Kevin Bridges on the price of success

"I don't think Vaq would mind me saying he was totally blown off stage by this kid Kevin Bridges, whom none of us had heard of. It was only his third show," Phelan recalls, 10 years on. "He looked a lot older than 17 and seemed to have more confidence than a teenage newcomer should reasonably possess, which is not to say that he came off as precocious or aloof either.

"His material was age-appropriate in the sense that he talked about the things that 17-year-olds say and do, but he also seemed to stand back from teenage thought and behaviour to shake his head at it a bit. There was an element of ruefulness and an underlying moral sense that made his stuff both funnier and more substantial. We were all beyond impressed."

Backstage, Bridges was nervous when Phelan spoke to him. "My impression," Phelan says, "was that he was already serious. It was only his third show and he'd already found a working balance between his self-doubt and his confidence. This might sound like classic hagiographic nonsense, but I'm telling you sincerely that I thought it at the time: this boy is an artist."

October 2014. I meet Kevin Bridges in his dressing room at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, where he has just wrapped up an entertaining Q&A with broadcaster Colin Murray about his autobiography, We Need to Talk About Kevin Bridges. The book is so crowded with his experiences that you can almost follow him as he grows up and takes the first steps towards a career in comedy.

He is now, of course, one of the biggest names in British entertainment. Next September he embarks on a 41-date tour of big venues across the UK. Twenty-four have already sold out, and 14 of the shows will be at the Hydro in Glasgow.

The interview begins with a simple question: why did you write the book?

"I was taking a year out. It was my dad who said, 'You don't want to keep taking on everything.' Panic sets in - that you're going to be forgotten, so you need to be on every single telly show, you need to be touring every single year, and you end up going mad. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy - you're so scared about being forgotten you do end up doing that much [but] people get fed up with you. Well, you look at [Billy] Connolly, he's still touring. How old is Connolly? In his 70s? It's phenomenal. His audience have stayed with him the whole way through, through the Crucifixion, all the routines with the Saracen's Head, right up to talking about living in LA. He's just a funny guy.

"That's a great way to live your life … the places you've seen, the travelling, the amount of people he's made laugh and tapped into. You're not going to get that if you're on every single stupid panel show. You do some of them to raise your profile, but I think there are enough people who like me. I've got an audience there, so that's my priority, rather than trying to get everybody to like me. You'll never get that. You'll go insane. There are a lot of people who like my stuff, and as long as I keep delivering it, I'll be fine."

This is your first book, but it reads well. It's an enjoyable read.

"Aye, good. The only way I can write stand-up is to be honest. I'm obsessed with detail, maybe OCD, ADD. Colin Murray said that. I don't know. But I can only write how I feel, and when you're writing a book. You write stand-up with somebody in mind, because you're thinking of your audience, making people laugh, but when you're writing a book [you ask] who am I writing this for? So it's almost as if you're writing to anybody else who feels in the position I felt when I picked up Frank Skinner's book [as a teenager].

"I've stripped back everything, I'm not Kevin Bridges Who's Playing The Hydro, I'm just a guy from Clydebank. I'm not trying to humble-brag. There's been no single bit along the whole 10-and-a-half years I've been in stand-up that something amazing has happened. You can argue that [Michael McIntyre's] Comedy Roadshow and the first TV appearances were big breaks, but the roadshow wasn't a big break until it was actually on the telly.

You write in remarkably candid detail about growing up.

"There's a quote in the film, Stand By Me, when the narrator says, 'Nobody ever has friends like they have when they're 12 years old.' It's my favourite film, but the quote means nothing to me, because I never had that many pals at 12. I had a few, but I was never in a close group or went on adventures or camping trips. I was insular and quite a solitary child. I had my mates - I wasn't a weirdo or anything - but I was always panicky. Then it was high school that I got all these mates and it was such an amazing feeling, being known as being funny, and everything was forgotten about from [primary] school, and I thought, 'I don't ever want to go back to feeling like that.' It was the happiest days of my life - that confidence, that wave took me right into, 'F*** it, I'll do stand-up,' and then, bang …"

At 17, you emailed The Stand's Edinburgh office and they gave you your first gig, at their Glasgow venue, in February 2004.

"Bang, I'm doing stand-up. First gig goes well. The fulfilment you get from the early days, it carries me through. Then there are people who were out there today who saw me at 17 at The Stand. There are people who've been there from the start … [The book] charts every single person who's been there, like my mates."

There's a lot in the book about your fourth gig, at The Vault in Pollokshields, which went badly.

"That was the worst thing I've ever experienced. The first death. You feel a weird sweat on your back, your mouth goes kind of dry. I look back at the first three gigs and realise how ridiculous that had been, that I thought I could be a stand-up. It was then that I realised I was just a 17-year-old wee f***y from Clydebank. It hits you - like, wow. I chucked it, and that was it, I'm done. At that time it was a hobby, it was what I did on Tuesday nights. At the time it was like, 'Right, that's it. I'll leave stand-up and move on to the next thing.' That's when you start going, 'What am I actually saying on stage?' It forced me to start writing material rather than just riding on the confidence, riding on a crowd that was up for it and saying, 'That wee guy's f****** young, he's 17 and wearing trainers and a T-shirt and his hair's all gelled forward and he just looks like a wee guy who's here to sell pills.'

"It propelled me into thinking, 'This is going to take a lot of work,' and then The Stand came back in. They had four gigs for me - they all went well, and that was it. I thought, 'There are going to be gigs that are better than the first three gigs and there are going to be gigs that are worse than the fourth gig.' That's stand-up."

Why does the book end in 2010?

"I finish it when I walk onstage at the SECC [in Glasgow] in front of 10,000, because I felt that was the point where everybody began to know of me. You can maybe write a second book, 30 years later, and talk about the celebrity years or the showbiz years, but that was the point I wanted to leave it at. It's like, the journey goes on. I'm trying to avoid using the word 'journey'."

It sounds a bit X Factor.

"Aye. It's not been 'a journey'. I never set out to go, 'I want to be famous, I want to be well-known, I want 10,000 [fans].' I set out to go, 'Stand-up sounds all right, it sounds like something I can maybe do.'"

Do you feel a sense of euphoria when you have 10,000 people laughing with you?

"You don't really think about it being 10,000 people. People go, 'Arena comedian' … I'll see the odd review - I don't really keep reviews, because sometimes I feel there's an agenda there - and you're now known as an arena comedian. You start off with, it's cool to review the new young guy, playing The Stand, what a legend, he's going to be brilliant. Then, when you start getting well-known, it's not as cool to go, 'See that guy that everybody likes? I like him as well.' It's more cool to go, 'Oh, arena comedian, TV comedian.' That's the way it goes. I don't think of it as arenas. I think - well, there's, say, 14 nights in the Hydro, is that 170,000 people? If 170,000 people want to see me, where else do you play? How many nights is that going to be in The Stand or the King's Theatre? It's inevitable.

"I don't walk on thinking, '10,000 people,' because that would affect the show and you would maybe start doing crowd-pleasing stuff. So I quite like it [that] you can still bring them in, and as long as the material is strong enough, you can play to 10,000, 100, whatever. It's interesting, stand-up. It's something I have got a lot of respect for. I'd never seen stand-up before, I'd never watched it a lot. I learned on the job."

Do you get approached by fans a lot?

"You walk out on the street and everybody's got camera phones … It's easy to become a celebrity, to buy into that world, but you need to say, 'They want a picture because you're on the telly,' and that's it, but you can't start showing up at showbiz bashes to get away from real people. It all calms down. You know the places to go, you don't go into the city centre on a Saturday afternoon because you'll get mobbed, but that doesn't mean you start going to the Groucho Club in London and removing yourself from reality, because you'll not be funny. You're a comedian, you're not a celebrity. Audiences laughing with me, connecting with me - that is what has carried me through and brought me success, and I would be too removed from that if I moved into those sort of realms."

Do you alter your live act once it's been written?

"Stand-up's never word-for-word, it's never a script, so it's like, you've got the idea, you've got something you want to say - a point, an opinion about a story or whatever, and it's getting laughs. Jerry Seinfeld says, 'A good crowd helps you write and a bad crowd helps you edit.' I don't believe in bad crowds, but I know what he means. Some gigs, there are hecklers in, people shouting, a fight will break out, so you need to edit your material - you can't tell a big long story if there's some guy throwing a chicken wing at you. You need to get to the funny bit. Whereas if you're somewhere nice, it gets to the stage where an audience will buy into it.

"Once you go on a big tour, once you've got the show ready, you're enjoying yourself on stage. It's important to try to enjoy it on stage and make yourself laugh, so that's why I'll change stuff. One night I'll decide I'm going to tell a story a bit differently, to make me laugh. People will go, 'You laugh at your own jokes,' but I don't laugh at my own jokes; I'm laughing at a guy in the second row who's doubled over because he recognises something I'm talking about. That's the nice bit about stand-up - it's between the performer and the people there and then. It's not like TV, it's not like anything else. It's very real."

Have you ever thought about acting?

"Aye. I sometimes get asked to come in for a [casting] call. Straight acting would be good; I don't think I could do comedy acting as much. "Shane Meadows, the director, I went for a call with him but never heard back. He's great. That's something you would go and do, because I love This is England and A Room For Romeo Brass. Dead Man's Shoes is one of my all-time favourite films. So if it's something with a bit of prestige …

"I don't know if I could act straight. I'd love to, but I'd need a bit of guidance, because it's something new. But stand-up - you don't need any qualifications to start that. I started that, then the book. Who says you can't write a book at 27? Just go and write a book.

"Anybody can write a book - write about your own life. It doesn't matter if you're well-known. It's an enjoyable thing to do. So I don't see why I should write off anything like acting."

You've got the big tour next year. Any plans thereafter?

"I'll maybe take a bit of time away and travel. I think it's important not to get obsessed with becoming … You see some guys maybe becoming like a brand, but they need to be on the next thing and the next, and they're on adverts. You're like, 'That guy can't be happy.' You can't be funny, for a start, if you're only surrounded by other celebs. It's that sort of thing - you're panicking. 'Am I still a celebrity? Am I still relevant? Am I important enough to talk to him? Does he still see me as the same?' I found events like that are exhausting.

"I'm going to see my mates after this [interview]. It'll be funny. It's relaxed, you don't need to be anybody. They'll take the piss out of you. They've always been supportive. I see through the celebrity bubble or whatever it is, and it comes across in the book." n

We Need to Talk About Kevin Bridges is published by Michael Joseph/Penguin, priced £20. Kevin Bridges will sign copies at Asda, 100 The Jewel, Brunstane, Edinburgh, on December 18, 1pm-4pm.