COMEDIAN Rob Rouse wants it to be known that he is knuckling down. Girlfriend, toddler, dog…check!

However he can’t live off high spirits and adrenaline forever; the honeymoon is over. Now comes the hard part, sorting himself out, but Rob soon discovers a wild animal lurks deep within us all.

Welcome to The Great Escape, the Edinburgh Fringe hit from 2010 now escaping into the British countryside for 40 dates, including the Hyena Lounge Comedy Club in The Basement, City Screen, York, on Sunday at 7.30pm.

“Basically, in a nutshell, the last time I toured I was living in London, and this show is about moving the family out of noisy London into a little village in the Peak District,” says Rob.

“We’re Derbyshire with a Sheffield postcode. Helen’s mum lives in Sheffield; I lived in Sheffield in the past. I was originally from Mansfield, though my parents were from Sheffield and so were my grandparents, and I went to university there, nominally to study geography.”

This time, geography led Rob and his family to Derbyshire last spring. “We’ve got a son aged three now, and we just fancied a life change,” he says. “It was all Helen’s idea, as all the good ideas are, and of course I objected at first as a man should always challenge things, if for no better reason that sheer bloody-mindedness!

“But then sense starts filtering through and you start convincing yourself you had this great idea first.”

Are you enjoying the Derbyshire countryside, Rob? “I love it. The fresh air, and of course, as a stand-up comedian, it’s perfect as it’s right at the centre of the motorway network, as Alan Partridge might say.”

As if on cue, a great escape suddenly tears Rob away: “Can I can call you back?” he asks. “We’ve got a bit of a crisis…the dog’s escaped.”

Skip forward a few minutes, and the crisis is over. Master and dog have been reunited. “He’s the ultimate mongrel, a real mutt,” says Rob. “He was from the Battersea Dogs Home so obviously he’s loving the fresh air.”

Talking of animals, what’s all this about Rouse “soon discovering a wild animal lurks deep within us all”? “It turns out it was quite near the surface – and it came out very quickly! Basically I got over-excited about the prospect of cooking and eating road kill,” he says.

“I don’t know where that came from but I grew up in the countryside, and then, living in the city, I’d lost contact with that side of me…but then I clunked a rabbit in the road and took it home and casseroled it. Very tasty!

“Three days later, I picked this sheep off the road…”

What breed? “It was black faced. I wasn’t bothered about the breed. I was more excited about the barbecue; I was thinking with my stomach, but in many ways it encapsulated how when I get things wrong, I run headlong into the brick wall of reality.

“It was the whole skinning, gutting, draining blood thing. I’d done it with the rabbit and it was only afterwards, when I started doing the same with the sheep that I began to think about diseases. In the sheer excitement of it, I was lost in the red mist of the wolf man.”

Once the mist lifted, Rob confronted the truth of the situation. “I found I’d reached my limit; I’d stepped over the mental perimeter,” he says.

“The whole thing had started off with me seeing a pheasant killed on the road but Helen wanting to get home. When I came back, it had gone, and there was that moment of unrequited bloodlust!”

For The Great Escape, Rob has written about his “experiences and interpretation of things”. “Rather than starting out trying to be universal straightaway, my material tends to be introspective, and if you have a handle on yourself, you will see similarities with what other people do,” says the former presenter of Channel 4’s The Friday Night Project.

“Hopefully I just try to be myself. If you try to be honest and try to be open about your failings and foibles, that’s good because it resonates with people.

“I’ve never been one of those comedians who wants to tell you ‘this is how it is’. “

• For tickets, phone 0871 902 5726 or book online at thebasementyork.co.uk. Rob Rouse also plays Harrogate Theatre on Wednesday, June 22; box office, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk