Angela Barnes

But instead of taking the lead in a theatre show (her dad loved am-dram), she took to the spotlight to tell gags.

“He used to say to me, ‘Why don’t you have a go?’ but I always said, ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t be good enough,’” she explains, before the first of two Brighton shows this weekend, one as a compere and the other on a double bill with Jim Campbell.

“Then I lost him very suddenly, and when he died I thought I never did have a go at that. So I signed up and did Jill Edwards’ stand-up course at Komedia.”

After learning the practical skills of performing – how to hold the mic, why you shouldn’t fiddle with your hair, writing methods – Barnes was soon out on the circuit doing open-mic nights.

Two years later, in 2011, Barnes won the BBC Radio 2 New Comedy Award.

“If you told me two years ago I would have been interviewed by Terry Wogan, I would have laughed in your face.”

She had a bit of comedy experience, mind. She had previously booked comedy acts for The Funny Farm nights at Brighton’s Farm Tavern.

“I’ve always been a really big fan of comedy. I’m a massive comedy geek and The Funny Farm was mainly a way of getting people to come to me. It was never a money-making venture. In fact, it was a hugely money-losing venture.”

A year on from winning the R2 award – with a six-minute sketch of sideways observational comedy and her world view, such as how Brighton is the place vegans go to die – the 36-year-old is now a full-time comedian and has just been commissioned to write a pilot script for a BBC Radio 4 show.

She says winning the award has changed her life, though not her attitude.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be confident my stuff is good enough. I’m still waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder to say, ‘Sorry, there was actually a mistake, you’re not a comedian at all.’ “That’s what drives me. I’m never happy with what I’ve done – I’m my own worst critic. Everyone says I’m self-deprecating in style. That is not something I do on purpose, that’s just how it comes out.”

She moved to Brighton from Maidstone to study linguistics at the University of Sussex and graduated in 1999. She took a job in nursing and then moved into social work and has flitted between London and Brighton ever since.

“I come from a background working in social care and social work; I’ve seen how horrible life can be, so my natural state is to be a bit pessimistic.”

Now she spends her days writing (back in London, but out performing five nights a week all over the country), she looks back on a job in a canteen at a police station when she was studying as her most memorable employment.

“It was fun, a real eye-opener. They used to play lots of tricks on me. I remember being bundled into a lift when I was about 19.”

Barnes’s hero is comedian Linda Smith, best known for her work on BBC Radio’s The News Quiz and Just A Minute.

“She had this amazing style of being somebody who seemed very approachable and warm, but very acerbic and biting and clever.

“I identify with that idea, that whole ‘I can be fluffy and nice and girly but I’m not silly and stupid and I have something to say’ idea.”

Smith was another proud working class comedian from Kent, who joked about her hometown of Erith: “It’s not twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham.”

It was fitting, then, that Barnes opened her comedy award-winning performance with an anagram about her hometown, I Am Stoned.

“There’s bog all else to do in Maidstone,” she says, “just anagrams."

• Angela Barnes hosts Rabbit In The Headlights, Upstairs At Three And Ten, Steine Street, Brighton, on Friday, October 26, at 8pm, tickets £6/£5.
• Angela Barnes will also perform in a double bill with Jim Campbell, also at Upstairs At Three And Ten, on Sunday, October 28, at 7.30pm, tickets £9/£7.50.
• For tickets for both events, call 07800 983290 or visit www.brightoncomedyfringe.co.uk