Last updated 13:20, Thursday, 20 March 2008

SEAN Lock has been in the comedy game since the late Eighties, but it’s only now that he’s learning what it’s like to be public property.

His recent stints as team captain on topical comedy panel show Eight Out Of 10 Cats and host of TV Heaven, Telly Hell – a kind of Room 101 for TV – have raised his profile in the public.

That’s not to say people actually know who he is: “Mostly people don’t remember my name – they just say ‘you’re that bloke off the telly’ and I have to help them out.

“I live in Hackney, which has a bad reputation, and a lot of people who live round there are quite shocked to see someone from the telly wandering about.

“There was this drunk bloke who saw me walking down the street and asked if he could punch me to see if I was real – he couldn’t believe a bloke from the telly was wandering around the same streets as he was.”

Sometimes bizarre but often brilliant Sean, who plays Carlisle’s Sands Centre tomorrow night, got into comedy by “going into pubs and heckling”, tweaking his material at open mic spots and getting his face on the comedy circuit.

He says: “I used to lay concrete floors by day for around £35 a day, and when I found I could earn the same for 15 or 20 minutes in a pub, I thought ‘hold on a sec...’.

Some people are obsessed with comedy, and all they have ever wanted was to be a comedian. I certainly wasn’t like that and in my experience most comedians are more like me – most tend to have found it through other means.”

Lock’s big break came when he supported Rob Newman and David Baddiel’s TV show Newman and Baddiel in Pieces. He toured with the duo as their support act, and, as a result, became the first comedian to perform at Wembley Arena.

He then hit the airwaves, making regular appearances on various radio panel shows, graduating to his own show 15 Minutes of Misery, which featured Sean eavesdropping on his neighbours Kevin Eldon and Hattie Hayridge from his grim tower block home.

This eventually developed into cult TV hit 15 Storeys High, which starred Sean as the misanthropic Vince, and which ran for two series on BBC 2. In 2005 he became a regular on Eight Out of 10 Cats, with appearances on QI, Have I Got News for You, both as a guest and a presenter, and Room 101 also under his belt.

Then in 2006 he got his own show in TV Heaven, Telly Hell, where he invites guests to re-live the highs and lows of their viewing lives. Guests have so far included Alan Carr, Johnny Vegas and Jack Dee.

So what pushes Sean’s own personal TV buttons? Well, he certainly knows what he doesn’t like: “I hate all these talent shows – X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent – they never discover any real talent, it’s just a sentimental load of crap.

“I hate Simon Cowell – everything he has ever produced is rubbish. Exploiting the public – that’s what he’s good at. It’s a celebration of mediocrity and I really don’t like that.”

Sean also has it in for ‘Sunday evening mums’ favourites’ like Heartbeat: “It pretends that the Fifties and Sixties were wonderful when we all know that’s rubbish, especially if you happened to be black, Irish or a woman. Or were ill. It was a dreadful time and things are much better now.”

And his idea of televisual paradise?

“I love Dragon’s Den, it’s my favourite show ever made. It’s trying to make the world a better place. I like the fact that these people get nervous and burble out their ill-thought-out, half-baked schemes. I like its optimism.

“And Gordon Ramsay’s actually trying to make better food. Anyone who eats out in this country knows the standard of food is appalling.”

Despite his fledgling TV stardom, Sean’s keen to keep in touch with his comedy roots and is relishing the prospect of performing live in front of an audience.

“It’s a great show, and the more you do it the better it gets. One thing I like about comedy is it surprises me. The punch lines aren’t what you expect and material goes in directions you couldn’t imagine.”

Tickets £17. Visit www.thesandscentre.co.uk or call 01228 625222.