After dealing with depression, Imran Yusuf turned his life around to become the optimistic cheeky chappy of Britain’s stand up scene. He passed on a few words of wisdom to Chris Price.

A little over five years ago, Imran Yusuf was a video game designer suffering from clinical depression and going nowhere, fast.

Skip to the present day and he is a comedian renowned for his optimistic humour who is embarking on his first solo tour of the UK – and going somewhere fast, very fast.

The Muslim stand up was a hit as soon as he set foot on the stage at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year. His solo show was part of the Laughing Horse Free Festival, designed as a low key affair for would-be comics to get some experience.

When word about his show got round he bagged a host of five star reviews and was nominated for Best Newcomer in the Fosters Edinburgh Comedy Awards, becoming the first performer from The Free Festival to be nominated in the history of the awards.

An appearance on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow followed and now his days of unhappiness are behind him.

“I had the goods ready and when the opportunity came up to be on TV it all followed through. When hard work meets with opportunity good things happen,” said the 31-year-old who was born in Kenya but grew up in east London.

Imran suffered from a period of clinical depression from 2005 to 2006. He then emptied his bank account and made a pilgrimage to the Middle East where he “did a lot of soul searching,” which led him to quit the video games industry and become a stand up in 2007.

“I hit a point in my life where nothing was going right for me but I realised nothing changed until I changed it.

“That is why I am so optimistic. I looked for a way I could turn every action I do into something positive. Slowly things got better and it has delivered me to where I am now. In the summer of 2007 I left the games industry and I was broke. In the summer of 2010 I was on telly.

“When you have got a strong vision and you make the effort it shows you what is possible.”

Despite his career change, Imran is still a computer games nut. He is eager to prove his “hardcore” obsession by explaining that he actually owned a Killer Instinct arcade machine at the age of 15 after asking publisher Midway if they had any “knocking around”.

The company had some spare units in San Diego which they broke up for him and imported at a cost of about £700 – a fortune for any teenager. He admits after building it he “played it about five times and then stuck it in the attic”. Yet he tends to steer clear of his hobby on stage.

“It is very difficult to talk about video games in a comedy context because only video game geeks will get it.

“The only joke I could do on Michael McIntyre was my experience on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare because so many people play it.

“If I talk about it too much people would stop listening to me because they didn’t know the difference between a hurricane kick and a dragon punch.”

An Audience with Imran Yusuf is at Folkestone’s Quarterhouse on Friday, April 15. He plays Canterbury’s Gulbenkian Theatre on Saturday, June 4.