Shame and sadness do not go away overnight. Comedy saved me...

for quite a long time, before finding his feet – firstly in the National Youth Theatre, then pursuing stand-up at the age of 22, going on to win So You Think You’re Funny in Edinburgh and the BBC New Comedy Award in the same year.

He explains: “My journey in the book is that comedy is about taking those feelings of unhappiness and rather than burying them, putting them on a stage.

“I hope the book reaches out to people so they feel less alone.”

Tom knew he was gay aged nine, he writes, but kept it quiet because he just wanted to fit in.

He didn’t come out to his parents until he was in his 20s, although his mother said she had known all along, while his father was a little disappointed that he’d lived with the secret for so long.

“My dad was born during the Second World War at a time when it was illegal to be gay. I had assumed he wouldn’t understand but there’s nothing modern about compassion and I’m very lucky that my parents are very loving people,” Tom says now.

“While we wouldn’t talk about sexuality around the dinner table, it didn’t mean they weren’t totally compassionate. I assumed my dad might not approve and I was wrong.”

Why did it take him so long to come out? He was, after all, a teenager of the late 90s, when the issue wasn’t such a massive deal.

“Changes in the law and role modelling around that time were very positive but these things aren’t a switch. Those ingrained senses of shame and sadness that come as a result of you feeling not quite right don’t go away overnight.”

Tom jokes about the fact that he still lives with his parents in the same 1960s end-of-terrace family home in Kent where he grew up, as his dad says, ‘near the nice houses’.

“I’m only 37, I don’t know why people have got a problem with it,” he exclaims. “My family have been a great support to me throughout my stand-up career. When I’m on tour I’m not in any place for very long, so it’s nice to hang around with them a bit.”

His mental age seems to have gone into reverse, he observes.

“When I was a child I was 46 years old but now I’m an adult, I’m like, ‘No! I’m barely 11!’

“I’ve done a lot of reading