JEREMY Hardy has been performing stand-up for the last 32 years and reckons that, without a lottery win, he has a good 32 more ahead of him. Not that he minds.

He doesn’t buy into the whole cult of money or celebrity anyway.

“Sometimes young people come up to me and say: ‘My nan loves you’,” he tells the Daily Echo.

“But what’s annoying is when people ask: ‘Where do I know you from?’ “I think: ‘You don’t know me, but you’re excited because you think I might have been on the telly. It wouldn’t be as exciting if it turned out you’d stood behind me in the queue at Tesco’s last Thursday.

“And it’s obviously not exciting enough for you actually to remember me! Why do you care?’”

The comedian, whose show, Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation, has run for 10 series on Radio 4, possesses an appealingly downbeat attitude and comes to the Lighthouse in Poole tonight.

“I find humans endlessly disappointing,” he carries on.

“Audiences don’t have to laugh – they just have to turn up and pay.

“I’m not demanding money from them on Just Giving so I can take a two-week holiday to Barbados in aid of Indigestion Awareness.

“I just want them to come to the show, especially in places like Basingstoke. Let’s face it, what else are they going to do that night?”

Hitting his miserablist stride now, Hardy points out that he has no time “for ?this awful vogue for false cheeriness in comedians. I appeal to people’s chipper sense of resignation and stoical determination to keep going. I should have been around in the Second World War. I was born after my time.”

n For tickets contact Lighthouse, Poole on 01202 280000 or lighthousepoole.co.uk

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