“Wellll. The first thing to remember is that in common with all my shows, the title is completely independent of the content. But nevertheless I thought it was important to mention Swan Power because people are fed up of hearing about the power of the goose so it’s time to hear about other waterfowl and their power. The swan also has a lot in common with my performances on stage. A lot of people say that my performances are actually two, one above the waist and one below. There’s a lot of leg movement, but above I have elegance, like the the swan.”

You’re elegant above the waist then?

“Yes and also, I eat a lot of grain.”

And do we have to be careful because you can break our arm?

“That is a myth. A swan cannot break your arm. They could break a finger, and that would only be if you wrapped your finger round their neck then asked them to pull down hard, in which case they’d be entitled to break your finger. You couldn’t accidently put your hand round a swan’s neck.”

And it would be owned by the queen anyway, in which case it would probably be treason.

“It would be, yes.”

You’re appearing in Bilston. You’ve never played there?

“That’s in Wolverhampton isn’t it? I’ve played in Wolverhampton before but never this room. There’s so much that the West Midlands has to offer, isn’t there?

Orange chips, baltis. Napalm Death. But it’s strange how the oddest places can throw up really good venues.

“Oh yes, there’s really good venues all over the place. One I remember is the Cube in Corby. That’s a great venue and I’m sure Bilston Town Hall is the same.”

Corby’s a surreal place in itself, full of third generation Scots whose grandparents moved down when the steelworks closed and still have the accent.

“And also in Wolverhampton a lot of people have that funny walk because the people are descended from ducks.”

I don’t think so

“Yes, I probably got that one wrong.”

What are your current influences?

“I’ve never really had any influences because I never understood comedy. My influences are things like Brahms and er, and, well I don’t know what my influences are. Silly things, more crazy musicians and sports people. People with great resilience; Zola Budd, Eddi the Eagle. He’s a big influence, before I do a show I always think of Eddie. Novak Djokovic is a big influence, I’m hoping to be more successful than him getting into the Black Country. It is in the Black Country isn’t it? I wouldn’t want to be humiliated by getting it wrong.”

At which point we went on a tangent about where the West Midlands becomes the East Midlands (we reckoned probably Rugby) and the north becomes the Midlands (Chesterfield) before returning to comedy, and the tributes being paid to the recently-deceased Barry Cryer.

“There’s a tradition in comedy that when someone you’ve never met dies, you have to say what friends you were. Ian Cognito died in 2019, he was a nice man but he was a bit of a maverick, talented but he self-destructed in his career. He pissed people off and didn’t have much work in the end, he was sometimes very anarchic on stage, very funny and exciting but sometimes it got really unpleasant. Then after he died there were all these comedians on TV saying what a great influence he was and how they thought of him every time they went on stage. Twaddle. I always refuse to comment on death, it’s such a cliche that someone dies and everyone piles in.”

It’s a lot more fashionable for new guys to say now that they learned from the old stagers, as opposed to when alternative comedy was first starting and nobody would admit to ever laughing before then.

“I’m not like that. When I started doing stand up comedy I’d never seen a show so I didn’t know how it worked. I thought you were supposed to make it all up. I suppose there is an artificial rule that you’re not supposed to criticise, which is why I find it exciting when someone like Stewart Lee will say what he thinks rather than everyone being so polite to each other.”

It must be difficult to be a comedian at the moment because you can’t possibly be as funny, or as surreal, as the government.

“There is that element that when thing become ridiculous, like the current politics, it’s the death knell of satire, but it doesn’t affect me because I don’t talk much about those things but if your job is satirising, you can make jokes about it, all those things about works events and being ambushed by a cake.”

How can any comedian top that?

“It’s a brilliant line, isn’t it? The cabinet are comedians themselves.”