A former biomedical scientist (true!), Dave Spikey only packed in the day job a few years ago - and went into comedy full-time.

Bank Holiday, my wife said: "Put some shelves up will you". I'm hopeless at DIY, so I thought I'd get a book. I went to the library and I said: "Have you got any books on shelves? The full interview

Before that - in true jobbing comedian style - he'd been thrown out of working men's clubs across the North (true) appeared on New Faces - where he came a close third to the Todmorden whippet juggler and the Latvian plumber who played I've got ‘I’ve got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence’ on a radiator ( OK - stretching it), until he found an outlet for his style of comedy at the Buzz in Chorlton.

"I still don't know what I'm doing here to be honest," he told Michelle. "I was a massive fan of comedy and my hobby was writing comedy and I just used to send bits off to TV. Then when the stand up thing happened as well, because I had so much material, I decided to use it myself, that it just ran in parallel with the two jobs. And then you just get better and better."

Dave Spikey is a former North West Comedian of the Year, enjoys regular TV appearances, is known in living rooms everywhere as Jerry St Clair in Phoenix Nights, and is coming to the end of a 70-night Overnight Success tour, which arrives at the Lowry this week.

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