Cwmavon's Owen Niblock talks about his career in comedy

I started watching a lot of it and I used to read a lot of Douglas Adams and other writers of that ilk.

Essentially, I wanted to be Douglas Adams I guess – and I read an interview with him where he said the best way to get into writing comedy is to perform it.

The theory is I guess that you can do that instantly and get recognised for that and it can open a fair few doors.

I went to the comedy nights at Warwick University and they have a fantastic comedy society which organised all these gigs.

I would sit there thinking ‘this looks easy’ and ‘I could do this’.

Until I saw Noel Fielding do stand-up and it just blew me away.

It was like nothing I had ever seen before and that was the moment that I decided I had to give it a go.

At one stage I wanted to be a journalist as I thought I would not make it as a comedian.

So I thought the next best thing would be a comedy critic and then I could see shows for free.

I entered a Times competition back in the day to be a Perrier judge and I was shortlisted to the final three.

I went down to London for the meeting and long story short, I didn’t get it as I had not seen enough ‘bad’ comedy.

That year I was going up to Edinburgh so I asked that if I enter next year after seeing some ‘bad’ comedy, or some random stuff, would I be in with a chance?

My lasting memory of that is sitting in a roasting hot room with five other people watching someone talk for an hour and not get any laughs.

It became apparent to me that it was not as scary at the lower end of the comedy circuit.

That was an important point was I thought I really could do it.

That was in 2003 and my first gig was later that year.

It takes a long time to get good at comedy – I gigged a lot when I was starting out but now I have other commitments.

From when I started 15 years ago, I have changed a lot of a person. In the last six years for example, I’ve been experimenting with what I do and trying to decide who I am on stage.

Much of my material is about my family and my children.

The jokes tend to reference things that are going on my life – factual or slightly embellished versions of facts for comedic effect.

The idea behind telling the jokes from the clipboard is that I have a terrible memory.

Having children and not sleeping does little to remedy that.

I was trying to think of a way of presenting that on stage without it looking awkward and the clipboard came to pass.

It is a lead-in for a tech-heavy idea I’ve had where I need to do jokes as they are presented to me.

It is a pre-cursor to something exciting which I am not at yet at liberty to divulge.

My family is a key part of my act and it is virtually impossible to get them separate.

My eldest daughter saw me for the first time a few years ago at a festival and I do a few of her songs to start the show.

She saw me on stage doing one of her songs for the first time – that was lovely, and she gives me all of her jokes.

She’s not yet grasped the idea of royalties, but it is only a matter of time.

On occasion, she will say something incredibly funny and I’ll ask her if I can say it on stage and she’ll say no.

I’ve tried to buy it off her and she still says no.

There are things that she had said which I would love to say on stage, but she won’t let me.

It is very hard to separate your influences from who you love in a comic sense.

Early influences were, as previously mentioned, Noel Fielding, Dave Gorman and Bill Bailey – I used to do musical comedy.

I was a bit of a mash-up of those three – I wasn’t myself.

As I progressed as a comedian, I do a lot more joke-based material now.

I’d say a big influence now is someone like Mitch Hedberg.

I am prone to try things outside of my comedy comfort zone more than I should.

Promoters have a long memory if you have a bad gig or it didn’t go well.

I like to experiment and try out new things. At Green Man last summer for example the clipboard was relatively new and I did some material that I had not done before.

It was a big gig for me.

The gig which sticks out most in memory was a show at the Bloomsberry Theatre in London with Robin Ince.

It was a kind-of ‘geek’ show and I used to do a lot of material with a computer – an artificial intelligence joke machine.

That was one of the biggest shows.

Green Man is always relatively high on my priorities list.

It is close for a start and that always helps.

We have camped a few times at the festival, although it does rain unsurprisingly for Wales

Having performed in theatres and festival, I would not say that I consciously alter my material.

If it is a show like Nozstock, which I know quite well – it will be at 1am or 2am and the crowd likes more of an interactive experience and can get a bit lairy – I’ll shift what I am doing naturally when I am on stage.

With theatre gigs, the audience is naturally more passive. They tend not to get as excited.

This year, I am still touring my current show for a little while longer before putting it to bed.

I am writing next year’s show at the moment with a view to doing that at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival in May.

I was going to do this year’s show but I ended up doing that in 2017.

That will be a show looking into whether or not my eldest is on the autism spectrum.

It will look into whether I am as well, whether my wife is and whether it matters and exploring those ideas.

Plus lots of jokes about kids.

I started the tour in Abertillery last month and there are a number of dates in Wales up until May.

The majority of the shows are in the south of Wales as they are within travelling distance from the house, or the Midlands as my family can go there quite easily.

Next year I may widen the places I go to but it’s my first tour.

Although I hail from Warwickshire, my wife is Welsh and proud and that it what ultimately brought me to Wales all those years ago.

I do feel like an adopted Welshman, and having a Welsh first name definitely helps.

My dad was born in Llandudno and my grandmother in Rhyl – so I am an adopted Welshman although being Midlands born and bred.

If anything, I married into Wales.

My advice for anyone thinking about comedy is just to get on stage as frequently as you can.

There’s a few popular Facebook forums – South West Comedy and Cardiff Comedy. Just ask for gigs and there’s loads around.

Someone will give you your first five minutes and then you are away.”