"I’m a comic. Everything I say on stage is to get a laugh"

“Sorry it’s a bit National Front,” says Jim Davidson, handing me a mug of tea emblazoned with the Union Flag. We’re sitting on the sofa in his London base in Harley Street, Davidson having just remembered his manners and offered me a drink. “Are they still going, the National Front?” he asks, shaking his head to make his disapproval crystal clear.

We’ve been talking about Davidson’s relationship with his ‘traditional’ audience – mainly white, predominantly working-class, and according to Davidson, sometimes more conservative than he is. “I’m playing to their right-wing prejudices,” he shouts from the kitchen. He is talking of a 2009 DVD of a live show in which he plays a ranting, aspiring politician version of himself. “I can sniff what the audience want, and I’ll go on that rant with them. Do you want sugar?”

Davidson is at the Fringe for the first time this year, and in many ways he doesn’t seem the most natural fit. Renowned for popularising the sort of pre-political correctness comedy that grew up in working men’s clubs prior to the '80s, and somewhat brushed aside in more recent years as the ‘alternative’ comedy movement established itself in the mainstream, he has struggled to find a foothold in that new establishment since. That said, his live shows still attract thousands.

In this context, it seems fair to ask how Davidson will adapt his comedy to suit an environment whose very origins are in the more left-leaning, intellectual world of ‘alt’ comedy. But for Davidson, this won’t be a problem: he’ll do what he does anyway and change himself to fit.

Comparing himself to Al Murray’s ‘Pub Landlord’ character act, Davidson cheerfully admits to telling lies about his beliefs “all the fucking time”, pandering to his audience’s views in “the same way that Al Murray does, same way that Nigel Farage does; same way that anybody plays to the crowd. It’s how Hitler got away with it all those years!” He chuckles to himself. “But I’m a comic. And everything I say on stage is to get a laugh.”

As has been widely reported, Davidson has had a funny year. Invited to take part in Celebrity Big Brother at the start of 2013, he was picked up by the police on his way to start filming the show, then detained over allegations of sexual abuse as part of Operation Yewtree. Although the allegations were not related to children and the police eventually dropped the investigation, he feared that his name would be forever tainted. “It were ‘orrible,” he says simply. But another invitation to Big Brother beckoned, and in January this year Davidson walked out of the house its biggest ever winner in the public vote.

“I got more nominations [for eviction] than Gone With The Wind, and yet I got more votes than anyone else in the history of Big Brother,” he says proudly. “It was a way of people saying: ‘you’ve had a shit year – here, have a better one. We don’t care what people say about you, we like you.’”

It’s a marked difference from his appearance on Hell’s Kitchen seven years ago, when he used the word ‘shirtlifter’ in front of gay Big Brother winner Brian Dowling and was forced to leave early by a resulting spat. Davidson is unrepentant about the incident, insisting that Dowling “played the homophobic card” against him and was actually upset about something else entirely. But he does say that he approached the Big Brother house differently from the Kitchen.

“I decided that I would just be me, and not try and do ‘shock horror’,” he says. “Not use TV as an extension of the stage act.” Although not every housemate got on with this new, “real” Davidson, enough of them did, and he struck up a seemingly unlikely friendship with the rapper Dappy, of N-Dubz. “I think he was the most honest person in the house,” he says warmly, “and he saved my bacon.” Days before our meeting, Davidson had been to support Dappy in court as he faced an assault charge.

Ticket sales to Davidson’s shows have risen sharply since Big Brother. “It proved to me that there’s a new audience out there, and this new audience come to me without baggage,” he says. “There’s younger people coming, you can tell with the autographs, the selfies, Twitter… and it’s exciting.” He grins. “I don’t think they do see things in terms of ‘old-school’ and ‘new-school’ any more. They just see me as a comic, who happens to be older.”

The Fringe seems the obvious next step in this process of attracting “young people who love comedy”, he says. “I want to get up there and get into them a bit,” he says, his wry smile daring me to take the statement literally. He’s dismissive of the “same little mob” of comics that appear on “every panel show, every chat show” and argues that he now represents “the alternative” to the mainstream, fully aware of the irony that statement contains.

“Aren’t we all sick of talking about what’s in the fridge?” he laughs, referring to the cosy, observational standup that many of his more media-friendly peers trade on. “I mean, people seem to laugh, so they must be doing something right. But wouldn’t it be nice to say [he puts on a deep, avuncular growl]: 'You’ve had a taste of beer, sonny; here comes a large Scotch.'?”

But for all his excitement, Davidson recognises that the Fringe is a bit of a “leftie hotbed”, and is convinced that “there are a lot of people up there waiting for me to fail”. He’s sussed that I might represent the “educated, left-leaning comedy people” that he will encounter a lot of at Edinburgh, and seems determined to win me over.

Davidson is open, warm and unexpectedly charming. He cracks jokes constantly, and I start to feel that he’s treating me as he treats his audience – partly sincere, partly pandering to what he thinks I want to hear. When I admit to not finding his stage act funny, he looks briefly crestfallen. “Have I made you laugh today, though?” he asks. I reply that he has, but he’s not convinced: “Well, I’ve made you smile, at least.”

Given this willingness to bend to the whims of his audience, I wonder how much Davidson’s stage act will change to accommodate the “leftie hotbed”. I quote him a joke from the 2009 DVD in which a suicidal man calls the Samaritans, only to be greeted by a Pakistani call operator who asks: “Can you fly a plane?”

“I wouldn’t do that joke now,” he says, dismissing it as an example of him “scraping the barrel” for a joke that would fit the ranting version of himself he was then playing. “Would I?… I don’t think I would, really, no,” he ponders. “There’s a lot of things I wouldn’t say now. Only because they’re not acceptable now, and you’ve got to sit and have these sorts of conversations. I did think it was funny, though.”

A few times during our meeting, I question whether Davidson feels a responsibility not to reinforce any prejudices his audience may have. His answer is always emphatic. “No!” he laughs, appalled. “For God’s sake, no. I’m a comic!” His audiences’ beliefs are their prerogative, he says, and in any case: “They won’t choose to believe anything because I, the comedian, said so.”

The answer comes even more clearly when I ask Davidson how he feels about the Samaritans joke again in the context of, for example, increased attacks on Muslims in the UK. His first response is to jump on my facts.  “Are you talking about, just because they’re Muslims, or the ones that walk round with the banners saying ‘Behead British Soldiers?’,” he asks. “Do you think they might bring these attacks on themselves?” Either way, he says, “There’s always nutters attacking other nutters. And I don’t think comedians have anything to do with it.”

Even so, Davidson implies that the broad national and ethnic stereotypes on show in his previous work will be toned down for the Fringe. But he shows no such compunction when I ask about the misogyny he’s sometimes accused of. “You’ve just got yourself an extra five minutes, I love this subject,” he says gleefully. “I think that the women thing is totally up for grabs for me.” He makes his point by goading me with some even harsher, apparently more sexist lines than I’ve found in recordings of him on stage. All a joke, of course, as his abundant laughter at my shock confirms.

Our hour up, Davidson starts to show me to the door. I ask about the arrangements that keep him in this beautiful flat while he’s visiting from Hampshire, and he explains that the production company keep it for him and other clients as a base.

“National Front,” he stage-whispers, leaning in close. He opens a cupboard. “Nigel, you in there?!” he bellows. “You can come out now, he’s leaving!” I laugh a very loud and unforced laugh, for the first time that afternoon. Davidson beams as if his day’s work is complete.