Jack Dee: "Believe it or not, I was quite morose"

Jack is back. After six long years away, Jack Dee has returned to his first love – live stand-up comedy. "I was only off the road for so long because I had other projects keeping me from doing stand-up," he assures me. "Lead Balloon took a good five years of my life, plus I was messing around with other bits and pieces, and I just thought, 'No. I need to get back to what I do.'"

Absence clearly makes the heart grow fonder, and TV, seemingly, sharpens your intuition; "I don't think it changes you as a writer, but your instinct becomes much more honed. I find that my comic instinct is more reliable, I've learned to trust it."

Talking to Dee over the phone from his latest stop, his passion for the live arena glows through everything – just about every question I ask him comes back to it. "I enjoy the immediacy of stand-up, I thrive on that. It means I can put in a whole load of new stuff each night if I want to. That's the nature of stand-up, that's how it should be. I think you should have a sense that it's going to be different every night."

Dee has been on the road for almost a year now, starting off doing ten minute slots at comedy clubs, testing the water and seeing what worked. Gradually putting bits of material together, he toured art centres and small theatres with a support act before putting together the full show of this tour – a one-man show. "I think that's a good way to do it, building it up slowly, making sure that everything works. There's no flannel in there."

What have the best bits been for him so far? "When I did the first night of the 300-400 seater venues, you go out and do a set for the first time and put it all together and hope it's going to work. That's always a great moment when it works because you just feel like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, putting on a good show. That's always a highlight. And then taking it into a really big theatre for the first time. That's always a thrill. Hoping that bits of it will still work, finding different ways of communicating those different subtleties."

His new show is "kind of a snapshot of my life as it is at the moment." The first half, he says, is his reflections on big news and world events this year. "The second half is about teenagers – all my kids are teenagers. And it's about growing old."

"Living with teenagers is a really interesting exercise. Being in close quarters and observing them, remembering what it was like for yourself. One half of you remembering, being understanding, the other half is just pulling your hair out thinking 'Get off your backside.'" And I just had to ask, what was he like himself as a teenager? "Well, believe it or not I went through a phase where I was really quite morose.

"It'll be interesting to see what their take on the show will be. They've seen me do bits but they haven't seen the whole thing yet. I do talk about them and what it's like living with them so it'll be interesting to see what they think."

But what do they make of having the famous comedian Jack Dee for a dad? "I don't think they've ever viewed it like that, actually. When my daughter Phoebe was about five, one of her teachers asked her 'What's it like having such a special daddy?' and she just looked at the teacher and said, 'Everybody's daddy is special.' It put her in her place, anyway."