ROB Beckett grew up in a place called Mottingham (in South London) which sounds a bit made up, a consonant short of a real place. But it seems an apposite place to emerge from, given Beckett can’t be for real, can he?

The Brylcreemed, Boris-blond comedian sounds just a little too mockney. Beckett may be everywhere these days, he’s on 8 Out of Ten Cats, he’s narrated Celebs Go Dating, but that Artful Dodger accent, and the working class schtick which he sells to the watching world – talking about Kit Kats and flatbread - has to have been cranked up a bit?

Then there’s the self-deprecation – he’s long talked about his teeth in stand-up – attack being the first line of defence – but is Beckett that self-aware? Is the sensitivity part of the act?

The conversation begins by talking about his Glasgow gig later this month, being asked if he’s looking forward to playing the city, which of course is almost pointless because a performer isn’t likely to say ‘You know, what, I’d rather have my head shaved and Frankie Boyle’s face tattooed on my back.’ But he’s gracious enough to run with the puerility of it.

“No, it’s not a pointless question because I do love coming to Glasgow,” he offers in rapid delivery. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel I’ll be relocating the family anytime soon, but when you’re in Glasgow you know you’re in a proper city. I spend my time in a lot of places in the UK that are all a bit similar and believe me, playing the King’s Theatre is not like not like going on stage and saying ‘Hello Maidenhead’ – with someone then shouting out ‘You’re in Basingstoke!’ And what I also like about Glasgow is if you’ve got to warm the audience up, especially if you’re a gobby Cockney like me.”

But is Beckett a real working class Cockney, or has he worked at this performance along the way? The answer arrives sideways, when he’s asked about achieving so much success so young (he’s just 33). “Here’s the fing; I’ve been working at this for ten years. My dad was a taxi driver – he’s a long distance lorry driver now – and he has an amazing work ethic. So I couldn’t be moaning about being tired doing what I do when he’s putting in these long shifts he still does. And you know, I reckon I’ve done 15- 20 years of gigging in ten years. And when you gig so much you get so much more confident.”

What’s also refreshing to learn is he never set out to follow the star in the sky leading to fame. “I didn’t go to youth theatre or appear in school plays. Nuffink. And I didn’t know I was good at comedy until I gave it a go ten years ago.

The comedian’s first job was at 14 working in a flower market. He studied tourism management at college before abandoning that to sell bags of compost back at the flower market. He later temped in an office.

Rob Beckett in fact only tried his hand at comedy after watching someone perform badly at a local comedy club. “I fought ‘I could do that.’ He did it because he loved a challenge and he loves comedy. (A huge fan of Eddie Murphy and Peter Kay.) ”I entered a competition and I got through and I entered another one. I didn’t seek the gig but I kept getting asked back. It was like playing five-a-side football where at first you pay a fiver to play, but then they say ‘Well, you don’t have to pay now’ and then I was getting a fiver to perform. Before I knew it I was offered £40 and it didn’t take too long to get to the sort of money I was getting working in an office.”

He worked hard. After gigs he often slept on the floor of the office he’d worked in. At times, he’d be so skint he’d call his dad to take him home in the cab. When he appeared at comedy club in Australia he had to leap train barriers because he couldn’t afford the fare.

Yet, given this will to succeed, there must have been a deep, contained, desire to perform? “Maybe, but I wasn’t aware of it. Where I grew up in South East London you became a cab driver or worked in a flower market. I would have been as well saying I wanted to become an astronaut.

He adds; “I did gigs alongside Oxford students and I thought being working class I’d feel inferior. But the thing is you don’t feel inferior if you’re getting more laughs than the other bloke on the bill. I could hear I was doing better than those who had already been part of the Footlights.”

A big smile emerges; “Comedy isn’t subjective like music. You either get the laughs or you don’t. Then, occasionally I’d get a gig appearing alongside someone who was on telly and I’d think ‘He’s not getting more laughs than me. I must be quite good at this lark’.”

His success is snowballing; he’s a chat show host’s dream, and Norton and Ross love him. But does he suffered writer’s block, as Kevin Bridges did a while back? “A little bit. But I’m nowhere near the level of someone like Kevin Bridges who can’t really walk about and live a normal life. (which can limit the appearance of ideas). He can go anywhere in the world and do what he wants. I still live in South London and I’ve got kids (two girls) and I have to look after them so I do the school run.”

He laughs; “If I didn’t have that God knows what I’d have to talk about it. The new show is partly about how posh my kids are, and the relationship with my (posh) in-laws who used to talk politics in their conservatory. Me? I’d eat my dinner off my lap and watch You’ve Been Framed.”

He adds, grinning; “It’s hard not to have something to write about when you’re being pulled from pillar to post by the family.”

Well, he could be living a showbiz life, of West End clubs, hot girls and wild cocaine parties? “Exactly. But I don’t know how funny you could make that,” he deadpans. “People would just get jealous.”

If there was also a thought that Beckett played up his own sensitivity for the sake of a laughs, that notion has to be dumped also. In the early days of stand-up he struggled to cope with the on-line personal abuse. “I was getting 1,000 followers every night and hundreds of messages and many of them said ‘You’re sh**’, ‘You’re fat’, ‘You’re unfunny’.” It was ugly.”

But rather endearingly, he admits he was sh** in the early years. “The good things is I was oblivious to how s*** I was for the first four years. There is a thing called the Stages of Incompetence. The first stage is Unconscious Incompetence, where ignorance is bliss. Then you move on to Conscious Incompetence where you realise you’re sh**. That’s the worst stage because you don’t know what to do. The next stage is that you learn why your sh** and try to do something about it. And finally, you become good at something and you’re confident and you can make it even better.”

His voice becomes serious, “You only learn from being rubbish. And to be honest, I couldn’t tell you one thing that I’m really good at now. I only see the negative. But in a way that’s good because if you focus on the negatives you can improve. Yet the trick is not to let yourself get too down about it.”

Beckett reveals he sought NHS counselling and CBT when he was struggling to cope with abuse and lack of confidence. “Now I have a number of coping strategies to help me deal with it. I can also spot the trigger points, like when I’m getting a bit tetchy with the kids and moany or even angry with other people. I use lots of exercise and talking about it really helps.”

The comedian is keen to develop himself as an all-rounder. And he will. But does he not worry a little about being over exposed? “American comedian) Steve Harvey points out that no one says Nike is overexposed,” he says, smiling.

And so long as Beckett is still funny it won’t matter in the least. He can talk about family and class, for example, till the cows come home. And the horses. “My wife once saw Prince Harry play polo,” he offers. “Me? I once saw a horse being loaded into the back of a Transit van.”

That’s funny. And so is this working class Cockney performer.

Wallop!, The King’s Theatre, Glasgow, November 19