Russell Howard’s Good News is BBC3’s most successful studio-based show, drawing in 2.5m and he’s just announced a tour for next year having played to more than 58,000 fans over nine nights. He also has two best-selling DVDs.

EACH episode of Good News is put together just days before transmission, so there’s no knowing what will feature in the new series as Russell Howard turns news-junkie once again putting his spin on the week’s headlines.

Were you expecting a second run?

They did mention it quite early on that they wanted more but I wasn’t allowed to say anything, which was really annoying.

You must be in danger of giving away plenty of your stand-up material?

We wrote most of it in the week before transmission. I wrote it fresh and it was topical stuff, so it wasn’t like using my stand-up stuff. It was a nice challenge. We started with a blank canvas and having to create half-an- hour with no fallback was a nice feeling.

Are you naturally quite politically aware and interested in the news?

Not really – I got into it gradually. I used to talk about my life and my family, but it was doing Mock The Week that made me more politically aware. I started taking more of an interest trawling through the papers. But that’s a weird one, because it’s not the things you would expect that make you mad. You get angry at the way things are presented rather than the way things actually are – the way some newspapers try and make people angry. Nobody’s really seething about energy saving light bulbs, but you get these shrieking headlines and then you read the story and it’s all designed to ramp-up the nation and make us angry. I find that fascinating.

Are you conscious of being first and foremost a comedy programme?

Oh, absolutely. For all the things that make you angry, if you can’t come up with jokes and you’re just grunting about the Daily Mail, it’s not exactly original. Everyone’s done that. I like a nice mix of throwing rocks at things that deserve it, along with telling you a funny story. It was like last year when we did the story about a quarter of all people needing CRB checks. There was this suggestion of paedophilia that made me really angry. But we ended the show with a story about a giant hedgehog. That’s kind of my personality. So I try and be angry about things that are important.

Is your first love still stand-up comedy?

I think you can do more with this than you can with stand-up, which is why I love it. You’re creating a body of work and it’s all go, go, go. With stand-up sometimes you can just fall back and perform the same hour or hour-and-a-half for a year. Some people are still doing the same 20 minutes they’ve been doing for ten years. There’s something exhilarating about having to create something on the spur of the moment, which is what this show forces you to do.

Are you comfortable with being one of the comedy A-list?

It’s interesting. I’m very much aware that this is a purple patch, but if it all went away I’d just take a bit of time off, write a new stand-up show and get back on the circuit. When I was 24 and gigging five nights a week, I wasn’t famous, but in my mind I’d made it. Being able to pay my rent by telling jokes was a pretty amazing thing.

Are you interested in following the path of a sitcom then a book then a film?

Not a sitcom. I wouldn’t mind writing a film and I don’t think a book’s for me. I love a good sitcom but there are not many of them. The Office and Black Books have stood out, but some of them make me feel ill. The way the jokes are written is so far from reality. It’s a real skill to get it right. That’s why Gavin and Stacey is so brilliant.

How do you write your comedy?

If I think of something funny I put it in my book or on my phone. Woody Allen does a really interesting thing when he’s not working. Whenever he thinks of something funny, or interesting, he writes it down quickly and puts it in his desk and then when he finishes a project and is looking for ideas, he opens the drawer and thinks “that’s quite interesting” and takes it from there. I did a similar sort of thing last year. I just jotted it down and put it away and then you start afresh but with all these ideas, and then a show just jumps out.

■ Tickets go on sale tomorrow for Russell Howard’s Right Here, Right Now tour to the MetroRadio Arena, Newcastle. £25. Box Office: 0844-493-6666

■ Russell Howard’s Good News, BBC3, tonight, 10.30pm