"I THOUGHT I might knock stand-up on the head last year and take a longer break from it,” says comedian Sean Lock.

But despite his flirtation with hiatus, Lock, is back on the road with his Keep It Light tour.

“I realised I didn’t really like that idea because all the things that make me good at the job don’t switch off and so if you have nowhere to go with it, you just turn it on yourself,” says Lock. “So, I’d give myself a hard time, mocking myself and then patronising myself to try and make me feel better. When it comes down to it, comedy is rehearsed moaning.”

Not being able to handle the boredom and his own sharp wit, Lock is now turning his sword of gags against ballet, James Bond, and designer glasses.

“I find the very notion of Bond so ridiculous. This thought that one man can save the world is so childish; an inebriated nine-year-old would struggle to maintain plausibility in that idea,” says Lock.

“I like the ambiguity of ‘keep it light’. I like it as just a throwaway comment you can make to somebody when they’re talking about a terrible mishap that has befallen someone,” says Lock. “It is a pinprick to any kind of heaviness, and ultimately I see that as my job. So I can go down a particular path but I can keep it light by doing some silly stuff.”

But he is also tackling heavier issues such as immigration and isolation in the elderly, but he insists he is going to “keep it light”.

The Surrey-born funnyman is one of the country’s most prolific stand-ups, a regular on panel shows such as 8 Out of Ten Cats and QI.

But in-between television appearances Lock finds tries to find time to write his touring shows – something he finds challenging every time.

“I have this weird feeling that other comics have a much more effective and swifter, more skilled working policy where they’d say to me ‘no you don’t have to do it like that, you don’t have to take a year saying the wrong thing. You do it like this,” says Lock.

Lock puts this flaw in his working methods down to not having gone to university. 

“It’s my major regret in life, though not for the qualification I would have gained. People I know who went to university have a working method where they sit down and get something done,” he says. 

“They know how to start and get on with things. I will do anything to avoid getting on with stuff. I have one method and that’s blind panic so I’ll sit down in my kitchen and suddenly get on with it. Maybe I just imagine it’s greener for other people.”

But Lock has gone as far as to get himself an office to try and get some work done.

“I spend a lot of time achieving nothing; days go by sometimes. I do rent an office and go there, though not every day: that would be a lie. I have my huge word-game commitments,” he says. “I have my huge word-game commitments: Countdown it’s called. But I have to be at my office just in case something comes along. It’s like fishing. 

“If you don’t sit at the river bank with a fishing rod, a line, a hook and a worm on it, you’re never going to catch any fish so if I do this for a whole day, then something will slot into place. 

“People perhaps assume that you just walk into a room and make this stuff up, but jokes are very hard to come by.”

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