There aren’t many comedians on the present-day Welsh scene with more impressive CVs than Kiri Pritchard-McLean – and that’s just the funny stuff. Behind the scenes, she’s also taken up foster parenting and is now free to talk about it onstage for the first time. So, as she tells Hari Berrow, she’s going on tour to do just that.

Peacock, Welsh comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean’s latest show, is not about peacocks. “Apologies to the ornithologists,” she smiles. ‘It’s a show I had been working up, but I wasn’t sure I’d be allowed to do it. So I gave it a generic cool name – I knew what I’d wear if I called it Peacock – and then sorted out the problem of the show.”

Why might she not be allowed to do the show she wanted? Because Pritchard-McLean has been leading a wholesome double-life as a foster carer. “For the last three years my partner and I have been foster carers, but as a part of that contract I was not allowed to talk about fostering on stage, and also was not allowed to use my real name with the kids or tell them I was a comedian,” she explains.

This new show, which visits several dozen venues between July and December, is about realising that motherhood isn’t for everyone – including Kiri herself – and the journey into becoming a carer. It took a while for social services to give the show the OK, and Kiri was developing the show over that time.

“It was always going to cover themes about what it is to be a person of my age that doesn’t want a biological family but that doesn’t hate kids, and isn’t childless or child-free. I just couldn’t see anybody talking about that in-between bit. It was going to be about the ‘rich auntie’ movement; that’s been folded into the show now.” The show now covers the period up to Kiri and her partner becoming approved as foster parents.

While it is about the process into fostering, Peacock is primarily an honest account of being a woman who doesn’t want children of her own. Ahead of the tour starting, Pritchard-McLean was unsure how people would respond to the show. “In the first part, I talk about what it’s like to be a mum and why I just don’t think I’m up to it, and all the people I know that have become mums and have become quite unbearable. I do worry about getting pushback from that, and I’m sure it will happen, because I’m sure people will feel seen. It’s a sort of critique, but it’s also recognising that I haven’t got the chops to be a biological mother.

“Some of my friends have children, and have been really honest about this; they say, ‘Children are the best thing I’ll ever do, I’m so proud of them, they have changed my life, I love them more than anything else… but if I had my time again I wouldn’t have them.’ I think lots of people have that feeling, and feel incredibly guilty about it.

“I don’t think it’s as taboo for men to say as for women, and I think me going on and saying, ‘I’ve seen it, I’ve witnessed it, I’ve weighed up the odds, it’s rubbish guys and it’s not for me…’ some people can feel like I’m going in on them, but I think that speaks to maybe how they are feeling as opposed to what I’m saying.”

Now that her show is out in the world, Kiri’s life as a foster carer is a little different. “We’re respite short-stay carers, so there was no-one with us continuously for three years calling me a different name every day – but we do have young people coming back to us. Since we finally got the show approved, [social services] have said, ‘Use your name, tell the kids. We were worried when we didn’t know what this was – but now we understand a bit more, it’s OK.’

“But it will be strange, because some of the kids coming back to us know me as Louise, and others then know me as Kiri. I haven’t worked out yet how we are going to deal with that.”

As a comedian, Pritchard-McLean’s main aim is to make her audiences laugh, but she’s also hoping Peacock will get them reflecting. “I would hope that they get a different understanding of what it is to be a foster carer and a clear understanding of fostering in general. I didn’t know you could do it if you were single or if you didn’t have your own biological children. I thought you had to do it full time, I thought you had to be older – all this is stuff that just isn’t the case. So I’d like to give a reframing of what it is to be a foster carer. And then, potentially, someone could think, ‘Does this suit my life? Is this what I want?’”

Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Sat 10 Aug.

Tickets: £20. Info: here

Peacock will tour to Cardigan (Wed 2 Oct), Pontardawe (Thurs 3), Carmarthen (Fri 4), Aberystwyth (Sat 5), Monmouth (Sun 27) and Bangor (Sat 7 Dec). Info: here

words HARI BERROW