There’s hardly a comedian out there that Arthur Smith hasn’t worked with, the standup tells Steve Pratt as he prepares for Harrogate.

COMIC performer Arthur Smith is explaining what Harrogate audiences can expect from him: “A stream of brilliant jokes and scurrilous stories, possible some nudity.”

He’s appearing at Harrogate Comedy Festival tonight – on stage at Harrogate Theatre – with his Arthur Smith At Large show. He also tours with another show, An Evening With Daphne Fairfax.

Different title, much the same show.

He has played Harrogate before when he’s done corporate gigs, most recently a flooring exhibition. This time he’ll be doing proper stand-up for an audience which knows him mainly through BBC2’s Grumpy Old Men and various Radio 4 shows.

“They are the two slightly different constants. But I’ve been around a long time,” he says.

Others remember him from the play An Evening With Gary Lineker, which he wrote, or perhaps his many appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

His current 15-date schedule is what he calls a “gentleman’s tour” in that it’s all fairly civilised. “I don’t drink any more but I was quite a boozer and madman in my day, as one should be,” he says. “But I’m not a five gigs a week man these days.”

He describes the annual Edinburgh festival as “a mad little bubble”. He’s been going to this “natural playground for new ideas” for more than 30 years.

“Sometimes I only do a couple of gigs.

There were two years I didn’t go at all and on both occasions I felt pangs. It was as if there was some sort of party where I’d sulked and not gone and secretly wished I had.”

Smith likes to have a bit of a mix in his act if he’s the only person on stage all evening. He’ll do a song and some literary pieces, old gags and new gags, and he’s always interested to find out about the place where he’s appearing.

The comedy started because he drawn to showing off on stage from a young age. “That’s not to say I thought I’d make a living out of it,” he adds.

“I was in a band and went to Edinburgh with revues. When standup exploded I was in on that. I took to standup quite well. I’m not good at acting or pretending to be anyone except myself.”

He’s certainly got jokes and observations to suit every occasion, or as he puts it, “There’s a whole raft of material that’s lurking about at the back of my brain that I can access. And I have an emergency bank – there are certain jokes, little one-liners, I can do while I think what I’m going to say next.”

He acknowledges that quite a few of his audience are Radio 4 listeners and he has a message for those who don’t listen to that station – “in the end you will”.

TV’s Grumpy Old Men has brought him to many other people. He did the first three series but reckons he was too grumpy to do any more. Not that his grumpiness has been cured – he has a grumpy tap he can turn on should the need arise.

The Grumpy series struck a chord with audiences. Why? I wondered.

“British people are naturally prone to whining and moaning. It’s a great pleasure in life. But funny is good. You’re not going to have Happy Old Men. There’s not going to be much of a series in that.”

You probably won’t be seeing him do stand-up on TV because “you get to certain stage and you fall off the end of young groovy standup shows – I’m too old to be on the Michael McIntyre show”.

He gets to work with new comedy performers as compere of a new acts award evening at Hackney Empire. He’s seen dozen of comedians before they were famous.

Like Russell Brand whom he remembers for something other than comedy.

“It appears he had it away in my dressing room while I was on stage,” says Smith.

“There’s hardly a comedian who’s famous that I haven’t worked with before.

When I started out there weren’t that many comedians, now everyone wants to be a comedian.”

In his early days jokes about such matters as racism, sexism and homophobia were no-go areas. Now he sees such issues creeping back into acts in roundabout ways.

“You can make a joke about anything depending where you are coming from.

There’s nothing you can’t joke about in a sense. It depends how you do it. There are no areas I wouldn’t consider because in the end life is comic.”

But analysing comedy isn’t particularly valuable. He’s always amused by surveys naming the funniest joke in the world or whatever. “All those scientists are just frustrated standups,” he says.

■ Arthur Smith At Large: Harrogate Theatre, tonight. Box Office: 01423- 502116 and online