Comedian Alan Davies owes a debt to Kent for his career as QI’s delightfully puerile regular panelist and the enigma solving illusionist in Jonathan Creek. Chris Price caught up with him.

Wearing his wellies in a field in Sheffield, Alan Davies waits to appear on the One Show to plug his new tour and the forthcoming series of QI.

On the programme he’d talk about how he made his name in murder mystery programme Jonathan Creek and how he has rediscovered stand-up.

His return to the mic will bring him to Kent three times on his first UK tour in more than a decade – the place where his comedy career began as a student at the University of Kent.

He graduated in 1988 after four years studying drama at the Canterbury campus, three of which he spent living in Whitstable. It was that same year that he got up on stage for his first ever stand-up gig, at the Whitstable Labour Club.

“Whitstable in those days was all a bit run down and unvisited but it was full of students,” said Alan, 46. “Now it has all gone a bit upmarket and students can’t afford to live there any more. I do like to go back to the Neptune pub and the beach to have a look round the place. It is an important spot for me.”

The whole area has very deep ties with Essex-born Alan. He is a season ticket holder at Arsenal and goes regularly with Brighton record producer Damien Harris. Damien’s two brothers, Stephen and Philip, run the Michelin-starred Sportsman at Seasalter, where Alan often eats when he visits the county.

“They have been going down there since about 2000 so I will hopefully pop in there for a snack and to see a few faces.

“The Neptune pub is where we all used to go when I was at uni. That pub used to be full of students – heaving with students. There is a bit in my show where I talk about all the women becoming lesbians overnight in the 1980s and snogging each other. That was in the Neptune. That was where that happened. I have lots of good memories.”

The new show, Life is Pain, came about after an experiment in Australia. While touring Down Under with host Stephen Fry and a host of Aussie comics in QI Live last year, a friend of his booked him a few stand-up gigs which was “a significant motivator to get off my backside and start writing some material”. The shows went down well and Alan resolved to make his stand-up return in the UK.

“If it had been an absolute disaster I would have just knocked it on the head but in fact it was really good,” said Alan. “It didn’t take me long to get my stand-up legs back. There was a similarity to my early gigs in how I felt. The nerves and anxiety came back to me. When I did the first gig at the Whitstable Labour Club I was catatonic with nerves, virtually all day. In fact in the early years of gigging I wasn’t able to take the mic out of the stand because my hands were shaking so much. The nerves returned in Australia and I had to conquer them all over again.”

Despite getting his big break as an actor playing the eponymous part-time magician in Jonathan Creek, Alan always had designs on comedy during his days as a self-admittedly mardy, not particularly good student.

“I always wanted to do comedy and when I got to Kent, I remember going along to the university’s dramatic society hoping to meet like-minded people and do comedy together. Some of my great comedy heroes met at university, like Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson, all the Python people, and Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. So I wandered round the place hoping to meet my comedy soul mate.

“In the end it was better for me to do it by myself. Stand-up was there staring me in the face. We had people who had been to Edinburgh to see stand-up and I thought ‘this is the thing that is happening and you don’t need anybody else.’ So that is what I did.”

During his time at university, Alan found lots of time to indulge his other great love – football. The prospect of watching Gillingham at the Priestfield even played a part in his decision to come to Kent.

“I used to love going up there back in the 1980s, when it was Tony Cascarino, all terraces and muddy. I loved all that. Proper football.

“I used to have a Mini and I would drive up the A2 and watch the Gills. I liked living in Kent. I liked Margate and Broadstairs and I taught English as a foreign language to a load of Swiss and German kids in Folkestone in the summer holidays. I used to spend quite a lot of time in Kent outside of classes as well.”

Alan Davies’ new tour, Life is Pain, comes to Tunbridge Wells’ Assembly Hall Theatre on Thursday, September 13, Dartford’s Orchard Theatre on Tuesday, October 2 and Chatham’s Central Theatre on Thursday, November 22. Tunbridge Wells box office 01892 530613. Dartford box office 01322 220000. Chatham box office 01634 338338. Tickets £25.