Lucy Porter’s new show is based around the North-South divide – but in her view, Brighton is a city which bucks the trend.

“Northerners tend to be more proud,” she says, sitting back home in her London flat with a cup of tea and a biscuit, fresh from the Edinburgh festival.

“As a Northerner, you are expected to be emotionally resilient, strong and dependable. Southerners don’t have any of those traits – there is a lot of shame in being a Southerner and no cultural heritage.

“Brighton is interesting in that it has a strong cultural identity – you tend to be very proud of being from there. Culturally and politically it is a very interesting place. Even if you feel like you don’t fit in, you can react against it.

“Growing up in Croydon there was nothing to react against – it’s vanilla.”

Porter describes Northern Soul as having the longest gestation period of any of her shows, being based around events that happened to her when she was 12.

“When I was a youngster I didn’t feel like I belonged where I was born in Croydon,” she says. “I yearned to belong in the North of England.”

She found herself looking back to those times after having children, admitting she thought becoming a mother would make her “more outward-looking and less self-centred”.

“There’s such a comedic taboo about talking about your kids,” she says.

“It’s really boring for other people. I am squirreling away quite a lot of material in my brain. I will be able to embarrass my kids like no other parent. It’s an awful power to wield.”

It was moving to the North that first inspired Porter’s career in comedy – initially as a producer, booker and reviewer.

As a student, she won a spot on the judging panel of the Edinburgh Fringe’s Perrier Award in a Time Out competition, which opened her eyes to the industry.

“I realised how enormous the comedy world was,” she says. “I was at Manchester University at the time and when I came back from Edinburgh I founded a comedy society. We went to see lots of comedians and I flirted with doing it for ages and ages.”

She eventually turned from comedy producer and reviewer to performer.

“It felt like poacher turned gamekeeper,” she says. “I had written critiques of other people’s comedy, so to go from reviewing it to doing it yourself felt karmically that every time I had given somebody a bad review it would come back to haunt me.”

It did give her an insight into the mindset of the reviewer though.

“You realise half the time critics don’t know what they’re talking about,” she says. “Critics have off-days in the same way comedians do.

“Your bladder can have more to do with the review than anything the comedian does – that’s why I always try to keep my shows as short as possible!”

Having returned to Edinburgh with this show, Porter is now taking it around the country, which is giving Northern Soul an extra aspect.

“Stand-up is not like doing a play,” she says. “My show changes as I talk about where people are from and whether they are happy to be from there. The show is quite organic.”

One major change has become apparent as the tour goes on.

“The show is about a North-South divide but I do think there’s a London-and-anywhere-but-London divide,” she says.

“No one really likes living in London any more. Historically it has been the seat of power, government, finance and royalty, but now all these institutions are becoming slightly questionable. The establishment seems to be crumbling, and London is part of that.

“It’s good they are moving the BBC out of London – they should move as much out of London as possible. The ruling elite live in a bubble, unaware that people don’t live like that in the rest of the country.

“There’s something to be said for decentralising everything. Let’s move the capital to Ludlow in Shropshire!”