Jerry Springer – The Opera has done many things in its brief time, including getting Nick Hytner's regime at the National off to a flying start, revitalising the West End, and dragging the British musical kicking and screaming into the 21st century. But one of its lesser reported side-effects is that it has been the absolute making of its co-creator Stewart Lee.

Three years ago, he was known, if he was known at all, as a young, clever, good-looking comic whose hour had perhaps already been and gone. As one half of Lee and Herring, the double act formed with his jovial, chubby Oxford University chum Richard Herring in the early '90s, he enjoyed a longish-running Radio 4 show (Fist of Fun), and two spin-off BBC TV series.
But the turn of the millennium proved to be a career cul-de-sac. This Morning With Richard Not Judy, the duo's second series, was axed; his solo live shows stood accused of going through the motions ("obviously and painfully in decline," sneered The Guardian) and his commendable first novel The Perfect Fool, five years in the writing, was met with near-total indifference.

A fledgling sideline as a TV director/producer also swiftly stalled. Scottish by birth, but adopted and raised in Solihull, Lee looked as if he was going nowhere fast.

"I reached a crisis point," he recalls. "I was going to get married, and we split up, and I suddenly thought, 'I don't live anywhere, there's no money coming in, what's gone wrong?' "

He renounced stand-up and placed a sardonic chronology of his achievements on his website, dubbing it "A Wasted Life", hoping to weather the angst through further novel-writing and rock journalism.

It was being thrown in at the deep end and pulling through, rather than the royalty cheques, that has emboldened him, he believes. "I've made about the same amount over the past three years as I would have done if I'd worked as the chief accountant of a catering supplies company in the Thames Valley corridor. I know because I've checked. It's not a life-changing sum."

He's already toiling on a follow-up with Thomas, a project that sounds so insane it just might be the start of something equally brilliant. The Ha-Ha Hole, to be staged at the Hanover Shauspielhaus from the end of January, will attempt to recreate a riotous night out in a London comedy club. It will be performed in German by a cast of opera and cabaret singers.

None of the German team could grasp what British stand-up entailed until they were taken to a London gig. "They had this idea that people come on, do their little character monologue and everyone goes 'How marvellous.' I said: 'No, it's like fighting.' ".

Whatever the Germans make of the show, he'll be laughing all the way to the banks of the river Leine. "It's fantastic to have ended up going to Germany to help out on an opera about stand-up comedy in German with a load of Germans: that's something I'd never have imagined happening in my life. It's completely ludicrous."
He leans forward. "If you want my advice, I'd recommend giving up everything, then doing something completely unexpected. That's the quickest way to success and happiness."

Stewart Lee opens at the Soho Theatre, London W1 (0870 429 6883), tonight.