IT’S a sweltering afternoon in late summer and Andy Parsons is happily recounting a trip to Siberia with fellow stand-up comedian Ed Byrne for the BBC 2 documentary - Worlds Most Dangerous Roads.

“It was extremely cold,” recalls the regular Mock the Week panellist. “We were in a tent and we were told if we went outside for a wee during the night...”

Well, the rest is unprintable in a family newspaper, but you can imagine the perils the minus 53 degree temperatures posed to the comic.

This autumn Andy is back on the road with his show Live and Unleashed – But Naturally Cautious despite already completing an eye-watering 50-date leg of the tour this spring.

But the show, which is kicking off at the Watford Palace Theatre next week, has undergone a bit of a re-write in accordance with the changed political landscape.

“Slagging off Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband is obviously not too worthwhile,” laughs the 48-year-old, reflecting on the outcome of this year’s General Election. “In some ways it’s great for me because you get bored of doing the same old stuff so it’s a chance to write some new stuff and there’s a few new targets out now, aren’t there?”

Poking fun at politicians has long been one of Andy’s mainstays.

“I’m something of a news junkie as it is, and the anger that you see in the world around you – if you want to change anything about that you’ve got to talk a little bit about politics because that’s the way you can change things,” explains the father-of-one. “That’s the whole idea of a democracy – we all get a little say in those people who govern us. If we didn’t have comedy we’d be in a dictatorship wouldn’t we?”

After shunning a career in the law – Andy studied the subject at Cambridge University – he cut his comedy writing teeth on satirical radio programme Week Ending.

“I hated doing anything to do with the law,” Andy states emphatically. “I basically did a law job for six months and I managed to persuade them to give me redundancy so I could go and write little bits for the BBC.

“They gave me three months’ redundancy money and that was a fairly good incentive if I didn’t manage to get something going on in those three months I would be back working for a law firm,” he laughs.

But the move paid off in more ways than one, and before long Andy found himself writing for the ground-breaking puppet show Spitting Image – known for its parody of political figures including former prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major. And after working his way up, he became a lead writer for the programme, which was broadcast during the 1980s and early ‘90s.

But it’s not just politics the South West Londoner is interested in. He pokes fun at a whole range of topics including, well, himself and his chosen profession.

“It’s a stupid job and you’ve got to have been bitten by the bug,” advises Andy.

“Like many things, there’s lots of disappointments along the way, but the great thing about comedy is those disappointments can be extremely funny which is a lot of what is in the first half of the show.

“If you can’t laugh at the things that go wrong, then you’re struggling aren’t you really? Far more goes wrong than goes right so you may as well make light of it and enjoy it.”

Remembering one such moment from his early career, Andy says: “When I started off the first gig I ever had I had to do a five minutes open spot. I had my little jokes on a bit of paper and after two minutes I completely forgot what I was supposed to be doing, got my bit of paper out to try and remember what jokes I was hoping to tell and dropped my bit of paper.

“A woman the front row picked the bit of paper up and there was that moment where she held my life in her hands. Thankfully she gave me back the paper and said keep going you’re doing very well. And I have remembered that heckle ever since.

“People ask – how do you deal with heckling? When it’s like that you think – if it hadn’t been that nice it could have been a very different story.”

Andy Parsons, Live and Unleashed – But Naturally Cautious, Watford Palace Theatre, Clarendon Road, Watford, Thursday, September 17, 8pm. Details: 01923 225671, watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk