TIM Fitzhigham likes a wager. 

The comedian, writer and adventurer who has rowed the English Channel in a bathtub, arrives at Cockermouth's Kirkgate Centre next week with a show about some of his crazy bets and unusual adventures. 

He's painstakingly sought out ancient challenges from the gambling books of gentlemen's clubs and then taken them on. 

And he doesn't cut corners. 

Tim says: "The main thing that excites me about the show is that it has to be right, we have to be historically accurate. 

"I have always said that if you're going to do a show about ridiculous bets and you're making them up, that's fine but that's not what this show is. 

"This show is about finding the amazing bets that have gone on in history and recreating them to create some sort of form. 

"To see who might have won if you don't know who won or to see how possible they are if they don't seem at all possible. 

"There are some remarkable names involved. Goliath Shadbolt is one. I can't believe anyone would have bet against him in anything. 

"He was an enormous man by all accounts. If you heard someone say 'I'm going to bet against Goliath Shadbolt', you'd say 'good luck with that one son because you're clearly going to lose'." 

Goliath Shadbolt's wager involved pushing a wheelbarrow for 25 miles which he attempted in 1789.

If you want to know how he got on you'd better go and see the show. 

Other bets include standing on one leg for 12 hours, cycling from London to Dover before a friend could draw a million dots and racing against a racehorse over 100 yards. 

Tim says he got into gambling in 2003.

He adds: "There was the oldest maritime record about taking to the water in a giant paper boat and I wanted to beat it to raise money for Comic Relief so I got a boat made out of paper and I took it down the river Thames for 160 miles. 

"It was after that I discovered it had actually been a bet, made in 1619, between some actors and some writers and some minor court people and I just thought 'wow I wonder if there are any more of these interesting wagers' and it was that thought that sucked me down the rabbit hole into a world of ancient betting. 

"It's turned into a wonderful world of doing something daft, raising money for charity and then making a show about it that makes people laugh.

"There are two things, I think, that make the show really funny.

"One is that I am genuinely trying to win not faking it.

"You can really see, if you're in the audience, that there's a man here who really, really wants to win these bets even if they look utterly impossible and are nearly killing him. He is going to try and win them. 

"The second thing that people really get behind is the historical aspect of it. The fact that they're learning something about people they didn't know existed who turn out to be among the most interesting people from history."

Tim FitzHigham can be seen at Cockermouth's Kirkgate Centre next Friday, February 19, at 8pm.