Circuit Training 88: And now over to our acting traffic correspondent, Hal Cruttenden

Still pottering around patiently in the household-fame holding bay, Hal Cruttenden seems happy enough with his lot. The not un-cuddly comic was widely regarded as comedy's hardest-working man during his circuit days, but is now touring theatres with another finely-honed hour-and-a-half, Straight Outta Cruttenden, while popping up regularly on mainstream terrestrial programmes like The Great British Bake Off: Extra Slice and (the apparently rather harrowing) Live At The Apollo.

But what was that about traffic, you ask? We'll come to that, and congestion in the acting business - he has some pretty caustic things to say about the way that profession operates. Generally, though, this is Hal musing at length about life as a comic, how on earth he ever got into it, and how a man perhaps not naturally built for such a sometimes-hostile environment managed to navigate it so successfully.

First, though: our initial 'hellos' lead to some classic awkwardness.

How's it going Hal? I get the feeling I've interrupted you doing something interesting.

Ooh no, sorry! I've just got a tone of voice that when I know someone that's called, I go [downbeat tone] 'Oh, hi' - it sounds like I'm disappointed.

Life is a constant minefield - although that's good for stand-ups, presumably?

Exactly - and with all my neuroses, it makes it even easier to write comedy. Although Live At The Apollo was filming this week, a Christmas one: Noel At The Apollo it's called. Everything's been so building up towards that, and doing my tour shows, that I haven't written any brand new bits for about a month. I've got loads and loads of things on my phone, scribbled down, 'must write that', because things keep happening.

It's a horrible feeling when you lose a great idea.

That's why we become so boring, comics. We're at dinner parties, someone says something so you sneak off and put it in your phone. 'That's really good, that's something there.'

So the tour is up and running?

Yes - you've got me in an unusually happy state. Honestly, I don't want to go on about it, but Live At The Apollo seems to scare me more every time I do it. Because when you first do it you've got nothing to lose, you're just going 'hey, it's great, I'm doing my first Live At The Apollo,' then suddenly, every time you go back its that feeling of 'oh god, if I cock it up this time I'll let people down as they'll expect me to be good.' So I'm slightly on cloud nine, as it went very well.

Do you only realise afterwards how tense you were beforehand?

Oh exactly - you just realise how much it was there in the back of your mind. It's one of the things that comics say, when people say 'oh you only have to work in the evening,' but actually it's on your mind all day, the gig, and it does take it out of you.

You in particular are famous for packing loads of gigs into your evenings. I've heard it described as 'doing a Cruttenden'.

It was all from having kids too soon! 10 years ago I was regularly doing five on a Saturday night - now I've got this reputation for it I feel really bad as I'm doing it far less. But I still double up, treble up when I can.

14 years ago I moved to Enfield, on the outskirts of London, so every trip into London it was always like 'I have to make this count' so I try to do three or four at least. But I've always enjoyed doing that. I'm quite neurotic, and it was good for me to be really throwing myself at stand-up all the time, it was really good training. I really recommend it, but I think it's getting harder for comics to do that many.

There are so many comics competing for spots now.

Yeah. I still do clubs to keep my hand in, and to do new material, but I don't need clubs any more, I live off tour, corporate, telly things - that sounds very cocky, but that's what we aspire to, and I hope I stay here. But I think that's why Apollo is so frightening for bigger acts, because we're doing longer shows, and suddenly 'I've got to be tight, I've got to be good.'

I've got too used to wandering out to my crowd going 'Hello! Let's have for a chat for an hour and a half, here's a joke, let's talk to you...' In your club days you're doing 20 minutes: 'You don't know me, here I go, bang bang bang.' You're there to make a big impact.

Stephen K Amos said that to me - 'never stop doing the clubs, always go back.' And it's the best advice.

So what's the most gigs you did in one night?

I don't think I did seven or eight, as the legend has it - I think I did six once. It was mainly the regularity with which I did five. I'd always have three gigs, then an hour's break where I realised I could fit another one in, so I'd email everybody, 'hey, I'm free in Leicester Square between 9.30 and 10.30' - that industrious thing of getting out there and making sure it paid.

My agent said 'having kids has been great for you, you've upped your game massively.' Well, we needed money.

Have you hit Malcolm Gladwell's magic 10,000 hours yet, that you need to be an expert?

Oh I must have done. My first gig was 1996, well over 400 gigs a year, and I think I did need to do that. I started as an actor, and I had a reunion with everyone from my drama school last year, and everyone went 'How did you do that? You were quite funny but you weren't ballsy.' I think it was that necessity. My first gig went well and I thought 'there is a future here.'

The thing that scares me the most is the fact that they can shout back at you, and you have to deal with it, so being neurotic I had to throw myself at it again and again, go through all the humiliation, all my worst fears.

When I told my mum that I was doing some gigs a few years back, she just said 'why?' Which is a fair question.

It is, but it's one of those jobs where the rewards are brilliant when a gig goes great. I've had plenty of dreadful gigs, and less so now but quite a few where I've been physically threatened, especially in club gigs where people are very drunk. But it's that promise, that drug of people laughing at you. You have this massive risk involved, which acting doesn't to the same extent.

I've had a few gigs in my career where I've literally driven home patting my back, going 'well done' - I really felt so proud of myself. And actually there's nothing else in my life I've felt proud of myself for! I'm proud of the kids. But I feel like my kids are only sane because of my wife.

When you were at drama school, was there a career path in mind?

All of us were so ambitious: 'We'll do The National, the RSC, we'll do some telly for money, but that's not the main thing' - we didn't realise that there's hardly any bloody work. I love actors, they're such positive, lovely people, but unless you're really established... you really do have to find someone in a secure job and marry them.

The drop-out rate is horrendous, and it's why acting is so horrendously middle class. A lot of these great actors, we go 'aren't they great, they stuck in it.' Yes - they had family money. And I'm not picking people out, as there are people who were very successful young, Benedict Cumberbatch and Helena Bonham Carter, but these are very upper middle class people.

They're like the Tory cabinet; not that they're Tories - god, this is a terrible analogy - they're going into a job, 'I do this because I love it,' but they know that they have a security of income to save them. The biggest problem acting has: people from insecure financial backgrounds whose parents are not going to fund them to keep going, they have to drop out, and it's so unfair.

Any solutions?

I think there should be a cull of actors: 'look guys, we're only accepting 30 new actors every year, there's the work for them, they'll cover everything, all the rest of you go and do something else.'

And by the way I am in that bracket - supported by mummy - but there is a promise in stand-up, if you can get to a [certain] level, there is work there, on the circuit. You can live a pretty good life doing it, as long as you work your arse off and get really good. It is a craft, there is a degree of genius - I will never be Daniel Kitson, or have the style of Jimmy Carr, or the Michael McIntyre ability to be a great entertainer, the way he structures jokes...

You've been tipped to be the new McIntyre, and there are similarities - you've both worked really hard to make it look easy.

It's so lucky that I discovered it. I'm forever in debt to David Clyne, who was on this comedy workshop as well but gave up stand-up, and he was really good as well. We were working together at the BBC, where we'd do traffic reporting, and he said 'you should do stand-up,' and I was the one of our little group that kept going.

You did BBC traffic reporting?

I was reading and writing traffic reports, mainly writing them, occasionally broadcasting them. Because I was an out of work actor, I'd do the odd job - I did EastEnders, Kavanagh QC, things like that - but I also used to write traffic reports, in the '90s, Radio 5 Live was the main one.

People often say to me, 'did you have a chance to put comedy in?' No, because drivers are really fed up if you're doing jokes about the reason they're in a five mile tailback, going 'ooh, its five miles, you're not going to get to your work!'

Did you ever cock it up?

Not really. I think my first broadcast on GLR, the producer phoned me and went 'yeah, you know it's not 'Wrotham' it's 'Roo-tem.' But I never said 'the fucking A4 is fucked...'

Speaking of acting, and supportive partners, your Radio 4 sitcom [Hal] was about that. Will it come back?

I think we're having another commissioning round in December, on whether we get a second series. But I loved doing that, it was sort of an amalgam of me and my wife, because my wife did a similar thing of having a good job, gave it up, the kids are growing up, that thing of what to go back to. She's multi-talented, a really good writer, funnier than me. I mean, I don't really like her school of comedy: she's a bit wordplay, a bit naff, but people at dinner parties think she's funny...

She was a copywriter, but she's a brilliant artist, and she's been commissioned by The Savoy Hotel. But she had a time when she'd looked after the kids, stopped working, then you've fallen behind.

So the sitcom is a bit of a role reversal.

It's actually a little dream we've had, because if we'd had kids and it'd not gone very well with comedy, my wife might have kept her job and we'd have been loaded, because she was so red hot, a copywriter in advertising. I could have been a little stay-at-home dad, and now I'd be looking for what to do with my life. So it had that feel to it, the sitcom, but there are a lot of other storylines I want to do.

I write it with Dominic Holland, who is the opposite of me in everything, and it's really good to write with someone who is so opposite to you. We get on very well, but he's dangerously right-wing, horrendously reactionary. We have a lot of fun.

For Hal's tour dates visit www.halcruttenden.com. Hal's debut DVD - 'Tough Luvvie Live' - is out on the 30th November. Order