'It's not a list of jokes; it's just a story, based on my first year in comedy.'

Comedian Andy Kind has written about his first year as a stand-up comedian. George Luke caught up with him.

Your first book, Stand Up and Deliver, has recently been published. What's it about?

Stand Up and Deliver is about my first year in stand-up comedy. A lot of people ask me what the book's about, or what type of book it is. It's not a list of jokes; it's just a story, based on my first year in comedy. It's autobiographical without being an autobiography.

The fact that it's me is incidental, really. It's about a young man trying to follow the dream he's always wanted to follow; trying to do the job he's always wanted to do; trying to respond to what he feels is God's calling on his life – and the joy of doing that, and the failure and the success; the misery, the happy times, the relationships, the way relationships are forged; the way they are strained... stuff like that.

And how did those early days shape your view of what it means to be a comedian?

Comedy can be quite a lonely profession. I'm very lucky to have a lovely wife and lots of very good friends and family around me. That wasn't the case when I first started six and a half years ago.

It can be very lonely because you're up there on your own, and unlike being in a band where you've got other people around you to share both the good and bad times, you are just on your own. Good gig or bad gig, that two-hour journey – or however long it takes you to get back home – is spent on your own, with your own thoughts.

So even in the good times, there's an isolation about it. And that can be very difficult for a new act. For me it took a few years before I actually felt that I was a proper comedian.

Comedy, therefore, is a profession that is strewn with insecurity. If I wasn't a Christian, I couldn't be a comedian, frankly. I need that rock-solid foundation that only Jesus can give me.

If I didn't have that, I wouldn't be able to do comedy; I'd be crying and freaking out every time I went on stage! So yes – I feel very lucky and genuinely very blessed to have the faith to underpin what I do.

Do you think the comedy circuit is a hostile environment for a person of faith to work in?

I don't think it is. Not any more than anywhere else, really. Comedians obviously have opinions, and so you'll meet people on the circuit who have certain opinions about any world view. But because I'm a comedian, I also have an opinion and a way of communicating that.

There are people who are hostile, but I don't mind that. As a comedian, you become thick-skinned towards other people's feedback. It can be hostile, but no more than any other job. It can be quite a dark place, but then you go out on a Friday or Saturday night into a bar with your mates, and you'll find that that's quite a dark place as well.

When I first started, I didn't know any other Christians in comedy. There are a lot of us now. The number's grown over the last few years.

And if this were the USA, you'd all be doing the “Christian comedy circuit”...

That's massive over there, isn't it? Christianity is so much more entwined within the fabric of society in America, whereas here we're a secularised country and so don't have a “Christian comedy circuit”. There are lots of gigs going on in churches – I do lots of them – but you don't have a specifically “Christian” circuit.

And I think that's the way it should be, actually. I think that laughter is a massive gift from God, and we should be first in the queue to cash that in. Because if God exists, then laughter is his gift to us – and we should be the people handing it out, in the same way that we hand out aid, and stuff like that.

What are your other passions aside from comedy and writing?

I'm a massive football fan, and I like to read. I'm also a gamer; I love computer games. But before I got into comedy, it was always my hobby and my passion – and now it's my job. So I would still say comedy. I don't think there's anything that matches that, in terms of what excites me.

But I've always been a massive football fan and enjoyed playing on computer games. I'd love to say that I collect mugs of the Queen, or stamps with chaffinches on. But I don't I like to read a book and I like to watch a bit of TV. I like to do what most people do. I'm very much of my generation.

My favourite author would probably be Bernard Cornwell. You're not going to get challenged by Bernard Cornwell, but you will learn a bit of history, and you'll have a good read. And really, that's what you want. You want a good read most of the time.

The best book I read recently was by Gram Seed. It was his first book – either One Step Beyond or It Must Be Love. I can't remember which, but they're both based on Madness songs. It was just an amazing book. Just a really, really good book. It just blew my mind. And my other favourite is by a guy called Frank Collins, who came to faith in the SAS. His book's called Baptism of Fire. That was an amazing read as well.

How would you describe your kind of humour? Do you do lots of topical gags?

Not really. Topical humour has a short shelf life. You can do a joke about, say, Gadaffi, at this time we're speaking – or about the riots – but in six months' time, it's not going to be applicable anymore. Comedy is all about recognition and immediacy. So if I heard a funny story that someone told me about their cousin, if I did that on stage, I wouldn't say “a friend’s cousin”; I'd say “me” - this happened to me.

Comedy needs immediacy. It's very much about the present moment. The further away you get from the present moment, the less applicable and relevant it becomes, and the less people are able to recognise it.

So that's the problem with topical material: it could be amazing in the moment, but you'd only be able to get two or three runs from it. And comedy's quite hard to write; it takes a lot of time and effort. So I try to be a bit more 'long-termist' about it, and write stuff that's going to be useable for about two or three years.

I love doing live stand-up; that's my heart – my first love. Actually, my first love is my wife... actually, it's Jesus, then my wife, then stand-up – let's get the order right! I also love writing. I really enjoyed writing my first book, and I'm now working on my second one. I think that's what I'm best at.

I can be quite good at stand-up, but I'm better at writing, I think. The way my mind works is more suited to writing than it is to performance. I'm quite a middle-of-the-road stand-up in some ways; I don't do funny voices or accents; i'm not really a physical comedian; I just tell stories.

That isn't terribly exciting onstage visually, but I think my mind is quite suited to the English language and the written word... and as with anything else in life, you try and do what you're good at, and you try and do it more and better. So I'll definitely be doing more writing.

Having said that, there's nothing quite like being on stage, telling a joke and having several hundred people laugh at it. Again, it's that instant gratification that comedians get. And that's why comedy is amazing.

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