When award-winning comedian, actor and screenwriter Simon Amstell quit hosting TV’s Never Mind the Buzzcocks, eyebrows were raised so high they hit the roof.

The 35-year-old had been credited with rejuvenating the music panel show and had won numerous awards for his work, with his famous jibes at the celebrity guests going down in TV folklore.

When he returned with his own sitcom called Grandma’s House in 2010, it revealed a different side to Simon but the show was his own – unlike Buzzcocks and his work on Channel 4’s Popworld before that.

Now, five years since quitting the world of TV presenting, Simon is touring again with his all-new stand-up show, To Be Free.

“I feel more connected,” he said. “I felt like I was always trying to shoehorn who I was into the format that was created before I got there with Popworld and Buzzcocks.

“But with Grandma’s House I created that show and with the stand-up it gets created from nothing. It means I can be fully myself in things that I’ve created myself.”

With this new, more connected sense, Simon has enjoyed a sold-out residency in New York and is looking forward to hitting the stage at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre for one night only this weekend…

How different is this tour to nearly three years ago, the last time you came to Kent?

“It seems to be less self-involved, according to reviews, in that I think I’m maybe a bit happier. The targets are no longer my own misery. There’s more stuff about the absurdities of where we live and what we have to deal with. There’s stuff about the Queen and how that there’s something quite odd that she just exists there in that big house and nobody seems to mind. And there’s some mildly more political material, but it’s all still coming from a personal emotional place; I haven’t left myself alone too much.”

How have you changed as a person since your last tour?

“This show isn’t about being or feeling broken in the way that the last show was. This one I feel that I’m ok now and I know how to be in the room with another human being without feeling terror. So the jokes are different. They’re not about me feeling anxious, they’re about me feeling angry, frustrated, and still sad occasionally. The performance is a lot more joyful and exciting than the more melancholy stuff that has come out of me in the past.”

Do you miss the time you had on Never Mind the Buzzcocks?

“Not really. I feel like I did it, I was there and fully immersed in it for three years, and for five years before that on Popworld. I was trying to be funny about pop stars and I don’t have any regret. There’s not a question I forgot to ask McFly – I did it all. I felt like I made my point as well about celebrity – I was done with celebrity. There was other stuff I wanted to do.”

What will audiences be thinking when your show finishes?

“They’ll be thinking, ‘My God, he is so funny, I can’t believe it, when can we see him again!’ No, I don’t know really. I’ll make people think about some things. I don’t do it in order to make people think a particular thing, although there is stuff about where I throw my opinions in. But even so I don’t really mind – all I care about is that I’ve been able to express myself and the people that have come have had as good a time as they could have possibly had at a comedy show.”

QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS WITH SIMON

Long or short hair? “Long because it’s the hair of my childhood crushes - it’s Leonardo DiCaprio, it’s Jared Leto. It’s the boy who played Joseph in my Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat school show when I was the pharaoh.”

Batman or Superman? “Superman. Oh, no, actually the last Batman films were very good so whichever one’s available.”

Ant or Dec? “Neither?”

From your Buzzcocks days, Phill Jupitus or Noel Fielding? “I can’t do that – pass, pass.”

Terminator or Rocky? “Terminator – because that was more when I was a kid, and Rocky was before I was a kid, before I was alive maybe.”

Daddy or chips? “Chips please. Because chips didn’t leave me when I was 13 – what about that?!”

HOW TO BOOK

Simon Amstell visits Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre with his To Be Free tour on Sunday, March 8. Tickets £21. Show starts at 7.30pm. Visit www.marlowetheatre.com or call 01227 787787.