It's been a journey from screen to stage and back again for comic Tim Vine. Viv Hardwick reports

HALFWAY through our interview award-winning TV comic Tim Vine breaks off and says, by way of apology, "I'm not being very funny am I?" He was being given every chance. But questions which reveal his many visits to Middlesbrough produce answers which interest rather than amuse.

His Teesside involvement comes from Stockton comedy writing partner John Archer, who helped Vine create around 50 gag routines for each series of The Sketch Show for ITV1. The results won last year's Bafta and series 2 is due to be aired from June 22.

Vine and Archer are on tour together and appear at Middlesbrough Theatre next week.

Vine describes the stage performance as "John does his thing, I do my thing... and then we come back and hand out written apologies."

Despite being compared to the legendary Eric Morecambe, the 36-year-old is far happier with Prince Charles's Royal Variety Show description of him as a British Groucho Marx.

Vine uses the old music hall ethos of hitting his audience with so many one-liners that they've got to laugh at something. That's why it's dubbed The Joke Machine Gun Tour.

"And it's a clean show. There's no swearing, but plenty of F words... like fridge and forecourt," he says, whipping more shots into the locker.

Vine's route to stardom includes a Best Newcomer in The Perrier Awards at the Edinburgh Festival, The Comedy Store and The Tim Vine Christmas Present for Channel 5, devising and hosting Fluke for Channel 4 and presenting BBC1's game show Housemates.

Then came The Sketch Show, which the BBC rejected as "having no unique selling point". It took ITV boss David Liddiment five minutes to back the idea and Ronni Ancona, Lee Mack, Jim Tavare and Karen Taylor joined Vine as writer-performers.

For the second series Ancona has been replaced by Australian Kitty Flanagan.

Quick-fire sketches are anything but when it comes to the planning stage. Vine reveals that he and Archer spend hours in a room throwing ideas at each other like "a man finds a whale in a squash court" or "two farmers on a skateboard". Out of scores of routine ideas, Vine writes down the funniest and it then takes eight months to incorporate his material with the rest of the Sketch Show routine.

"I've never been embarrassed about watching myself on TV. When the first Sketch Show was on I went down to my local Dixons dressed in a long coat and baseball cap. There I was on a bank of about 70 tellies and it was very exciting to think I'd be there for the next six weeks.

"I turned to one assistant and said 'that's me on the telly' and he replied 'yes sir, of course it is'. "So if you're ever on TV go down to Dixons and watch yourself."

* Tim Vine appears at Middlesbrough Theatre on Wednesday. Box Office: (01642) 815181. On June 27 he moves to York's City Screen as part of the city's Comedy Festival. Box Office (01904) 541144

* The Sketch Show, ITV2, Sunday, June 22.