SO, HOW did popular camp comedian Julian Clary mark his half-century earlier this year?

“I threw a big garden party in May, and we had a fab time,” he beams. “I’m loving being 50. I’m a much happier person now. I get more content with every decade.”

Never more than a minute away from the next joke, Julian deadpans that the one disappointing aspect of his 50th birthday was that he was not accorded loads of TV retrospectives. “I was expecting all sorts of TV tributes like Bruce Forsyth or Stephen Fry, but I got nothing,” he says with a mock pout. “I suppose I’m not a National Treasure. I’m a National Trinket.”

Chilling out in his dressing room before his Lord Of The Mince show, dressed casually in a green T-shirt and tattered jeans before he dons his fabulous stage outfit, Julian could pass for a decade and a half younger.

He is also a rare example of a comedian who is as amusing and charismatic off stage as on it.

“As I get older, I’m more and more fearless,” he explains. “I now have this feeling of being able to do all these different things. I’m so relaxed about life, I feel I can do what I like. I’m really enjoying that sense of liberation. I realise that it’s not worth getting upset about the things that used to bother me. I used to have panic attacks and get anxious about things, but I don’t anymore. It’s about acquiring a sense of peace and learning to live in the moment.”

And having made a huge splash as a contestant on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing reecently, Julian has ruthlessly used it as material for Lord of the Mince, coming to the New Theatre in George Street, Oxford, next month. “Strictly is ripe for comedy. Everyone takes it seriously, and you have to stand there while the judges say rude things about you – it’s crying out for someone to send it up.”

He also went on the Strictly arena tour, another occasion that proved a rich source of material. “It was thrilling,” recalls Julian, “I’m never going to play an arena again and get laughs out of 10,000 people. Also, I’d never been in such close proximity to a whole gang of heterosexuals before. It was fascinating. Everything’s a competition for them, from arm-wrestling to burping and breaking wind. That was quite an insight.”

He also admits that Strictly Come Dancing has had an enormous impact on his profile. “It’s given my career a great boost – it’s been a real shot in the arm. I couldn’t have foreseen the reaction, but it introduced me to a whole new audience and brought out my fearlessness.”

So what else can Julian tell us about his new show, and what about the title? “Well, I have done for mincing what Michael Flatley has done for dancing. And this show is about going back to basics. It’s how I started in comedy. I get very playful on stage, which makes it great fun. It’s a very silly show – I’ve always liked the lighter, more trivial side of life. There is no hidden message, no attempt to change the world.

“I still get the odd sharp intake of breath, especially from blue rinse ladies in pearls who’ve come along to see ‘that nice boy from Strictly Come Dancing’! But I don’t feel the need to shock now – people are much more accepting and less fearful these days. Besides, the rapport is still there,” declares Julian proudly.

No doubts then? “At first, I thought: ‘Do I want to tour at my age? Will anyone turn up? Am I past it?’ But as soon as I got the show on the road, all those doubts evaporated,” he says.

“I have nothing left to prove. Now I just want to entertain and make people laugh. I think that’s what I was put on Earth for!”