Aren't you off the telly?

Greg Davies, also known as Mr Gilbert, the sociopathic head of sixth form in Channel 4’s The Inbetweeners, is in the middle of a 100 date tour of his first solo show. Firing Cheeseballs at a Dog, which hits the MGICF on 28 March, is a novel idea for a show in which Davies asks audience members to pick random passages from his old notebooks and he tells the anecdotes behind them.

Was he nervous stepping away from the safety of a TV studio? "I was as nervous as it's possible to be without actually dying. But it is undeniably a good feeling to create something on your own and have people generally be nice about it. It's a bit like doing your first poo in a potty."

To give you an idea of how long Norman Lovett has been in comedy, his earliest gigs included opening for John Cooper Clarke and The Clash. "I came to comedy late. I was in my 30s and I used to repair coffee machines. But then punk came along with the whole DIY ethic... anyone could have a go, so I thought, 'I’ll give this a bash'."

Lovett’s long television CV ranges from his own sitcom to working with Gordon The Gopher, but he's best known for playing Holly, the bumbling computer in Red Dwarf. The nature of sci-fi fandom means that he'll always have an income from DVD sales and convention appearances ("I like to think of them as my pension plan,") but he has never stopping gigging.

It can be hard to get up there and do your own material to an audience who only know you from a TV show. Caroline Rhea, also bringing her latest show to the MGICF, is generally more famous for her role as Aunt Hilda in Sabrina The Teenage Witch than she is for a twenty-year career in stand-up comedy. The Skinny saw the show at the Fringe, and though our comedy editor quite liked Caroline, she gave a bad review to the audience, who ignored the jokes and cheered at every mention of talking cats (see our website for details on what Rhea makes of this). I’ve also seen Ardal O’Hanlon respond to shouts of "Arse! Drink! Feck!" by saying, "Did you really spend £20 just to hear me shout catchphrases that aren’t even my character's?"

Lovett has a warm affection for the Red Dwarf fans who come to see his show but admits that they can be difficult sometimes. "I was doing a show a few months ago and I noticed this woman asleep at the back. I asked, 'Are you tired love?' and she replied, ‘No, it's just that I preferred you as Holly'." So does he prefer playing to audiences where nobody has ever heard of him? "Oh yes. I played a charity gig recently to some students and none of them had a clue who I was and, yeah, I did the business."

"My experience," says Davies, "is that people often want to be told off when I meet them, which is odd. Total strangers will come up to me in the street and ask me to be horrible to them." Does the shadow of Mr Gilbert hang over his show? "No. It is often the reason why many people come and see it but they soon discover that I’m far from scary. The show is a positive celebration of the sillier things in life. No one gets detention." However, he does admit to using his teacherly gravitas to deal with narcoleptic audience members: "A drunk bloke came into one show, fell asleep before I'd come on stage and woke up as I was leaving to proclaim the show he'd slept through was 'rubbish.' I bollocked him, old school. I've still got it."

Stand-up comedy is physically tiring, emotionally demanding and occasionally humiliating. And that’s just being in the audience. For comedians, you’ve also got late nights, long travel, time spent away from family. It makes sense when you’re up-and-coming, but why on earth would you bother when you could make a living in TV?

The answer seems to be a profound love of comedy. Davies quit a career as a real-life teacher to follow his comedy dream. "All I can ever remember wanting to do is comedy, so as soon as I started I was champing at the bit to do it full time. The very second I thought I could earn enough money to have a reasonable chance of not becoming homeless, I resigned from teaching. It is a noble profession but in the last couple of years I wasn't a noble teacher. I felt almost jet-lagged from the late night gigs and I think it's fair to say that some of my classes saw more DVDs than the curriculum demanded. I hope I'm able to do comedy for the rest of my life and have many things I want to achieve within it."

When asked how much longer he intends to keep touring, Lovett refers to some recent Frankie Boyle comments. "Frankie says you can’t be funny after you’re 40. Where did he get that from? I’m in my 60s and I think I’m funnier now than I’ve ever been." Will he ever stop touring? "No, I love it. I’m going to be doing it for another 20 years."

There seem to be plenty of people in comedy who would gladly pack it all in for a job on telly in a heartbeat. But then there are some who could never walk away from the thrill of performing live. You can’t keep a good stand-up down.