Gearing up for his first nationwide tour in five years (he comes to the New Theatre tomorrow evening), Julian Clary muses on having recently turned 50. “I’ve actually embraced it; there’s been a certain sense of achievement as each decade has passed. Yes, it crept up on me, and beforehand you think of 50 in terms of grey hair and geography teachers. But, most importantly, I’m far enough away from my twenties and not being wistful all the time.”

Why, I asked, had he taken such a lengthy break from touring when most of his peers seem to be on the road most of the time?

He’d been doing other things, mostly involving writing two successful novels (of which more later).

“But I thought I’d better do what I wanted to most. Especially now I’m 50. I’d rather missed the hit, the fix, from a live theatre audience.”

And so he returns, with a show proudly entitled Lord Of The Mince.

Clary writes the material for his shows with a friend (David, no further details), off whom he bounces ideas based on his own life and experiences. There is a formal shape and set topics each night, but he’s then on his own, of course, when he involves hapless members of the audience.

Although the tour wasn’t due to start until late last month, he tried the mechanics out for a week at the Edinburgh Festival, where he received a couple of frosty reviews — “a rather thin set”, said one.

“I really don’t take any notice of my reviews: it’s too destructive to read them while I’m in the process of actually performing. I have a lot of affection for Edinburgh and running the show there was a good part of the creative process.”

What Julian (and David) are creating, of course, are ever-bluer double-entendres — during Strictly Come Dancing (Clary was a finalist in 2004), he camne out with “as soon as I pressed my Fred against her Ginger, I could smell triumph”, and so forth.

I asked him if he could pin down the nature of the audiences that come to his shows — who exactly the material is being aimed at?

“I don’t aim it at anyone specific — I write it to please myself. They’re very mixed: there’s the gay and lesbian lot, the people who watch me on television, Strictly fans or people who hear me on programmes like Just a Minute, which I love doing — you can be more imaginative on radio.”

And so to his two relatively light-hearted crime novels (Murder Most Fab, which came out in 2007 and, published earlier this year, Devil In Disguise). Reviewers were taken aback, it seems, by the quality of work by a so-called celebrity novelist; this time Clary did read what the critics said, and was gratified.

“I’ve always been interested in crime — I suppose it was inevitable, being the product of a police officer and a probation officer. It’s been a chance to explore a different part of my imagination; I just start out with an idea and plough straight ahead without knowing exactly where the plot’s going to go.”

Clary says he doesn’t mind the somewhat lonely element involved in writing (“I’ve always been quite solitary”) and is likely to do more in the future.

But for the moment, it’s back to the outrageous greasepaint.

When I asked him whether he’d ever considered surprising his fans by doing something absolutely straight, or if that wouldn’t work for him professionally, he was nonplussed for a moment.

“You mean acting, do you? No, I’d be lost. I don’t know how actors can wait until the end of a play to get their applause. I couldn’t imagine not having applause from the audience right at the moment, to let me know immediately that what I’m doing is working.

“In the end, I suppose I am a product, a brand,”

Which sounds a bit wistful, actually.