Marcus Brigstocke

THE prospect of interviewing the fiercely intelligent, famously cynical and razor-sharp comedian and satirist Marcus Brigstocke is pretty daunting.

So I'm thrilled to discover he used to be not only fat, but also a social outcast.

"Yes, it's true. I was 25 stone and I was a Goth - but the first one of those things tends to lead to the second," he says.

"There's a critical weight you can reach as a teenager, then you have to become a Goth because people are staring at you. So what you do is dye your hair black and put on lots of eye make-up so you can complain that everyone's staring because you're different."

Marcus claims he still struggles with his weight and has to be careful about what he eats.

"In moments of weakness I eat vast amounts of cheese," he says. "On tour it's the worst. I don't want to eat before I got on stage so I end up eating at 11pm when the only things open are kebab shops."

Thankfully, Marcus isn't the prickly cynic I'd feared he might be, but is warm, charming and funny.

Our interview was scheduled for 10am but when I called his mobile he didn't pick up.

I wasn't surprised - during my research for the interview I unearthed a great quote about being a poor timekeeper.

"I was five minutes late for a meeting about 10 years ago and I don't think I've ever really made it up. I've slipped back ever since," he was quoted as saying.

At 10.10am he calls me back with an odd story of having an emergency involving breaking his key in the lock of his safe and having to organise a man to come and drill a hole to free his valuables.

But once that palaver is over, we get down to business and he says he's looking forward to bringing his sell-out show to Burnley Mechanics.

Before last year he hadn't performed any stand-up for four years, being too busy with TV and radio projects, and he says he's rather enjoying getting back to his roots.

"Stand-up is getting back to basics," he says. "You say it, they laugh, you move onto the next thing. No-one ever comes and asks for a retake. The down side is if they don't laugh you're not doing your job properly."

So what can we expect from the show?

"Hmm, when people ask me this I always think Should I issue an invitation or a warning?' If they've seen me on the new show (News Knight with Sir Trevor McDonald) that's exactly what I do but when I'm on tour legally I can say more and swear. It's a lot of politics - but don't let that put you off - and observation. They can expect the best stand-up I can deliver. No, I'm too modest, I should say something better."

Shall I put that they can expect the best one-and-a-half hours of their lives?

"You said it - print it - yes say that. Say it'll be the best time of their lives, even if they recently got married or had children," he jokes.

Marcus came to the attention of the general public last year when he took part in BBC2 show Excuse My French where he, Ron Atkinson and Esther Rantzen were immersed in the French language by staying in a classic French town in the Provence region.

Marcus was far and away the most successful and ended up writing and performing a live stand-up comedy act in French to a French audience.

His success on the show meant a lot to him, he says, especially because he fared poorly at school, suffering from dyslexia.

"When I went on to the show I couldn't speak French at all," he says. "The last time I'd tried was when I was 16 doing my French GCSE, and I got a D in that. Performing in French and actually being funny too was difficult - one of the most difficult things I've done.

"But it meant a lot to me and that's why I leapt at it. Having not achieved anything at all really at school it was fantastic to excel at something like that."

He's kept up the French too, and is busy organising a bilingual comedy festival for next April where English comedians will be encouraged to perform a portion of their act in French and French comedians perform a section in English.

One of the best-known Brigstocke jokes is an ironic commentary on the controversy regarding the influence of video games on children: "If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

The joke is frequently attributed to famous figures in electronics, including the chief executive of Nintendo, but Marcus vehemently claims authorship.

"It is my joke. I wrote it, then I took the rest of the day off as I was so chuffed with it," he is quoted as saying.

"I am gutted that it has been claimed and passed around by so many people. Intellectual property law will not save me. The false claims will continue until I am man enough to give it all up. All I can say is it seems that it is very unlikely that it was written by a Nintendo employee in 1989, being as Pac-Man was still around and not much of a childhood memory. There were very few claims that gaming influenced children's behaviour and that the wording of it is identical to how it has been delivered in my stand-up routine for six years."

See Marcus Brigstocke at Burnley Mechanics on Monday, September 17. He also has a DVD out in November. Call box office on 01282 664400. Visit www.marcusbrigstocke.co.uk