“I’m really looking forward to meeting the people of Watford,” says Jasper Carrott over the phone, as he realises he’s never performed here before. “Although it depends how your football team’s doing. A few years ago, Birmingham City started to be very successful and they knocked 20 minutes off my act, so I’m keeping my eye on Watford!”

The famous Brummie comedian is coming to Watford Colosseum (for the first time) with his show Stand Up and Rock, which does exactly what it says on the tin – stand up comedy from him interspersed with good old rock n roll songs from the Bev Bevan Band, consisting of Jasper’s lifelong friend and former ELO drummer Bev Bevan, Trevor Burton from Birmingham rock band The Move, Geoff Turton, lead singer of The Rockin’ Berries, a Birmingham pop group, and, on lead vocals, Joy Strachan-Brain, from Celtic rock band Quill.

The show, which Jasper and the group are touring the UK with, was born last year when they got together to do 20 shows in their home town, Made in Brum. They got such a good reception that they decided to go national, the first time Jasper has been on tour in 16 years.

“We realised we’d hit a niche,” says Jasper, real name Robert Norman Davis. “It’s for people who like humour that’s not four-letter words and the music is stuff that everybody knows. We were getting standing ovations. Now, it’s a mature audience so we would have had 100 per cent standing ovations every night if 100 per cent of the audience could stand. I’ll be running up and down the front row helping people get up!”

Jasper will introduce each half of the show with his stand-up routines, before handing over to the band. What will the all-new comedy material consist of?

“Well, about getting old! There’ll be a lot of that. Reminiscing about the 60s, the state of the world as it is, me trying to cope with the internet, not knowing who anybody is on television that’s under 40. I mean, who are the Kardashians?”

And Jasper will join the musicians on stage for a couple of numbers. “You’re talking to the man who made and released – and sold – Funky Moped!” he laughs, “a little single that changed the face of the musical world. But yes, I can sing and play the guitar, which I think audiences have probably forgotten that I can do.”

But Jasper actually started out in the music business – after failing to get a job as a Red Coat at Butlin’s in Bognor Regis in 1968, he started up a folk club for the staff once a week. Having caught the bug, he started his own folk club, The Boggery, in Solihull with his friend Les Ward the following year, which became one of the best-known folk clubs in the country, welcoming the likes of Billy Connelly, Barbara Dickson, and Joe Brown, for one of his first ever gigs.

Jasper was the compère and was soon being invited to other clubs to host. He used to “sing a few comedy songs and do comedy chat” and gradually the chat became more and the songs got fewer, and comedy eventually took over.

“If I’d been any good at music, I don’t think I’d be here today,” he laughs.

His first official stand-up routine was about his time at Butlin’s, with a gag about the guard going round at 11pm every night saying ‘Have you got a girl in there? No? All right, we’ll get you one’. “It’s embarrassing now but at the time it was very original!”

He quickly moved into television work, with shows such as An Audience with Jasper Carrott, Carrott’s Lib, Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown, Canned Carrott, and the police drama spoof The Detectives, with Robert Powell.

“I had the TV scene pretty much all to myself when I started out in the 70s,” he says, “Billy Connelly couldn’t do television because of his language. I could go on stage and say ‘Hey, isn’t it difficult to unwrap cheese?’ and people would hoot with laughter. Of course, that’s changed these days!”