DAVE Spikey wrapped up his mammoth two-year Punchlines tour with a visit to Workington last year, and it turned out to be one of the best nights of the whole run.

This month he returns with his brand-new show Juggling On A Motorbike, with his latest trip to West Cumbria being his first appearance back after a summer break.

"I'm going to have to do a bit of revising before the Workington show," he says.

"I've done about 15 shows before the break, but I've gone back and had a look at some of the cue cards and I haven't a clue what some of them mean.

"The show wouldn't be exactly the same anyway, and while I've had time off I never really stop, so I've been making notes. I can't go and holiday and just sit on a beach, so I take a notebook on holiday. I've just been going through them all trying to make sense of them, and it's just stuff like 'Madonna, nomad, golf, what?' - I'm sure they were good ideas at the time.

"I'll write it all out in long-hand before I go back on tour, and it does feel like I'm preparing for an exam."

Phoenix Nights star Spikey is celebrating 30 years in comedy with this new show, charting his remarkable journey from working class lad to chief biomedical scientist, to much-loved comedy star.

It is the first time he has deviated from his topical brand of comedy, littered with one-liners, instead working in a narrative that recalls his early years and the beginning of his stand-up career.

Making the unusual leap from haematology lab to the stage, he was crowned the winner of the national talent show Stairway to the Stars very early on, and never looked back - until now.

He continues: "I really do think this is my best show - I'm obviously going to say that, but I'm not just trying to sell tickets. The feedback from those shows was great, and I'm thrilled to bits with it so far.

"It's not vastly different to what I've done before, and I still like to read the local news before the show and talk about what's going on, but there is a slightly different style.

"I've never done a show about my life before, and it's not "I went to school, then I did sat my 11-plus, then I did this" - it's not some kind of big play that unfolds.

"But I've been doing comedy since 1987 and for 13 years I was still working at the hospital too, and there's lots of things I like to talk about that I've never had the chance to put in a show. The audiences have really bought into it, but it's still along the lines of my other shows.

"I'll talk about how everyone these days watches the Bake Off, but when I was growing up we had Fanny Craddock - there's a good story about that - and I'll talk about daytime telly and some of the dross on TV nowadays, but we just seemed to have puppets on everything."

The Juggling On A Motorbike tour got under way in the spring - also starting in Cumbria with a visit to The Old Laundry Theatre, in Bowness - and now entering the second leg of the run, Spikey has found his rhythm.

"It was the first time I've done Bowness and I loved it. I'm always a little apprehensive before the first night, worrying about whether people will find it funny or not, but the response was phenomenal.

"I'm looking forward to coming back up to Cumbria. Workington was one of the best shows on the last tour, and usually I would leave a couple of years before returning to a venue, but straight away they were asking when I could come back. It's the perfect place to kick off this tour.

"I reckon the show's changed quite a bit since that first one, because I think in Bowness I only got about two-thirds of the way through what I had planned to talk about, so it's been a case of fine-tuning things, just re-editing as I go along. But then when I'm editing, it makes me think of other things, so they'll get added in too.

"It's a constant process of polishing things up, and I like to keep it fresh - not just for the audiences, but for me too, just to keep that spark."

Dave Spikey brings Juggling On A Motorbike to Workington's Carnegie Theatre on Friday September 29. Tickets are available from the venue's box office now.