We spoke Welsh comic Rhod Gilbert as he takes his award-winning show on tour, including shows in Blackburn's King George's Hall and Salford's Lowry.

COMEDIAN Rhod Gilbert has been dubbed "The Welsh misery" but when I spoke to him he sounded quite chirpy.

Despite being in the middle of a gruelling UK tour, he didn't moan once.

"The tour's going well. I'm getting all four and five-star reviews," said Rhod.

"It's hard work, though. For the last 14 days I've done 16 shows on the trot without a day off.

"A show only lasts a couple of hours but it's quite stressful.

"When you come off stage you can relax for a couple of hours but it's not long before you're thinking of the next night's performance.

"Every morning my very first thought on waking up is whether tonight's audience will laugh."

But Rhod doesn't shirk hard work - in fact, for the tour's publicity shot of him sitting in a bath of grapes (the tour is titled Who's Eaten Gilbert's Grape?') Rhod had to haul a Victorian bath tub up to the top of Primrose Hill before stripping off in the freezing cold to be photographed in it.

"That was a labour of love, I tell you," he said at the memory.

"There was me, the photographer and about seven young hoodies we enlisted to help us dragging that old bathtub up to the top of Primrose Hill.

"It was really heavy but we were determined to get it up there.

"I was saying let's do it at the bottom' but he wasn't having it."

The critics have described him as "surreal" and "brilliantly funny" and have compared his "netherworld of nonsense" to that of Harry Hill.

He's not done badly for awards either.

In 2006 he won Voice of Wales, a place in The Times top 50 comedians and was named one of The Rough Guide to British Cult Comedy's top 50 icons.

In 2005 he was a Perrier newcomer nominee, and won both the Chortle best breakthrough act and the BBC New Comedy award.

Before his comedy career Rhod worked in qualitative research for a drugs company.

He got into the business after taking a comedy course in London.

"We all worked on our routines throughout the course and by the time we graduated we'd all built up five-minute routines," he remembered.

"We held a gig to which we all invited our friends and family, but the problem was it wasn't realistic - we all stormed it.

"Of course, I went to my next gig feeling superhuman and the audience literally didn't raise a smile for the first five minutes."

Dying on stage, says Rhod, is the worst feeling in the world.

"It's the worst thing that happens in your life," he said.

"It's horrible. It's very difficult to deal with it on stage and it's even more difficult to turn it around because you're panicking and the audience doesn't trust you.

"I don't mind hecklers really though - mine always say something about me being Welsh and there are only so many Welsh insults around so you can always come up with a witty come-back."

Rhod's nationality often features in his act when he talks about 25 miserable years growing up with a fictional family in Llanbobl, a Welsh village he himself invented.

In actual fact, Rhod was born and bred in Carmarthen and is proud of his Welsh roots.

He has been the subject of his own 30-minute documentary profile entitled Rhod Gilbert Stands Up For Wales and also attempted to learn to speak Welsh under mentor Cerys Matthews of Catatonia on The Big Welsh Challenge (BBC1 Wales).

"I don't think I play up my Welshness. It's just what I am," said Rhod.

"It's just what influences my comedy. It's what comes to me, it's not deliberate.

"Learning Welsh with Cerys has been fun but I'm not doing very well at it.

"There are six celebrities being taught it and while the others are coming on well, I'm at the bottom of the class."

Although Rhod is making sure he calls in at lots of Welsh venues on his tour, his stand-up career has also taken him all over the world, including some strange venues.

"I've been to Australia, New Zealand, Cape Town and have even entertained British troops in Iraq in a former palace of Saddam Hussein." said Rhod.

"Performing in Saddam's palace was incredibly surreal.

"Even just being in one of those places is weird, never mind doing stand-up comedy there.

"Before the gig I wandered around the kitchen and the bedroom and it just felt so bizarre to be in a place that has become so significant historically but not long after the event."

  • See Rhod Gilbert at King George's Hall, Blackburn, on Thursday, November 15. For tickets call 01254 582582. See him at Lowry, Salford on January 26.