Rock 'n' roller

David Baddiel and Rob Newman will both be performing at this year's Fringe. Not together of course, and there'll be no reunion or poignant photo op for the two men who ushered in an era of stadium comedy in the 1990s, before they split among reports of acrimony.

"We did fall out badly," admits Baddiel, "but it is all fine now, and when I do see him I very much like him, and I've seen his shows and I've liked them. I don't hang out with him, it's true, but Rob's always been a bit 'off the world' and difficult to get hold of."

Prior to his recent return to the stage, Baddiel himself had been largely off the radar. Now, back at the Fringe after 15 years (the last time was with Frank Skinner with a show that became Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned), he will deal with the disconnection he feels from the idea of his own fame.

"When you are in the public eye—or have been—notions of who you are are reflected back at you and you are represented as something that isn’t quite you. It looks like you, sounds like you but it isn’t quite you."

"All fame is mistaken identity," he contends. But sometimes these contortions come in the shape of good old-fashioned mix-ups, examples of which will pepper this new hour."Steve Hall [of We Are Klang] told me that when he came to see my work-in-progress show, he was in the bar afterwards and a woman from Avalon—our management company—said to him 'Great show, David!'"

Initially the subject matter for a TED-style talk, Baddiel's riff on fame struck him as the grown-up way back into performing standup. He's not sure that this Fringe foray will necessarily lead on to more live performing, however.

"We'll have to see about that. I basically write films and books now, that is my job. I hadn’t really thought about this as a career move, I don't imagine that I will be doing Jongleurs with it."

"Besides, standup tends to blow everything out of your head. If you've got a gig that night or the next day that is all you can think about, which is kind of hard if you are writing three films and a musical and fuck knows what else."

The films Baddiel mentions include one with Bwark (who made The Inbetweeners), a Hangover-like project "about a British guy who goes off to America on a kind of sex quest" and a US film called Paramount.

"If I talked through all the ideas, a) I would get into trouble and b) it would seem like I was lying," he says. "Film is a weird thing. I've got people backing them and I am getting paid to do them, but you still never know if it's ever going to happen. It's a kind of a miracle that films get made."

Also in the pipeline is a musical version of The Infidel, his 2010 film starring Omid Djalili about a Muslim who discovers he is Jewish, and a sitcom Baddiel is developing for Channel 4 about the internet. "I noticed that the internet is always represented big on film and TV, stuff like The Social Network and Black Mirror – all brilliant, but missing out how most people interact with the internet, which is in a very mundane way."

The show, provisionally called sit.com, is being developed with standup Barnaby Jones, with whom Baddiel plays football. Much of their research for the project has included watching standup clips on YouTube, which may in part be responsible for Baddiel's tentative comeback. "I didn't watch much [standup comedy] for a while and then recently I saw Josh Widdecombe, Paul F Tompkins, Russell Brand and Omid Djalili.

"I've seen a couple of arena shows too — Billy Bailey, Eddie Izzard. It was a fantastic experience." But, he adds, "I can't imagine doing it now. It feels like there is a grandiosity to it that I don't want. I want to be talking to people in an intimate way."