Peter Kay may be a star turn these days, but no-one has told his answering machine.

"If it's about shore business," callers to his Bolton home are instructed in a voice as broad as a through terrace, "ring me agent. Ta."

If it isn't the sort of greeting befitting an award-winning comedian with his own, upcoming TV series, it's not entirely surprising. Kay's feet have barely touched the ground these last few years, and between performing in the Royal Variety Show, being feted by TV executives and appearing in his first movie, updating his answerphone message seems to have slipped his attention.

"It's all been very strange," he reflects. "Actually, it's been too strange."

It's only two years since Kay came to national attention by winning So You Think You're Funny, a televised competition for comedians. A year or so before that, he was working part-time in Netto.

"I'd done a media course in Salford," he says, "and as part of the second year I chose stand-up comedy as an option. Each week you'd write two or three minutes of material and you'd perform it in front of the class. Then you'd go to a club and do it on stage and the lecturers would come and mark you."

Kay's first-ever out-of-college gig was a heat of the North West Comedian of the Year contest in Manchester. He won.

His second gig was the final of the same competition. He won that, too.

"So that thrust me into doing the clubs," he says. "Then I won the other competition and that got me picked up for TV work. It's been amazing."

Yet despite many demands on his time from the big TV companies, Kay has shunned the London media circus in favour of the north country he loves.

"I don't really like London and I don't like having to go down. I'd probably give it all up rather than move down there - that's how strongly I feel about it.

"People say, 'Give it time', but I just can't. There's a lot more on offer up here."

It's this northern milieu - in particular the Bolton of his childhood - that has inspired his new series, That Peter Kay Thing, which Channel Four will screen in January.

"It's not a sitcom," he says. "It's six individual short films. The only link is that they're set in Bolton.

"I always used to work part-time - in Netto and as a cinema usher, barman, in video shops and factories - and a lot of the jobs are featured in the episodes.

"I'm interested in the sort of jobs that won't make it to the next millennium - ice cream men, paper boys - and following people as they try to hang on to the past.

"Look at ice cream men. No-one wants to stand up queuing for a cornet in the rain when you can go down the shop and get a Ben and Jerry's. And ice cream men don't make any money so they resort to anything just to get by."

Channel Four used a professional cast of 130, augmented by members of the public, to make the films, which their star describes as "bittersweet but not sad".

"The fact that real people are in them too gives them an edge," he says. "Sometimes you don't know what's real and what's not."

Kay is again skirting close to reality in his first film, Never Better - a wickedly funny take on northern council politics by Simon Beaufoy, author of The Full Monty.

The film, set in Keighley and partly shot in Bradford, concerns a local councillor's attempt "to put t'city on t'map" by hosting a national hairdressers' convention in the Town Hall.

Kay, who plays Cyril the entertainments manager, says: "I only took the part because I thought I'd be working in Keighley. Then I learned they were filming my bits in Shoreditch in London, so I had to go down there for a week."

The film will be released next year. In the meantime, Kay is traversing the north, and will arrive at the City Varieties in Leeds tomorrow week, with his particular brand of laid-back stand-up. It's his first tour .

"I were apprehensive about doing one, because I didn't think anyone would come," he says. "I were a bit shocked, really, when I found it were selling well.

"I'm only doing places that are in driving distance from Bolton. I prefer it up here, to be honest with you. I prefer doing gigs around people I know and places I know."

The tour was to have coincided with the screening of his series, but Channel Four delayed it at the last minute, to get it a better slot.

"Doesn't really matter to me," says Kay, slipping back into Lancastrian and starting to sound like Fred Elliott on tranquillisers. "I'm just thrilled to bits I've got me own shore. And I'm thrilled to be doing a too-er."

He surveys the date sheet his manager has given him. "D'you knorr Leeds?" he asks. "Any idea where t'theatre is?"

David Behrens

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.