Hot Rhod

“When I started out, I was very quiet, very deadpan, very surreal. There were lots of pauses. Mainly pauses. There was more pause time than word time. And now I'm just this ranting... raving... shouting... screaming... lunatic.”

As is the wont of those in the enviable possession of a Welsh accent, Rhod Gilbert luxuriates in the delivery of his adjectives—r's rolled, vowels longer than the Nile—as he relates the tale of his rise to prominence.

In the time since his 2008 Fringe show ...Award Winning Mince Pie was nominated for the If.comedy Award, Gilbert has launched a sell-out national tour—we're talking the whole UK now, not just Wales—as well as fitting in TV appearances on Live at the Apollo, the Royal Variety Performance and headlining Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow.

Though a man seemingly approaching the summit of the stand-up mountain, Gilbert remains philosophical about the concept of success: “2006 and 2007 were just sort of… I mean in Edinburgh terms they were good. They were four star sort of shows across the board and they all sold out – but there was no major buzz. In 2008 there was a real buzz about the show. But I’m still at a loss to understand these things – how it all works. It’s a complete mystery to me.”

Tonight, prestigious awards, huge telly audiences and brushes with royalty must seem a distant memory as the hurried comic chomps into a BLT before a low-key preview of his new show. 2009 offers a chance for fans to hear another meticulously arranged “fucking rant” against the strains of modern life, inventively stitched together by the theme of a cat resembling Nicholas Lyndhurst. But finding time to write new material in amongst his many commitments has clearly become an issue for Gilbert: “It doesn't get any easier,” he concedes. “The first year I went up to Edinburgh, 2005, I’d been doing stand-up for three years and the show was just all my greatest hits cut into a story. Last year I wrote the whole thing in six weeks. This year I have five writing days between now and Edinburgh.”

I suggest that sending his jokes out to millions of viewers at prime time, Saturday night must turn up the pressure to develop new material: “It eats it up. It totally eats it up,” he admits, “And some comedians, they get to a certain profile and they do use writers. But the joy for me is writing something that I think is funny – and then it works. I don’t think I’d find it as satisfying to go out there and perform something that somebody else had written. I haven’t used any writers yet – I hope I won't have to.”

Perhaps best known for being the first comedian to make jokes at Prince Charles' expense at a Royal Variety show, it is the big moments on the small screen that clearly drive Gilbert on. Was it fun to have that freedom to dig into Prince Charles? “Definitely. It was a real gamble though. It could have been the stupidest thing I'd ever done.”

Told by producers only the morning before the performance that cameras would be focused on the spotlit Royal box for the first time in Royal Variety history, Gilbert rushed to change his act to take advantage of the new arrangement: “I just went 'Ping!' This is a chance to interact with the Royals in a way that’s never been done. I thought, if I do it well and it comes off then it will be the thing that everybody remembers. But if it goes wrong then I’m buggered and it’ll be the biggest mistake I ever made.”

Gilbert becomes particularly animated talking about what he undoubtedly regards as a defining moment in his career: “I was backstage—McIntyre denies this but I'm sure he said it. He gave me a row the other day for saying it but I’m going to say it again—he said there are eight million people watching on TV, there are 2,500 people out there, if you screw this up at the top of your gig and they don’t particularly go for it then the next seven, eight minutes are going to be hell. But something in me just made me do it.”

Thankfully for his legions of fans, accusations that Princes William and Harry had vandalised Gilbert's local bus stop didn't fail to raise a royal chuckle and no charges of treason have yet been levied: “In the end, I think it paid off. But if it hadn’t, I would still be losing sleep over that, I would still be kicking myself all over town.”

A perfectionist to his core—his preview shows regularly include a slot for audience feedback—it is refreshing that the art of stand-up clearly holds much greater significance for Gilbert than any panel show ever could: “I'm a little bit ambitious,” he acknowledges. “When I go on tour, I want to go to bigger rooms, I want to get more audiences. And I guess I’m insecure enough to need that reassurance and that ego boost. But I'm not one of these super ambitious, got to be on TV, got to have my own show types at all – the integrity of it is much more important to me.” Such integrity will no doubt ensure another sell-out year in 2009, and with the awards formerly known as the If.comedys under new management, perhaps one more shot will be all he needs.

Rhod Gilbert and the Cat that Looked like Nicholas Lyndhurst Pleasance Courtyard 5-31 Aug, 8.45pm, £14