As Harry Hill begins his first stand-up tour for six years in Kent, James Rampton caught up with the TV Burp star

For a man who is so relentless in his success, Harry Hill is remarkably good at quitting.

The comedian wisely gave up his career as a doctor to concentrate on stand-up two decades ago and last year he bowed out at the top by ending TV Burp after 11 years on screen.

He won multiple Baftas and British Comedy Awards for the ITV1 show. The comic, who lives in Whitstable, also won the respect of his peers, with Peter Kay famously saying that TV Burp was “the only thing on TV that actually makes me laugh out loud”.

The next chapter is to head out on tour with Sausage Time Live, his first stand-up show since 2007. Starting in Kent this week, he is relishing the freedom it has given him.

“When you do a TV show, there is a very long time between writing a joke and getting a laugh,” said Harry, 48, who grew up in Staplehurst and went to Cranbrook School.

“You have to write a script, have meetings, explain to the producer why it’s funny and shouldn’t be cut and explain to the prop maker what the prop should look like. Then you turn up and the prop is wrong. The new prop turns up just 10 minutes before filming, but even though it gets a laugh, the producer still wants to cut it. It’s such a laborious process.”

Despite making viewers keel over with laughter on TV Burp – sporting his trademark look of gleaming bald bonce, thick spectacles, big-collared white shirt and dark suit, complete with a top pocket stuffed with pens and lapels lined with badges – it is easy to understand his reasons for giving up the show.

“TV Burp took up so much of my time. I wanted to tour, but I couldn’t do it to my family,” said Harry, who is married with three daughters.

“Even when I was at home, I was having to watch TV all the time and was mentally somewhere else. I felt we were getting disinterested, which is the kiss of death. It was a great stress watching TV for hours and hours each week.

You can do that for six weeks, but not for weeks on end. Also over an 11-year period, we felt we’d done all the jokes we could do about every single show. How many more jokes are there to make about EastEnders? And by the end, pseudo-documentaries like The Only Way Is Essex were doing the jokes for us.”

So Harry, who also voices ITV1’s You’ve Been Framed, decided to quit while he was ahead.

He said: “I thought, ‘We’d better get out now’. By then, no amount of money could have persuaded me to stay. On our final show, we had knitted character, Wagbo and Heather’s death on EastEnders, which was a complete gift for us. I thought, ‘It won’t get any better than this’.

“At the end of that last show, all the production team were crying, but I went back to my dressing room and felt like a weight had been lifted. The closest equivalent was when I gave up medicine.

“When I drove out of Ashford Hospital for the last time, I had this great feeling of euphoria. I still feel that – I’m not missing TV Burp in the slightest.”

`My show is just a load of silly stuff'

Harry Hill has not done a live stand-up tour for six years but cannot wait to return to his roots.

He said: “Stand-up is what I’ve always wanted to do. It’s what I gave up medicine to do all those years ago. It is the bedrock of everything I do.

“There’s never a serious agenda to my comedy. I use a lot of slapstick and a lot of silly wordplay and puns. The show doesn’t have an overall theme. It’s just a load of silly stuff.”

However the audience should not come to the show thinking it’s going to be TV Burp Live. It’s not.

“I wouldn’t give in to that pressure. It’s a slippery slope when you start giving people what you think they want. You end up popular and wealthy and we wouldn’t want that!”

Harry Hill’s Sausage Time Live tour starts at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre on Thursday, February 7. Box office 01227 787787. He is at Tunbridge Wells’ Assembly Hall Theatre on Friday and Saturday, February 15 and 16. Box office 01892 530613. Tickets £30. Harry also performs a warm-up show at Maidstone’s Hazlitt Arts Centre on Tuesday, February 5. Tickets £20. Box office 01622 758611. Suitable for ages 12 and over.