Live At The Apollo star Paul Chowdhry returns to Birmingham

He’ll be bringing his latest show, Live Innit, which follows the success of his 2015 100-date tour.

The star of Taskmaster and Stand Up for the Week is glad to be back on the road and has been earning rave reviews, with The Mail on Sunday giving him a five star review and writing: “It’s a rare and joyous thing to see a stand up so vibrant and imperiously on top of his game.”

Paul began his stand up career in 1998 and was the first British act to perform at the Caribbean Comedy Festival in Trinidad in 2003. He has been a guest panelist on 8 out of 10 Cats and Comedy World Cup and has also featured as a guest stand-up performer in the Russell Howard Hour.

He was inspired by his family and friends when he started to develop a passion for comedy. He was surrounded by family members who were hardcore Panjabi and that fuelled his passion for making people laugh. He also watched such comedians as Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Sam Kinison.

Paul had few role models to follow given the unconventional nature of a career in stand-up comedy, particularly among British Asians.

He laughs: “Forget Asians, it’s not conventional with anyone. Even if an English person said to his parents, “I want to be a comedian,” his dad would say, “what you talking about?” It’s a very risky thing to do, but you gotta follow your dreams, otherwise you don’t know if it’s going to work or not. If I never tried it, I’d never know if I could be in this position.”

He realised he could make people laugh when he started writing jokes at home and telling stories to his school friends in class. They would laugh and Paul eventually got kicked out because he spent so much time larking around. He hoped to start treading the boards at the age of 16, then at 17 – but he didn’t eventually get round to it until he was 24, after he’d graduated. Much to his surprise, it worked and he found he was very, very good at it.

Being from an Asian background did present unexpected problems. “Anything is difficult, if you wanna be a Hollywood actor or a Bollywood actor or you want to become a singer. But stand-up comedy; it’s probably the purest art form. There are no special effects, there are no sets, there are no actors, there’s only you and a microphone, so it is the most difficult and purest art form and the realest when it comes to performance. You’re not dancing or anything – I’m just talking into a microphone.”

His DVDs have been a highlight. When he did three nights at the Apollo, he performed in front of 15,000 in that week. He was the biggest selling act in London and I performed in front of 100,000 people on that tour. His DVD was outsold only by Kevin Bridges and Michael McIntyre and he found that level of commercial success humbling.

Paul likes to make people laugh, but accepts there are underlying messages in his act. He finds his engagements with people on social media sometimes baffling because he is so often the subject of abuse. That, coupled with other challenges in his life, have taken a toll.

He told a recent interviewer: “Well, I haven’t been on antidepressants, but I’ve thought I’ve been depressed. Mental health is such a complex issue, and it’s hard to find out when you’re sad and when you’re depressed. Sadness is a natural human emotion. People say ‘depressed’ and you’re taking away from the people who are really depressed.

“I’ve known friends who have gone to the doctors’ and said: ‘I’m really sad about a break-up,’ and they’ve been given antidepressants.”

His material can at times be controversial but he stands by it and won’t back down. “If someone can’t take a joke, that’s not my problem – it’s theirs. No-one’s getting hurt here, it’s just telling a joke. We live in a world where you tell a joke and you’ve offended someone. If you choose to be offended, you can choose to not be offended, it’s up to you. You can walk away, and don’t watch me.”

He bases a lot of his material on his life and personal stories and anecdotes, as well as his beliefs. A lot of it is autobiographical and in Live Innit he’ll be talking about class, prejudice, the way Brexit is changing the country, loss, dating in the age of Tinder, and being mistaken for a terrorist.

He also talks about the death of his mother, who passed away when he was five. At the time, he didn’t understand it. “The only things you see are superheroes who have lost a parent and become a superhero. But that doesn’t help a child. When you’re five, you don’t get it – you think they’ll come back.”