Weren't you once a brickie? Or a builder? Or something equally manly and serious.

Builder's a grand term for what I was, I was more of a labourer really. I did fall over on the job once and this naturally led everyone else to call me Susan. Songs in my honour were sung. Strange experience, being serenaded as "Susie" by about 70 builders. But yeah, I worked for a bit on the sites and even did six months as a plumber. Not sure how I got away with that. Natural charm I guess.

How did you get started in stand-up?

I was supremely qualified to do stand-up comedy as I was wholly unqualified to do anything else. I had no formal skills at all, you see. But I was in Stoke Newington in the late 80s, when alternative cabaret was growing, and found myself having a go on the microphone now and again. I kept going back for more, and it trundled on from there. A "lucky accident" just about sums it up.

Is it true you once wrote a film about darts?

Yeah, that was a bit of an odd commission, being asked to write about a sport that wasn't exactly the biggest passion of mine. But to my surprise I quite enjoyed doing it, going to loads of darts tournaments and the like. Of course, it was never actually made. That's the reality of the film industry – everyone's always being glamorously commissioned to write stuff, but about 95% of scripts end up, you know, keeping tables level and draughts out.

Your sitcom 15 Storeys High was acclaimed for its dreamy minimalist weirdness. How on earth did you come up with that?

I basically wanted something un-zany and un-wacky, because most fringe comedy is like that. That's not to say I don't like watching whimsical colourful silliness, Father Ted is probably my favourite sitcom ever after all, but I wanted to do something very different. I did once live in a tower block myself, and it seemed like the perfect setting for a sitcom – a comedy response to all those one-note telly dramas in which tower block people are all caught up in drugs and despair. Oh, and I wanted to have a slow pace. A really slow pace. Kind of like the atmosphere of films like Stranger than Paradise by Jim Jarmusch. So all of that went into the show, helping make it quite unusual.

Were you really the very first comedian to play Wembley Stadium?

In 1993, Rob Newman and David Baddiel played that big famous gig at Wembley Stadium and proved "comedy is the new rock n roll" and stuff. So they're remembered as the first comedians to play Wembley, but I actually pipped them to it because I was the support act and went on before Rob and David. Luckily, Baddiel recently admitted on Jonathan Ross that it was true, so there you go.

Sean Lock will be appearing at Hammersmith Apollo on May 10th. Full tour details are at: www.offthekerb.co.uk