Who were your main comedy influences growing up?
As a little child I liked the Two Ronnies. My Mum took me to see them live in Coventry and I fell onto the floor laughing. As a teenager, the first wave of Alternative Comedy hit me like an enormous “yes!”. I saw Peter Richardson from Comic Strip Presents supporting Dexy’s Midnight Runners in 1981, Phil Jupitus when he was a poet opening for Billy Bragg, and Ted Chippington, a deadpan art-comic opening for The Fall in 1984. He changed my life and made me a stand-up.

Out in the provinces, away from London, you only saw these people opening for bands – there weren’t any comedy venues. On TV, though, The Young Ones blew my mind.

Is it more difficult now for working- class comedians to get a foothold?

It’s more difficult now for people without lots of money to do anything in the arts, as all the cracks you could thrive in have been filled in. Goodbye to squats, student grants, housing benefit, cheap accommodation. The sort of jobs you did while trying to be an artist are now unpaid internships, and education has been reduced, philosophically, to a customer/service provider transaction, so no one is encouraged to believe in the value of ideas for their own sake.

The burst of post-war talent that made Britain’s cultural reputation abroad in arts, music, comedy and film can never be repeated because ordinary people’s access to the means of communication and production has been blocked.

Why do you think society still makes jokes about hearing loss, but wouldn’t dream of doing so for any other disability?

I suppose because it isn’t as obviously awful as other disabilities, so a balancing act is done, ethically, in our heads, that justifies laughing at it. I’m deaf – and I think it’s funny.

Well, it’s one point of view… so what is your own experience of deafness? I went back to a venue in Australia in 2005 that I hadn’t played since 2000. I couldn’t hear the massive sound rush of laughter that I remembered the room generating before. So I thought I’d either got a lot worse, or I was going deaf.
In 2013, I met my real father for the first time. [Stewart was adopted as a baby.] The first thing I noticed was that he had a hearing aid. He told me all the men in the family go deaf.

I went for a check. They said I needed hearing aids. They also said the pattern showed it was genetic, not noise trauma, which is what I’d expected due to years of doing radio, noisy gigs, playing guitar, and listening to music.

The first thing I heard, after being fitted with the hearing aids, was my daughter shuffling her bottom on a plastic seat in the consultation room. I’d forgotten that fabric made sounds. The whole experience of hearing such detail continues to be amazing. And it’s transformed my live work. I don’t really know how I was working rooms before, other than second-guessing the responses from muscle memory, I suppose. God bless the NHS.

Have you ever used the fact of your own hearing loss in your comedy?

I talk about it in the current show and get my hearing aids out of my ears. I look forward to talking about it more.

Hearing loss can be very socially isolating – has this happened to you or do you worry it might in the future if your hearing gets worse?
I was worried mainly about working – but my hearing aids have given me confidence that I’ll be able to continue my live work for long enough to discharge my family and financial responsibilities and then die. I’m not bothered about being sociall cut off. I don’t really have any friends.

But you’re a big music fan – has hearing loss affected your appreciation of music at all?
No, I’ve just been turning things up. But I just found out that an album I love has cello all over it that I hadn’t heard before. And live, squeaky, low-key jazz improvisations sound better than ever.

What are the best – and worst – things about becoming as successful as you have?
The worst things are the invasion of privacy, the compromises in all your relationships with friends and family and other comics, the pressure to meet your own high standards, and the difficulty of juggling relationships and children with working away, and at night, 300 days a year or more.

The best things are not having to worry too much about money, and the satisfaction I get from the work.

Do you see yourself still doing what you do in years to come?

I’m going to do a new stand-up show every two years, and tour it as extensively as possible, until I’m too old, or too sick, to do so. I have no interest in anything else.

Do you prefer writing to performing or vice versa? The fourth series of your BBC show, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, has just aired – did you expect it to be such a hit?

I write the stand-up material and then I perform it – so they’re intertwined. But then I get to edit it, and improvise with it as I go along, so I much prefer this to purely written stuff.

I’ve tried to make the filming for the TV show essentially just the same as me performing. I don’t like filming things as such; I prefer live. I didn’t expect [the TV show] to ever be made. It has been allowed on by a string of coincidences and accidents.

Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions left?

No. I’d like to go to the Tewa village in New Mexico and see the clown ritual again, but this time with my kids. I’d also like to walk up a big mountain with them, before my knees go. I’d like to see Robert Pollard [American rock musician] play live again. But, really, nothing massive. Things have worked out beyond my wildest dreams. I envy me.