Wrexham's Humphrey Ker on his job switch: ‘I was slightly falling out of love with the whole experience'
It means he has plenty of reasons to be thankful to the Hollywood duo. That gratitude, however, does not extend to being effectively strong-armed into running next month's Manchester Marathon by Wrexham's two co-chairmen.
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'It has been exactly as much fun as I expected — which is not fun at all!' says the comedy writer and actor. 'I keep searching for this runner's high that everyone keeps telling me exists. Maybe I'll get delirious around mile 12 and suddenly start enjoying myself, I'm not sure.'
A throwaway comment seized upon by Reynolds and McElhenney explains why Ker will next month pound the streets of Manchester for 26.2miles in aid of the Wrexham Miners' Rescue Project, the club's nominated charity partner for this season.
At the launch of an appeal to raise £250,000 ($322,000) towards turning the historic Miners Rescue Station building — those who led the rescue attempts at the 1934 Gresford Disaster that claimed 266 lives were trained there — into a community hub, Ker quipped to the audience: 'I'm hoping we will get there without me having to run a marathon.'
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A few weeks later, on their regular video call with Ker to discuss club business, the two owners not only revealed they had seen the clip but also entered him to run the April 27 marathon. Oh, and they'd start the fundraising by donating £26,200 each.
Five or so months of training later and the start line is coming into view. The Athletic can sense Ker's nerves from 5,000 miles away, even allowing for how wife Megan Ganz — also a comedy writer and member of the team behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia — will be joining him on the run.
'About the only positive thing is I can now run for an hour without stopping,' he says in an early morning call from the couple's Los Angeles home. 'When I started this process, I ran until my heart rate went over a certain level and then walked. This honestly meant I was running for one minute at a time and that was it.
'Everyone who knows me has been saying, 'You? But you hate running'. The big problem is I'm quite fat these days. I've got skinny legs and skinny arms, but carrying around the waist. I look like an avocado.'
Needless to say at a club where the Welcome to Wrexham documentary cameras film every move, Ker's fundraising efforts will form part of the upcoming fourth series.
He insists much of it won't be pretty, even if the support from within the club includes a delegation who plan to join him in running the New York Half Marathon on March 16. Even that landmark moment, though, will carry consequences.
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'My wife depressed me the other day by pointing out I'll have to run another half marathon the following Sunday after New York,' adds Ker with a wince. 'Just to keep me on track.'
As for next month's big day, he adds: 'There's no target other than to finish. Anything that involves me propelling myself over the finishing line on my own two feet is a victory for avocado-bodied men everywhere.'
Wrexham has seen a lot less of Ker this season. And not just in a physical sense amid that fitness regimen for the upcoming marathon. Compared to the 2023-24 season, when he spent months on end in north Wales working on club business, his visits have become much more fleeting.
Ker was at the STōK Cae Ras for the opening day victory against Wycombe Wanderers. He then came back for a few days around the 90th anniversary of the Gresford disaster in September, as he did again during a flying visit over Christmas.
Otherwise, the 42-year-old has been at home in LA. After previously spending so long apart from Ganz — and effectively putting his writing and acting career on hold — the shift has been welcome.
'I was missing my wife,' says the lifelong Liverpool fan, who famously triggered McElhenney's interest in football by urging his co-writer on Mythic Quest to watch the Netflix documentary Sunderland 'Til I Die during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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'I was finding the grind of it a bit harder. I was slightly falling out of love with the whole experience, in a way.
'This season, though, has been great and allowed me to get back into my other life. It's been a good year, career-wise. It's always amazing to do both things, but it has been nice to give more of a focus to that side.'
Michael Williamson's appointment as chief executive officer in May last year was the catalyst for Ker to resume his life on the other side of the Atlantic.
The switch from executive director to community director came at his request amid a series of key appointments designed to bolster Wrexham's leadership team. One of those was Jamie Edwards, the head of community who Ker now works alongside.
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'How the whole setup works today has definitely improved from my perspective,' he says. 'There's less stuff landing on my plate where I was previously thinking, 'I don't know what this is and I'm not responsible for it'.
'Or I was getting tagged into things (by fans on social media) and asked why we were doing it like this. I had no idea! People were still emailing me or shouting at me about things I had no control over.'
There has, though, been one downside to all this change. 'I do miss being in Wrexham and I do miss being at the heart of it all,' he adds. 'It's also a weird experience now in going to the stadium and seeing all these faces who I don't recognise. And they don't know who I am.'
Ker will become a much more familiar face during the run-in. He's due to return to Wales a few days after the New York Half Marathon and will stay until the season ends.
But Ker is refocusing on a career that took off in 2011 after winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer. A second series of BBC sitcom Daddy Issues, starring Ker alongside David Morrissey and Aimee Lou Wood, has recently been commissioned, while Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days of Christmas, a show he co-wrote with David Reed, starts a two-month run in Birmingham later this year.
Then, there's a film Ker has written with Ganz called If I Were You that is being shot by Amazon, with other big projects also in the pipeline.
Wrexham clearly have lofty ambitions of their own and, according to Ker, the club are unlikely to settle for anything other than their very best.
'Phil (Parkinson) isn't a manager who is happy with stability,' he says. 'Same for Rob and Ryan as well. If Rob has a philosophy that can be condensed into one sentence then it would be, 'Why not us?'.
'He doesn't care for conventional wisdom. He likes to break the mould. Phil, (assistant) Steve Parkin and this group of players are all the same. They want to win. It's why when people bag on them, it gets my goat.
'Being more removed from things, it's been fascinating to watch expectations evolve as the season has gone on. Back in August at the Wycombe game, I was telling everyone, 'Anything above 12th, we should build a statue of Phil'.
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'Fans were saying the same to me. But we've gone from that to now, where we've been right up at the top of the table all season and massively outperformed all expectations, and yet I'm reading comments such as, 'Can't believe we scraped past Mansfield'. Or, 'The manager is s***'.'
Ker remains a firm favourite among those who only know Wrexham through a documentary streamed by FX in the United States and Disney+ in the UK, but he's also popular on the ground, be that among supporters or the players. This affection, though, has not saved Ker from some ribbing during the countdown to that marathon date in Manchester.
'The one who's made the most fun of me is (former Wrexham captain) Ben Tozer,' he says. 'Now he's no longer shackled by being a club employee, he seems to feel he can be as insolent and impertinent as he wants.
'I'm also fully aware Rob and Ryan are hoping to watch me suffer and then come out the other side, transformed.
'Me? I just want to get it all over with and, hopefully, raise some funds for a great cause.'
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