Comedian Alun Cochrane tells Viv Hardwick he enjoys listening to The Twits as his current UK tour brings him to the North-East and North Yorkshire.

NOT many comics would admit to touring the UK listening to Roald Dahl audio book. Alun Cochrane has his young son to thank for his latest choice of breaking the boredom while out on the road.

“A CD multi-changer in the boot helps. I Am Kloot’s Sky At Night is a favourite but I also listen to Roald Dahl because my son was sent it by his aunty in Australia and he’s a bit too young, but I’ve been listening to it a lot. Lately I’ve been listening to The Twits read by Simon Callow. It’s really funny,” explains the Yorkshire-based comic who arrives at the Harrogate Comedy Festival on Tuesday, having played York’s Hyena Club last week.

He’s booked at Darlington’s Hilarity Bites on October 16, Durham Gala Theatre on November 6 and Stockton’s ARC on November 18. Cochrane specializes in longer titles for his Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows, which launch his UK tours, and follows Owner Of A Shed And A Son Thinks the World is Wonky and Alun Cochrane is a Daydreamer at Night with Jokes, Life and Jokes About Life for 2010.

“It’s got jokes in a pub and stories and observational stuff about my mum being ill and my wife,” he says “Really it’s about using jokes and light-hearted comments as light-hearted strategies for coping with the serious side of life.

There’s no Oscar-winning crying each night it’s just me telling jokes.”

While he’s reluctant to discuss the explosion of comedy artists and clubs around the UK, Cockrane ventures: “It’s tempting for me to worry about that because I have a mortgage, a wife and a child. The way I look at it is that there’s always been jesters and prostitutes.

They are the two oldest professions in the world and it just so happens that I’m doing the modern version of one of them. I won’t tell you which.”

He feels that stand-up hasn’t been on television that much over the past ten to 15 years, but is now one of the mainstays of the schedules. “ A lot of comedians have been getting good and getting good while not that many people have been noticing. Now people are saying ‘oh look we have all these good comics’.”

The most recent TV appearance of the Glasgow-born but Yorkshire-raised comic was on the Michael McIntyre Comedy Roadshow, but he recently filmed at Newcastle’s Journal Tyne Theatre as one of the support acts for Sarah Millican. This is part of Dave’s One Night Stand series which takes the headline comic back to his or her home town area.

“I barely do any TV. People think I do a lot because nearly all of it (Eight Out Of Ten Cats, Mock The Week and The Comedy Store) runs on Dave. But the vast majority of my life is spent doing live stand-up. I would probably do more TV if it was offered but really there’s always live to go back to, which is what I do 98 per cent of the time,” he says.

“I just want rooms full of people who are prepared to laugh. There’s not a Darlington sense of humour is there?

People think there is but there isn’t. I think if you have decent jokes and stories they will work just as well in Liverpool as they do in Surrey. You can have jokes that work in Glasgow that failed in Edinburgh, but it’s not because you’ve moved a few miles it’s because you told them better on one night than another,” Cochrane says.

“I’ve just done my sixth Edinburgh show in the last seven years. I took one year off because we were having a baby and I thought it would be a bad start to parenting to be in a different country at the time. The following year we went up altogether, but there are certain things you learn over the years to do or not do to make you feel better about it. It’s like making sure you hang around with comedians you really like instead of drunkenly standing there until 5am with people you don’t get on with,” says Cochrane who now tours using home, relatives and friends as places to stay rather than relying on hotels.

“You also really have to like the show you’re doing because that’s the hour of the day you’re up there for. The unhappiness always seems to coincide with the year that your show wasn’t quite as good as it should have been.

“I have to say the last three years I’ve worked hard on my shows and really enjoyed doing and got a lot of positive feedback.”

■ Go to aluncochrane.co.uk for the full tour list

■ Dave’s One Night Stand, Sundays at 10pm.