Comedian Stewart Lee, 42, was one half of a successful 1990s double act with Richard Herring. He co-wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera before returning to stand-up in 2007 with a series of critically acclaimed shows. He has just written a new book.

What’s your book about?

It’s the transcripts of three stand-up shows I did between 2004 and 2007 with notes explaining what was behind it. It was interesting to see what things even from five years ago I wouldn’t do again.

Such as?

Certain jokes. There was a lot of stuff in the 2004 show about American complicity in Iraq but because there’s allegations of us doing torture I couldn’t write that now without thinking about what our own country has done.

The book starts with you contemplating giving up stand-up. Why was that?

I was getting bad reviews, touring around to do shows no one came to and I couldn’t write anything. I went down really badly one night in Liverpool and thought: ‘I can’t do this any more.’ I stopped for four years. Richard Herring and I had done our fourth tour and we hadn’t turned a profit after four months on the road. I had a sense of pointlessness about it all. It was the end of a difficult period.

So why did you give it another go?

A lot of what I thought of as limitations of stand-up suddenly seemed like advantages after working on Jerry Springer: The Opera. You can write something in the morning and perform it that night. I thought I could mess with the format more and decided instead of being really popular I should aim for the people who liked me and I’d be alright. It suddenly seemed really simple whereas Jerry Springer: The Opera didn’t add up financially. I thought if I could just get 4,000 people to see me once a year I’d be all right.

Was it hard to get motivated?

Some comics make films or write books about going back to stand-up – like Frank Skinner going back after doing chat shows for ten years – but they didn’t need to, it was a sentimental journey for them. That wasn’t the case for me. I was 36, everything I’d done hadn’t worked out. It mattered a bit more. It wasn’t for fun. I got to the point where it was too late to do anything else and nothing I’d done had worked out so this time it had to. It had also become easier to get through to the people who liked me via the internet rather than having to spend money on publicity.

Was trying to be popular a mistake?

Comedy was supposed to be the new rock ’n’ roll in the 1990s. After Newman and Baddiel played Wembley there was this thought that the sky was the limit for everyone but there is a top limit to what I do, 90 per cent of people won’t like me. I had to realise that. Instead of someone promoting me as the next big thing I had to realise I was never going to be that and make a living out of what I did. My TV show might have got 1million viewers but that means 59million didn’t watch it. People find me boring. I had to find the minority of people who didn’t and get them to help.

Have you got a typical fan?

When I was touring with Tony Law he’d laugh his head off at the audiences. We’d get to frightening towns in the middle of nowhere and every Guardian reader in that town would be in the audience. When I go to a town I go to the comic shop, the independent record shop and the independent book shop and the people behind the counters usually have tickets to my show. It’s usually pretentious self-satisfied outsiders with funny hair. That’s what I like.

Do you ever get mistaken for anyone?

So many – Terry Christian, Roland Gift from the Fine Young Cannibals, Ali Campbell from UB40, Todd Carty from EastEnders, Ben Watt from Everything But The Girl, Mark Lamarr – I have genuinely been mistaken for all those people at some point. Anyone with a chubby face and a quiff.

How I Escaped My Certain Fate is out now published by Faber, £12.99