REBIRTH OF DES CLARKE’S COMEDY CAREER

IN many ways life for Des Clarke has come full circle but at the same time he couldn’t be further from where he started. His new 11-date Scottish tour, The Trouble With Being Des, opens at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow next weekend.

The venue is only a stone’s throw from the site of the Gorbals tower block where Des spent his early childhood and attended nearby St John’s Primary.

He hilariously reminisces about his days as a “real weird looking kid”.

“Do you remember the guy in your class who had what was called ‘bum fluff’ above his upper lip?” he says.

“I was that guy. I had permanent bum fluff all the way through primary school.

“So I don’t think I found comedy – comedy found me.

“I see old photographs of myself and I look like Super Mario.

“This little fat guy with a ‘tache. People would mistake me for the school janny.”

The Trouble With Being Des is packed with similarly side-splitting material.

“I tried for years to get onto the school football team,” he says.

“The moment I realised it wasn’t going to happen was when I was a substitute, we were getting beat 5-0 and, for the last five minutes, the manager sent a dog on.”

Two decades have passed since Des first found his calling as a 12-year-old in a talent show at Holyrood Secondary School on the south side of Glasgow.

He did his first stand-up gig at 19 and his big break arrived at 22 when he landed a presenting job on ITV Saturday morning children’s show SM:TV Live, following in the footsteps of Ant and Dec.

He has gone on to enjoy a raft of success.

He is the cheeky chappy who hosted the 2014 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, pops up in panto and whose laughter fills the airwaves each morning on the Capital FM Scotland breakfast show.

Yet Des is keen to fulfil his long-held childhood dream: to be known as a stand-up comedian.

“I think the perception is, because I have had success with other things, that I had stopped doing stand-up,” he says.

“People would say to me: ‘Oh, I see you’re back gigging’ or ask: ‘When did you start doing stand-up?’ I think: ‘I’ve being doing this since I was 19!’”

The Trouble With Being Des may be the first step in his grand plan for world domination but he already has a taste for the big arena tour life.

“I’ve been lucky enough to do warm-up in the Hydro – three different gigs,” he says.

“One was warming-up for Nicki Minaj at the MTV EMA awards.