The spectre of imminent death and the thought that he had nothing to leave his children, prompted North-East comedian Bobby Knoxall to write his amazing life story, he tells Steve Pratt.

LYING in a hospital bed, unsure whether he was going to live or die, made it easy for Bobby Knoxall to think about writing his autobiography. "People coming in to see me or sending me cards made the memories come flooding back. I was putting it down on tapes as soon as they left. I made about 30 tapes," recalls the Sunderland-born comedian, who's lived in the same council house for 30 years.

If you didn't know Knoxall was a comedian before you met him, you certainly would by the time you'd finished talking. "I never made any money. I blew it all. Women, racing, smoking, drinking - and the rest I must have wasted," he says.

His life has taken him from the North-East clubs to South Africa and the Gulf States, sharing the stage with singing and comic greats like Johnny Mathis, Ella Fitzgerald, Frankie Howerd, Louis Armstrong and Bob Monkhouse.

It took a near-brush with death a few years ago for the 69-year-old to take stock and put his thoughts down in print. He was diagnosed as having an aneurysm, which he was told was inoperable.

"When it sank in, my wife broke down. My family broke down. I was the calmest man there. I've had a great life, I've lived ten people's lives in one," he says.

"When I left to go home from the hospital, I thought I didn't have long to live. I'd had a great life but thought about what I had left. I'd blown every penny, and the only thing the kids would have would be photos of their dad with top stars all over the world.

"I'm a star in my own town but hadn't left them anything. That's when I got the idea to write a book and do a video. I decided to get out and get this done because I thought I only had a matter of weeks to live."

Eventually, a surgeon agreed to operate, telling his patient he had a 70-30 chance of pulling through. "I said, 'that's good', and he said, 'no, you have a 30 per cent chance'," recalls Knoxall.

"The operation lasted seven hours, they gave me 22 pints of blood and saved my life. Every day I wake up now is a bonus because I should have been dead."

His determination to tell his story remained. The result is Stand Up!, his life story as told to former Northern Echo reporter Patrick Lavelle. Publication coincided with the comedian kicking off a series of charity shows for the £5m Grace House appeal in his home town, part of his on-going charity work.

He could, he says, work as hard as he ever did in his life, but his illness has taken its toll. He's not so much a stand-up comedian as a sit-down comedian now. "I don't have the energy to do stand-up for as long. I fake it, do the first half standing and the rest sitting down like Dave Allen," he admits.

"I still get a buzz out of performing. All my life, as far back as I remember, I've been on stage. But as someone said, 'don't make contracts with your brain that your body can't keep'. I'd like to die on stage like my mate Tommy Cooper."

After a tough upbringing in Sunderland, it all began for Robert McKenna - to give him his real name - in a Sunderland pub where he worked collecting glasses. One night he asked the manager if he could sing.

Audiences liked him and he began singing regularly, earning the princely sum of 25p a night. Then he and a friend formed a group, The Rock 'n Roll Boys. At 16, he was working in pubs and then clubs. He introduced a few gags into the act, and gradually the comedy took over.

"What I didn't know then, and what I couldn't even have visualised, was that the talent I had would take me all over the globe, to some of the world's most exotic, sun-drenched, picture postcard locations, and that I would meet royalty, prime ministers, gangsters, famous footballers and boxers, some of the greatest names in Hollywood, and work alongside some of the world's greatest stars," he writes in his book.

His conversation bristles with the names of long-gone North-East clubs, including Stage Door and La Dolce Vita, as he tells how he became a top-of-the-bill comedian. As well as this country, he performed on the international circuit taking in Zambia, Rhodesia, Hong Kong, Bahrain and Dubai among others.

"But I'd always return to the North-East for a month and work up here. It didn't matter where in the world I was, I'd come back to the working men's clubs," he says.

"People who didn't come back forgot how to work the clubs here. I'd work a few clubs in Newcastle and Sunderland just to keep my feet on the ground, going from a big cabaret venue to a working men's club. I think that's why I went on for so long. That, and a lot of luck.

"The North-East audiences are supposedly the hardest in the country, but once they like you, they like you forever. A Geordie audience, if they think you're not working hard, will let you know."

The first big Hollywood star with whom he ever worked was singer and actor Dick Haymes, whose wives included Rita Hayworth. He appeared with most of the big American singing stars.

He has fond memories of Ella Fitzgerald agreeing to do an extra Saturday charity show in a Sheffield club to accommodate fans unable to get tickets for the sold-out performances. He was impressed by singer Roy Orbison "who'd go on stage and not say a word, just sing".

Despite his worldwide travels, he still feels most at home in the North-East and his favourite comic is the legendary Bobby Thompson, whom he regrets never made it big outside the region.

And, as for playing in far-flung exotic locations, Knoxall says: "I'd rather work in the North-East than anywhere in the world."