Comedy favourite Al Murray heads north on his national tour. But the aggressive, in-your-face Pub Landlord of TV fame is quaking at the thought, as Keith Newton reports.

AS Al Murray knows, one-man shows do not get scarier than this. Michael Jackson flew all the way from the States for 20 minutes this month just to talk up his appearance at London’s O2 arena in the summer and then went away again – probably for a long lie-down.

The bar-room philosopher will arrive there in May exhausted from a punishing schedule that takes in Newcastle twice and countless other venues on his Beautiful British tour.

"I only got into stand-up not to get up in the morning and now I’m doing this," he sighs. "I’ve done long tours before but not in terms of the sheer scale of this one.

"It’s the biggest by a long way and it’s turned into something quite spectacular. It’s pretty strange really, playing in these big arenas, mind-boggling but exciting."

With a new television series under that famous belt, the Pub Landlord has embarked on his biggest-ever tour of UK theatres and halls.

He has already been to Sunderland Empire and Newcastle City Hall but these are broom cupboards compared with what follows. He will be at Newcastle’s Metro Radio Arena on Thursday, April 16, returning on Friday, May 1, before completing his journey at the 02 a week later.

These are seriously big venues – Newcastle is capable of holding 11,500 people and the 02 all of 14,500 – and Al admits he is scared. They’ve called comedy the new rock ’n’ roll for years, but it’s never had the same scale of live exposure.

"They can hide behind the noise but I can’t. I’ve had this fabulous set made, but ... Anyway, I’m not rock ‘n’ roll, I’m a cup of tea and sandwich man. I’ve been doing this for an extremely long time and you’re always on your own, just me, a stage and then a hotel room."

Al, a public school-educated Oxford history graduate, is the creative aggression behind the Landlord. He fills the role so superbly that many people think he is a pub landlord.

He is not. He’s quietly-spoken, friendly and has a lot more hair. But try telling that to his legions of fans.

The great-great-great-grandson of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, Al was born in 1968 and started performing comedy at Oxford with the likes of Stewart Lee and Richard Herring before writing for BBC Radio’s Week Ending and ITV’s wickedly satirical Spitting Image.

Then he struck out as a solo act, supporting Frank Skinner on his 1992 world tour, before meeting Harry Hill at a Radio 4 commissioning meeting. As a result, he appeared in four seasons of Harry’s Fruit Corner on Radio 4.

Al’s break came in 1994 when Harry invited him to join his touring show called Pub Internationale. The Pub Landlord was born and the rest is bar-room history.

With his national stage tours, own TV series and DVDs, he has struck such a powerful chord with audiences and critics alike that the Press has labelled his creator a genius.

"He’s a universal figure. Everyone can relate to him if only because he spills beer and spouts garbage and everyone knows someone like that," says Al. The scary part is, some people believe it – people even told him he spoke a lot of sense after explaining why God was British.

Separated since last year from his wife Amber with whom he has two daughters, Al guards his privacy and admits he enjoys the warped anonymity that the Landlord gives him.

"It’s funny how people expect me to be," he says. "They expect me to be fatter and more leery – more leery in particular."

And is it any wonder?

Page 2: Chains count the cost of greed