Dymock Watson: Nazi Smasher, which was loosely based on my grandfather and what he got up to during World War II, had got me an agent in Los Angeles,” he recalls. “I subsequently became homeless after breaking up amicably with someone I’d been living with. I’d also pocketed – and this was unheard of for me – about thirteen grand from Dymock Watson’s six week run at London’s Soho Theatre. I thought, ‘Right, I can go to the States for a few months, live off that and if it doesn’t work out come back with my tail between my legs.’ To my amazement, I straight away got cast in a pilot, sold a script as well and very shortly after that met this extraordinary woman who became my wife. I was like, ‘Well, I’m not going back now!’”

That extraordinary woman being writer, editor and director Megan Ganz whose credits include Community, Modern Family and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, which Humphrey ended up guesting on in 2018.

“I always felt there was something a bit tragic about ‘unemployed actor sponges off of successful wife’, but when Meg wrote an episode of … Philadelphia – which was incredibly funny – I read it and said to her, ‘I really think I could do a good job as this character. Can you mention to the casting people that I’m asking my agent to put me forward for it?’

“Appearing in that was incredibly exciting because before moving to the States I’d watched … Philadelphia religiously. I love the way they shoot – it’s very run and gun and written short, which means you can mess around and riff on things in a way that’s semi-improvised.”

Humphrey then landed a recurring role as Tall Paul in Mythic Quest, the video game spoof which brought him into contact with Rob McElhenney whose sporting interests at the time didn’t extend beyond the Philadelphia Eagles and their NFL rivals.

“He was very anti-‘soccer’ and razzing me about it being boring – ‘There aren’t enough points, all they do is dive, blah blah blah,” Ker laughs. “I was helped by it being 2019 when Liverpool had that famous 4-0 comeback win against Barcelona in the Champions League semi-finals. Rob saw me watching those games in my lunchbreak and slowly but surely started saying, ‘I can see how excited you are…’ He became a bit jealous of how, as a Liverpool supporter, it meant so much to me. Then when lockdown came along and we were exchanging ‘Watch, read, listen to this’ recommendations, I sent him in the direction of Sunderland ‘Til I Die. Fortunately, it piqued his interest.”

Now that he’s got to know both of them really well, how would Humphrey sum Rob and Ryan up in pithy soundbites?

“A good way to describe Rob is ‘affably impatient.’ No matter how much you do, achieve and push forward, it’s not enough. He’s also really interested in people and loves talking to them.

“Ryan’s a bit more laissez faire and just delighted to be along for the ride. He’s very comfortable in his skin and doesn’t feel he has to prove anything to anyone, which is a really good quality to have. Rather than being recognised as the world’s leading scientist, he’s content with who he is – a highly successful, very handsome movie star!”

Welcome to Wrexham.

Talking of movies, has Humphrey seen the Kneecap one and what does he make of the controversy surrounding them?

“I loved the movie, I like their music,” he confirms. “I’m concerned at the way in which protest in the UK is steadily being outlawed. I find it crazy that we’re using anti-terrorism laws against a group of people who are expressing themselves via their art. I think Kneecap are entitled to their views.”

Kneecap’s manager being Daniel Lambert who’s also the CEO of Bohemians. Is the League of Ireland on the Wrexham radar?

“Definitely,” Ker replies. “James McClean, of course, began his career at Derry City. One of our goalkeepers, Luke McNicholas, was at Sligo Rovers. Eoghan O’Connell, who’s been a big, big player for us, was at Cork City. Thomas O’Connor, who’s coming up to his 100th Wrexham appearance is from Kilkenny, so we’ve had a big chunk of Irish lads.”

In addition to Welcome To Wrexham duties, Humphrey has been rehearsing for an upcoming play in London’s National Theatre, The Estate, and also prepping for a festive Sherlock Holmes reboot, which finds him and Dave Reed collaborating with none other than Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

“Tim, whose son is my brother-in-law, used to come and watch Dave and I in the Penny Dreadfuls whenever we were in London,” Humphrey explains. “He also really liked Dymock Watson: Nazi Smasher, had us in the back of his mind and eventually said, ‘I want you to write a play to go with these songs.’ Despite the level of success they’ve had, they’re not ones to rest on their laurels and still have that creative urge.”

Sherlock Holmes And The Twelve Days Of Christmas runs from November 14-January 11 with tickets from £25 and up available from birmingham-rep.co.uk.

Rob McElhenney, as is his wont, is targeting promotion to the Premiership this season but Ker will be happy if the Red Dragons manage to stay out of the relegation zone.

“You always have to start with survival,” he notes. “We desperately need our infrastructure to catch up with the rise of the club. We’ve a decent training ground arrangement with our friends at the Football Association of Wales, but we need our own state of the art facilities. We need to rebuild the stadium and grow our scouting and player identification department. I’ve no complaints about our recruitment so far but you’re getting into that sphere where an extra 2%-5% on top of everything is what’s required to be successful.”

Before he gets back to rehearsals at the National Theatre, what are Humphrey’s favourite Welcome To Wrexham scenes?

“There’s a Series 3 episode where the focus is on both a hundred year old fan of ours, Arthur Massey, and one of our players, James Jones, whose partner Chloe was pregnant at the time and had to be rushed to hospital whilst he was on the pitch. Someone on the sidelines says, ‘You have to go right now!’ and Phil Parkinson immediately substitutes him. They ended up having their beautiful son, Jude, after just twenty-three weeks.”

It’s an extraordinary piece of television, which has doubtless contributed to the show’s multiple EMMY awards.

“They did an incredibly good job of weaving together the longevity of Arthur, who went to his first game in 1936, and this tiny, tiny baby who was born incredibly early and is now bouncing around the place,” Humphrey continues. “People are like, ‘Oh, Will Ferrell’s here!’ but I don’t care about that. The best bit for me is always the fans and that feeling of extended family a football club gives you.

“One of the funniest was at the end of last season when we had our titanic game at home against Charlton, which was going to decide whether we went up or not. Nathan Jones, their manager, had somewhat inadvertently referred to us the week before as a circus. Because of this, a load of our fans turned up dressed as clowns and when we went 2-0 up started chanting, ‘You’ve seen the circus, now fuck off home!’ Which was rather good...”

• The current series of Welcome To Wrexham is available now on Disney+