VIDEO: Watch stand-up Lucy Porter talk to Phil Hewitt/SussexWorld about her current tour

A long list of dates awaits including Brighton’s Komedia (March 2) and The Hawth, Crawley (March 10 and 11). She retains a note of caution, though: “Let's not say that we are back to normal! Fate is just waiting to be tempted if you start saying things like that. The last tour I did was called Be Prepared which was about scouting and guiding and I started that in March 2020 and then I had to put up posters saying Be Prepared is cancelled! So you just never know. So let’s not be too positive or optimistic but let's just hope for the best.

"To be honest we all look back in different ways at the lockdowns now. My husband being an actor and me being a comedian, things were tricky but we were very lucky. We kept healthy and sane but it was quite weird. People ask me will I be talking about the pandemic during this tour but I just think people want to be distracted and have optimistic and bright things.

"And the show is called Wake Up Call, after all. It's about coming to things afresh and I am definitely very grateful for the work and to be able to have that live experience again with the audiences and all the things I had before. Definitely it all gave me a little bit of a kick up the bum, and I think we all need a little bit of a kick up the bum sometimes, don't we!”

Wake-Up Call is a show about revelations, realisations and epiphanies, Lucy says. Subjects covered include bin collection schedules, the novels of Jean Rhys, cats, school fair booze tombolas, the Scottish Enlightenment, pressure washers and Huel. The show takes its inspiration from the unwanted Wake Up Calls we all receive in life.

“Like a really good episode of Casualty, this show starts with a medical emergency and then expands to talk about anxiety, grief, love, loss, shame and regret, with a bit of sauciness thrown in for the dads. It is my midlife crisis show. I have been having one all my life. But it's about dealing with the slow decline. I will also be talking about the happiness curve.

"There was survey saying that we start off happy by the age of 18 and then we dip into the unhappiest years between 45 and 54 and then we're happy again by the time we are 65.

"Certainly in the middle there is that difficult period because you have all the responsibilities and you're conscious of bits and pieces of your body falling off and trying to stand up and sit down without making a noise. So really the show is about kissing goodbye to your youth. That's a difficult thing. I am quite a hypochondriac.

"Infirmity is starting to kick in, and I talk about my GP quite a lot in the show. In fact if you want to see GP then maybe coming see my show might be the quickest way of doing so.

" It is also about taking up exercise, and we all know that in your middle age doing exercise is not enough; you've got to tell everyone about it. I do hot yoga. You get to lie down in a hot room and then you stand up and do some bending and then you get to lie down again.

" You have got that bit of activity in between two periods of lying down pretending to be on a beach which is my kind of exercise!”

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