NINA Conti and her puppet Monkey have been performing on the comedy circuit for more than 15 years.

Having been turned on to ventriloquism by theatre director Ken Campbell after working for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Conti won the BBC New Comedy Award in 2002 and the Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2008.

She has also appeared on 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown, Live at The Apollo and Russell Howard’s Good News.

Conti talks to EDWIN GILSON about her new improvisational show In Your Face, feeling “infantile” at the start of her comedy career and her unique emotional connection with her puppet.

What is the intention behind putting face masks on the audience for your new show, In Your Face?

It’s only the lower half of the face, the jaw. I put a new mouth on the audience to control what they say. I respond to their expressions and physical gestures to create something in the moment.

Sometimes people give me fake names, I can’t tell. Then it just goes to a place of total stupidity and nonsense. Some nobly idiotic thing. It’s not about undermining people. It’s to celebrate the creation of a new nonsense.

It departs from reality at such a rate that the person is no longer really them. It can be quite liberating.

The audience has a part to play, then, in corresponding to your imaginary story with bodily actions and expressions?

Yeah, it’s a two-way transmission. It’s just funny, really. You see sometimes if people are with their husband or wife. I’ll make up some story about how they met and one of them will give the other the finger, in a jokey way. It brings the house down.

You said you were “terrified” about doing improvisational comedy before you started it – what gave you the motivation to try it?

I’ve just always got to keep doing something different or I’ll die.

It’s a risky approach, though, and it must have been quite scary at first.

I only tried it really incrementally at first, a tiny bit at a time. Over the years that approach has grown slowly and now this show is fully improvisational.

Have there been any moments in a show when your mind goes blank and you’re not sure what you are going to say next?

There’s never nothing happening, though. It’s not like I’m alone trying to think of brilliant ideas out of thin air. There is stuff to work off.

There’s always a demon which thinks “maybe you could have taken that somewhere more interesting” and then I get too wrapped up in my own head.

But then all you have to do is make the person next to you with the mask on say “maybe you could have taken that somewhere more interesting” and it becomes funny. As long as you vocalise those things they become your friends.

You seem quite self-referential in your shows in general, commenting on your routine as you go along.

Yes. It’s better to get that out there otherwise we all just disappear into introverts. You can say awful things but as long as you apologise for them then it’s fine. I don’t stand by anything I say.

Was there any trepidation about performing your routine with Monkey in the early days when comedy audiences might have been expecting a more orthodox mode of stand-up?

Yeah, I felt pretty stupid a lot of the time. I was always performing on the same bill as young guys, who were pretty cool and had their little notepads. And there was me with a, you know, teddy bear. I felt like a simpleton.

It was strange because people did laugh at this monkey a lot and I always felt a bit sheepish.

People were like “you’ve got a monkey, that’s cheating”. I was thinking “get your own monkey then”. It felt a mixture of cheating and infantile. Maybe I had to work harder because of that, though, to win people over.

How did you get into ventriloquism in the first place?

I hadn’t paid any attention to the art form at all in my life until a guy called Ken Campbell, who was a theatre director in the era of John Cleese and a maverick guy. He got really into ventriloquism and bought me a puppet “teach yourself ” kit. I looked at it like “crikey Ken, what are you doing now?”. It seemed so far away from what I wanted to do. I probably wanted to go and audition for The Bill or something boring.

I unpacked this present and started playing with it though and I thought maybe he was right. It was kind of fun. I would never have come to it myself.

Do you still think of it as a nice medium or have you seen more interest in it lately?

Well there’s quite a lot of it on the talent shows. It’s a different circuit from the one I tread, though.

Is it niche? Well, I’ve always tried to present it as niche and arthouse and I’ve made documentaries on it. This show is brash and bold and very mainstream, though. It’s my boldest show to date and one that can carry in a big theatre.

Your relationship with Monkey must go beyond that you might have with any old inanimate object. Have you built up an emotional connection with him over the years?

I’m very blasé about him but if I really take him and out look at him on my own I’d realise there is quite a lot of dependence on him. It’s a very invested object.

Some people feel that way about a lucky charm on a necklace. My version of that just happens to be this awful nylon monkey. He’s got this face that seems to know me.

Is the ultimate goal of ventriloquism to make the audience forget that you are speaking for the puppet?

No, I think I’m always striving to make people laugh. Whether people think my lips are moving or not... well, I’ve left that worry behind.

It’s quite far down the list in terms of importance.

I guess him seeming real is important. But my puppetry is very clunky. I’ve never tried to get a fluidity in my arm or make him breathe.

He looks left and right and opens and shuts his mouth. I met some puppeteers recently and thought they were doing some really cool stuff I’d never learned.

Nina Conti, The Brighton Dome, Church Street, Saturday, October 15 7.30pm, £21, 01273 709709