Just the jokes

"I was working in Croydon - it's Stonehenge with windows - in an office for some sort of pension firm, doing VDU work, inputting information. Well, mucking around really. Anyway, I was friends with the security guard, who did comedy too and had this great comedy name, Frankie J Pooley," Tim recalls.

"He told me about the Comedy Caf, in Islington, where on Wednesday nights - and they still have it - you could put your name down and do five minutes, and the winner got £25. I kind of got the bug."

Since making his debut there ten years ago, Tim has never looked back and even now, one of the stars of ITV's The Sketch Show, he still likes to break in new material at the caf in Old Street.

He is an old-fashioned act, a rata-tat-tat teller of jokes who sees no need to swear.

"I would describe myself as a gag teller. It's become more common now but when I started ten years ago, there weren't that many people doing it. Now it's not frowned upon, and comedy has come full circle with the alternative becoming mainstream," he says.

"There's no swearing and nothing rude from beginning to end because what I do is quite gentle. I come on with a smile on my face and say 'Here are some jokes'. I'm not making any serious points, and what I want to do is make people laugh, and swearing wouldn't suit the silly material."

Tim believes there is an advantage to his non-swearing stance: "There's definitely a huge gap in the market for something that is clean but funny as well."

Funny, and in his case fast. If one Tim Vine joke fails, another one is just around the corner.

"I don't know about living on your nerve ends as a comedian, but after a while you realise that the one thing that unnerves an audience is a nervous act. If you look like you're breaking out in a sweat, they can sniff you out like a pack of dogs," he says. "So the key thing is how you react when a joke doesn't work. I just tell another one."

How does he come up with his material?

"I tell you how I do it quite often: by working backwards from a punchline or taking a well-known phrase and working backwards from there," says Tim, who heads out on tour with 200 tried-and-tested Vine gags, all stored in his memory bank with room for improvised linking passages.

He is never afraid to fail when testing new material.

"I'll read five minutes of new stuff off a postcard and none of it works, and I end up with the stuff between the jokes getting the laughs," says Tim, who latterly has been trying out sketches with The Sketch Show team in a Battersea pub each week.

Come Sunday, the second series with Vine, Lee Mack, Jim Tavare, Karen Taylor and new signing Kitty Flanagan starts an eight-week run on ITV.

"Once that's up and running, I may try and wave around some of my other TV ideas," says Tim. So, more fruits of the Vine could be ripe for picking.

Tim Vine, City Screen, York, tonight, 7.30pm, tickets £12 on 01904 541144. The Sketch Show, ITV, Sundays, 10pm starting this weekend.

u JERRY Sadowitz, the self-appointed "world's most offensive magician", will preview his Edinburgh Fringe show at The Other Side Comedy Club in York on July 6.

On his last York appearance, at a near deserted Grand Opera House in November 2001, he took offence at Evening Press reviewer Charles Hutchinson writing notes. The Glaswegian comic grabbed the critic's notebook and became embroiled in a skirmish with Hutchinson on the stage steps, telling him "I thought I was a psycho, but you're even more of one".

Sadowitz will make his York return in the Basement Bar of City Screen, York - note the much smaller location - on a bill with Adrian Poynton and Other Side compere Dan Atkinson York. Should you care to join them, tickets cost £10 on 01904 541144.

u DID you hear about the stand-up who couldn't stand up at York Comedy Festival? Alas for Omid Djalili, he had to pull out of Monday's launch event at the Grand Opera House, suffering from motion sickness from all his international travels.

In other festival gossip stockpiled by co-promoter Tom Sharp...

On Monday:

While in the VIP bar at Kennedys, Lee Mack became enamoured of the bright blue festival T-Shirts. Anything to keep a star happy, volunteer George Brichieri stripped to the waist and offered his.

On Tuesday:

The festival organisers had a ticket for parking a car in the wrong place... Gatecrashers got into the VIP bar just to get Hattie Hayridge's autograph... Hattie's cocktail of choice was a Tiernan Tipple... and a man walked around with an umbrella that rained on the inside.

On Wednesday:

One of the festival volunteers fell into the river... After his usual set, Dominic Frisby unveiled an entirely new show at City Screen, York, to warm up for Edinburgh... The festival got a mention on Look North because Dominic just happens to be Claire Frisby's cousin... Ian Cognito cut himself headbutting his microphone at City Screen.

Updated: 12:15 Friday, June 27, 2003