Circuit Training 4b: Extras, Edinburgh - and Everett?

It was early in our conversation, before the teas had even arrived, that James Dowdeswell dropped his bombshell. The well-established stand-up and slightly less-established actor has, it transpires, a rich comedy heritage.

"My aunt's Caroline Dowdeswell, she was in Dad's Army, On the Buses," he reveals. "She tended to play the sexy blonde, which was a bit awkward for me, whenever my friends mentioned it the next day."

Indeed, James' aunt played the recurring role of Captain Mainwaring's clerk Janet King in Dad's Army, a character apparently introduced because the Beeb felt the sitcom needed a "soupcon of sex." All very odd for her nephew, but then his comic ancestry goes back further still.

"My great granddad was a comedian, William Rugby Dowdeswell, but he used to work as William Rugby," he goes on. "He died in 1923 at the stage door of the Theatre Royal, Brighton. It's rumoured that he was in Fred Carno's circus with Chaplin..."

Dowdeswell the Younger is following both career paths, although times have certainly changed. As mentioned in the first part of this interview he's about to head up to Edinburgh, just for a week, with a show about a controversial broadcasting legend. "When I was seven and they asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up I said I'd like to take over The Kenny Everett Television Show," he smiles. "Ironically, now I've got curly hair and a beard, I'm turning into him. So boys, watch out!"

Edinburgh can be a headache for many comics - too much booze, not enough bums on seats. The now enormous Michael McIntyre (popularity, not waistline) once told me that during his first summer at the fest he was "overtired, confused, panicked and cried in Starbucks," but Dowdeswell seems fairly positive about the whole business. His last two full-length shows - well-themed efforts about wine and over-niceness - have enjoyed further outings elsewhere, and the showcase aspect shouldn't be sniffed at.

"The key thing with an Edinburgh show, it doesn't matter how good you are, but has it got something it can go onto? A friend of mine didn't think they'd had a good Edinburgh, but someone saw them and they're now developing a sitcom with them, so you never quite know."

In truth, most stand-ups head back to Edinburgh every year for the same reason that certain middle-aged women squeeze themselves into inappropriate clothing and go clubbing every weekend: the dim possibility that the man of their dreams will finally show up and take an interest. In the case of the comics, that man would be a producer or casting director, although Dowdeswell has already had some action in that direction.

Slightly bizarrely, shortly after Florence and the Machine make their exit from the cafe in which we chat (see the previous column, again), in comes Ash Atalla, the man chiefly responsible for getting The Office on screen. He and James exchange pleasantries and Ash then takes the table behind us, which is a little bit awkward as I'm about to ask about Ricky Gervais.

If you've never seen Dowdeswell's brief appearance in Extras, it's a curious introduction to the wine-loving, well-read comic. He'd known Gervais' right-hand man Stephen Merchant from a sitcom-writing group in Bristol and was called in to audition for The Office - aiming for Gareth but coming closer to the cameo role of his mate Jimmy the Perv - and was invited back to try for a character called Count Fuckula in Gervais' follow-up series. He won the role by humping a chair during the audition and found himself closing out the David Bowie episode in similar fashion, with a beer barrel, while also fluffing the dialogue in impressive fashion.

Asked about the origin of the nickname, Fuckula was supposed to respond "'Because I can't stop shagging'," recalls the actor, "but I forgot the line, I only had one, and I went 'because if I see something, I've got to fuck it!' and Stephen Merchant went [perfect Merchant impression] 'Cut! That's a keeper, we'll have that eh?'"

Those few seconds of on-screen barrel love raised his profile no end, and Dowdeswell "shamelessly mentioned it in Edinburgh last year, to sell a few extra tickets." Then again, it's not the sort of character you want to be typecast as. "As soon as I did it I got called into lots of auditions, because you're hot for a short while," he recalls. "But the auditions kept being pervy roles."

Hence the acting CV is still rather sparse for the moment. So what does he make of Ricky Gervais' subsequent transition to stand-up? Comics tend not to be keen, to put it mildly. "I suppose people might be a bit jealous that he hasn't done the hard yards, but if he went into a big theatre and he wasn't any good, he wouldn't be able to keep going. So good luck to him."

Dowdeswell has been trying to get his own projects off the ground over the last few years but, having hit numerous walls, he's now trying a different, more ambitious tack. "Me and a friend have set up a production company. Rather than send scripts to Hattrick or somebody we thought 'right, lets actually make something ourselves, and then show it around,' because I find that if you send a script or synopsis they'll go [turns nose up], but if they can actually see or hear something they'll go 'oh riiiight.'"

And if not, there's always YouTube. It's as good a showcase as any.