VENTROLIQUISM has had a bit of a bad name in recent years. But with TV programmes like Britain’s Got Talent giving prominence to variety acts, Paul Zerdin is helping to bring talking puppets back to the fore.

He said: “I have worked at the Comedy Store for the last 10 years and you get an audience now that has never seen ventriloquism — I’m not that old at 38.

“People have an image of a bloke with a scary puppet but it’s changed and is much more modern now and it’s like any other stand-up format.

“Britain’s Got Talent is making variety trendy again. It’s come back round and evolved and got better, I think.”

He describes his Sponge Fest act as ‘stand-up comedy with the gimmick of being a ventriloquist’ and a ‘one-man Muppet stand-up sitcom’.

Sponge Fest features three characters; cheeky lad Sam, his grandfather Albert — who’s deaf, senile and chases women but can’t remember why — and Baby, who’s being led astray by the other two.

Paul said: “I’m in the middle, reigning them back.

“And then there’s stand-up about being a ventriloquist — where the audience will hear me thinking, and I hear them thinking and eventually get someone out from the audience to be a human puppet. It’s modern ventriloquism, as it did go through a bad phase. But with this show the humour would work the same if it was four actors. The sitcom humour comes from the situations in the dialogue between myself and the puppets.

“It’s more Avenue Q than Keith Harris and Orville. There’s an adult element to the show. It’s not just smutty but it’s definitely one for the over 18s.”

His current act’s adult humour is a world away from Paul’s original showbiz break, introducing cartoons in Rise And Shine, ITV’s early morning kids’ slot in the early 1990s, but he values the time as a training ground.

“You’re 20 years old, recording a show every week — as well as guest spots on things like The O Zone — so you do a lot of learning,” he said.

“It was invaluable.

“I got a very quiet break with it being so early in the morning so I didn’t really register in the industry — I passed unnoticed, which was good as I could make mistakes and not have them remembered.

“I got a higher profile when I appeared on Jonathan Ross’s The Big Big Talent Show, then got guest slots on prime TV.

“Then TV changed and I was away again.”

But he returned to screens, appearing at last year’s Royal Variety Show in Blackpool, alongside the likes of Lady Gaga, Michael Buble, Bette Midler and Katherine Jenkins also on the bill.

And, on the back of that as well as a sell-out stint at Edinburgh this summer, he is now in talks with ITV for his own TV show.

* Paul Zerdin, Sponge Fest, Manchester Comedy Store, Tuesday, October 19, 8pm. Tickets £15 from 0844 8260001 or www.thecomedystore.co.uk