Your new touring stand up show is called Carpet Remnant World. Why?
Well, the idea of the show is that as a 43 year old comedian and dad of two all I ever do is drive around motorways doing gigs, going past all those massive warehouse type shops, or look after children, so I haven’t had time to write anything apart from jokes about things I’ve seen out of the window of the car. Of course, this is just a dramatic device and in the end it all ties together beautifully and turns out to have been a devastating critique of society. There’s also a load of old carpets in it which are quite expensive to transport around so that explains the high ticket price.

So being a father has changed your stand-up?
Yes. But for the better. Looking tired and dead suits my act. Also, because I’m too tired to learn anything verbatim the shows are more discursive and naturalistic now, which is good. Also, I used to be very cynical, but when you have kids you can’t take any pleasure in the abject failure of the world. You have to hope, for their sake, that things get better, which is an interesting place to do stand-up from.

In your TV series you said you hadn’t got any jokes. Is that true?
Yes, but people do laugh. I do stories and odd ideas really, not jokes as such. If I do a joke it sort of breaks the spell of the show and sticks out like a sore thumb.

What difference has being on television made to your stand-up?
I don’t know. More people are coming. But I don’t know if they’re coming to see me, or just someone they’ve heard is on the TV. It doesn’t seem to make the shows go any better or worse. There’s still people in that don’t get it. There’s just more people generally in the room.

You must have been pleased to win two British Comedy Awards last year?
I’d rather not talk about it to be honest. I found it very confusing. I don’t know who chooses them or where they came from. It was a big surprise. I was happy for about ten seconds and then I just started worrying about whether people would come to see me expecting ‘award winning comedy’ and then just hate what I do. I couldn’t go to the ceremony as I was working. When I got home I put the TV coverage of the aftershow party on. I saw a load of skittles with the faces of comedians on. They had all fallen down apart from one with my face on. And then a woman in a red dress ran up and kicked it over, very violently. It was all quite strange really.

You caused a lot of controversy when you wrote Jerry Springer The Musical.
You mean Jerry Springer The Opera? Jerry Springer The Musical is two rubbish things together so it isn’t funny. Jerry Springer The Opera is funny because it’s two different things. And I didn’t write it. I co-wrote the words with Richard Thomas. It was his idea and he wrote all the music. I’m fed up of talking about it to be honest. A far right pressure group called Christian Voice made up a load of lies about its content and stirred up 65 000 people who hadn’t seen it into wanting it banned for being blasphemous, so it basically closed and we never saw any money really for five years’ work. The guy in charge of Christian Voice, Stephen Green, even the Daily Mail won’t talk to him these days. I was very proud of the piece but the stress surrounding it means I don’t really like thinking about it.

What’s the worst heckle you’ve ever had?
I can’t remember. People tend not to heckle me. I don’t really invite it. If people shout stuff out it’s usually funny or helpful. That said I did a show at the Lowry in Salford and a drunk Turkish man came in and just kept going on at me for so long it meant there was no way I could really do the show as written, which was a shame. The venue tried to make out it was my fault and that I should reimburse people who wanted refunds out of my own pocket, so now if there are persistently disruptive hecklers, like there were last time I was in Cambridge, I force them out of the theatre myself and barricade the door with chairs.

In the early 90s you were something of a comedy sex symbol, but now
you are grey haired and very overweight. Does this make you feel sick?
I find that question quite offensive to be honest, but I will answer it anyway. It works better for my comedy to be old and decrepit, but I do miss being fit and thin. I have to suffer for my art I suppose, and so do my audiences.

Frankie Boyle has described you as ‘irrelevant and flabby’. What do
you think of that?
Has he? I didn’t know that. I can see what he means. If you want punchy well-written one-liners like he does you’re not going to get them from me, so I suppose what I do is irrelevant to what he feels comedy is. I wouldn’t imagine there’s much cross over of audience. And I am flabby. So he’s right on both counts. I met him once or twice. He was actually very nice. He lived near me for a bit and one of the old ladies at the church my wife goes to said “The Scottish comedian from off the telly” was always going round to check she was alright, because she was a bit disabled, and help with stuff in her house. But then money started going missing. She couldn’t confront him about it, obviously. He moved away soon after. Back to Scotland I think.

Who are your favorite comedians?
Well, everything we think of as break-throughs in stand-up has already been done better and first by Lenny Bruce. I think the best living comics are Daniel Kitson and Jerry Sadowitz and Kevin MacAleer, who is Irish. I really like Paul Sinha, who is a gay Hindu, and Simon Munnery. Boothby Graffoe is very good, a musical comedian. Greg Fleet, who is an Australian who doesn’t come here really. I don’t really like any comedians under 40. I don’t think you can really be any good at stand-up until you are 40. I don’t like any American comedians either, except some of the dead ones. Comedians seem much funnier when they’re dead, I think. I liked Dave Allen when I was a kid. My wife, Bridget Christie, is also one of my favorite comics. I thought she was so funny I married her. People say, ‘that must be funny, being married to a comedian.’ But the laughs soon wear off. Then it becomes like any normal marriage. Awful.

What can people expect from you in the future?
Well the audience numbers I’m getting now are big enough to do stadium gigs like all the famous comics, so I’m wondering if there’s a way of making that idea interesting or subversive. I’ve signed up for martial arts and contemporary dance classes for when this tour is over, and I’ve been talking to some people at The Circus Space in East London about what is entailed in being shot out of a cannon. I want to study kung fu with the Shaolin Monks. I’ve also been doing Neuro Linguistic Programing studies, to try and control the minds of audiences to laugh at what I want them to, and mass hypnosis ideas, thinking about how Hitler and Stalin manipulated crowd responses. I’ve been trying to see how far I can spit ping pong balls, and trying to contact that guy who used to dance with ferrets down his tights on TV at night in the 80s. It’s all good stuff. Also, in the 19th c the Hippodrome Theatre in London had a show with elephants in a water tank. I don’t think you’re allowed to do that sort of thing to animals now but I saw a show where someone swam in a tank with a python in Paris and these are all the sorts of things I’m thinking about for the next big tour, which won’t be until about 2016, so I’ve got lots of time to learn all these skills and get fit.

And get the snake?
Well, I don’t know if it will be a snake. It might be just a big worm. In Australia there are worms that can grow up to 9 feet long. The Gippsland earthworm. Maybe I’ll use one of them.