He came second in school sports races, was second best in his GCSE results. More recently, he missed out on becoming a Top Gear presenter. Then he found he was being replaced in his job on Southern Counties Radio’s Saturday morning breakfast show by Paul Ross.

It’s no wonder Stephen Grant describes himself as “the Martin Luther King of nearly-men everywhere”.

Second is the Brighton comic’s fifth full-length Edinburgh Fringe stand-up show and is, he says, a celebration of near-missing.

This includes Britain building its sporting history on coming second, his own competitiveness, class divisions on planes, postage and even supermarket labels.

“It’s not just about competitive stuff like sport, it’s about people’s second relationships, people’s second jobs – which actually tend to be the thing they wanted to do, not the thing they originally did,” he explains, “If you’re first at everything, you learn nothing.”

Aptly, it wasn’t his first choice of topic.

He had originally planned to do a show called Stephen Grant: 1p Warrior, inspired by his battles with his energy supplier when he accidentally paid a bill 1p short and was pulled up on it. Astounded by their pettiness, he decided to experiment with paying all his other bills less 1p. The resulting dialogue was amusing but, “The whole thing completely nosedived when I applied for a mortgage and my credit rating was f***ed”.

Best known to Brighton audiences for his presenting work on Southern Counties Radio and as the live-wire compere of Komedia’s Krater comedy night, Stephen says impressing in his hometown has always been more important to him than in Edinburgh.

He previewed Second at the Brighton Fringe in May and is looking forward to bringing it back after a run in the Scottish capital this summer.

“A lot of people take Edinburgh as the pinnacle, but Brighton is the main thing for me. When I play in Edinburgh everyone sits in the front but here, people sit at the back because they are petrified of me. I’ll be playing in front of a room full of people who at some point have been the target of my acid tongue!

“These people regularly see me at Komedia and follow the soap opera of my life and this show will bring it all up to date.”

Renowned for his manic, motormouthed delivery, Stephen claims as the years go on he is mellowing slightly. “Sometimes you’ll see me with a stool on the stage.

“But my definition of mellow is still most people’s definition of having eaten too many blue Smarties.”

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