FORGET what the history books say, according to Sean Kelly he was the first person to dream up the idea of putting bidding for abandoned storage units on TV and his 2011 format, Storage Hunters, was about to air when a rival network put out Storage Wars 21 days earlier.

“In 2009, long before Storage Wars, I shot the original footage of my auction and took it to LA and tried to turn it into a TV show. I ended up putting the four-minute footage on a website and targeted Santa Monica where all the production companies were and three weeks later I got a call. We ended up selling the idea to TruTV and now the show is in 44 countries,” Kelly says.

The comedy club boss and newspaper manager in San Diego was looking for a way of getting on TV and, by chance, was asked to do a charity storage unit auction.

“I went home and told my wife, Laura, that I’d found my TV show because these auctions were crazy. The people who came to bid were nuts and were bidding blind. It had all the elements of what you want. I knew I could be in the centre of it as the auctioneer. We pitched it to A&E and the network passed on it and three weeks before we aired, Storage Wars came out on A&E,” Kelly says.

Kelly is busy with his UK debut stand-up tour, which brings him to York and Whitley Bay next month, and follows filming of a new series of Storage Hunters UK for the Dave Channel.

“A lot of people are going to come out and see me because they are fans of the TV show and I want them to know me better. I share all kinds of things with them like I’ve managed to embarrass myself in all 52 countries I’ve finished. I talk about behind the scenes and living in the UK since January,” he says.

Fans will be able to bring along items to his show which Kelly will auction for armed forces charities and he also likes to stay behind at shows to meet fans.

Kelly is the unmistakeable “bid calling” voice of Storage Hunters and learned his craft from one of the best US cattle auctioneers.

“I’ve been doing stand-up comedy for about 16 years and I’ve been an auctioneer for ten years. So, for me the reason I was good at auctions was because I already had the stage presence and timing. It was like the perfect storm for me. My style is that I put people under a lot of pressure during the bidding and then I relieve that pressure with some laughter. You can’t keep people in a pressure cooker forever because they end up just wanting to beat each other up,” he says.

He jokes that the best description of his TV show is The Antiques Roadshow meets WWF because the format tries to avoid bidders patting each other on the back and acting like buddies.

“I want people to not like each other, but sometimes it goes too far and I can see it coming. I never expected any fights in the UK and I was surprised when we had one in series two. That ended up shutting all the cameras down,” Kelly says.

On the cancellation of his TV contract in the US, he says: “Every time we filmed a block of episodes the network said it was a series and that turned out to be 79 episodes. Then TruTV got a new president and the first thing he did was axe our show. We were the number one rated show, so we were puzzled, but that’s how showbiz is.”

The accusation against all the “bidding war” programmes is that lockers have valuable items hidden inside to ensure the filming is more interesting.

Kelly says: “I’ve seen this criticism of all the shows, that it’s all set up and all fake. The shows are all produced and if we show five storage units normally it would all be over in ten minutes. When we’re filming, it takes 14 hours because of all the camera angles. What ends up happening is that it looks like people are acting because of all the re-shooting. I have told the production people that I do not want to know what is in the units and I don’t want the bidders to know what is in the units. The one ingredient that is key to all of this is a genuine first reaction. As long as no one is cutting the locks the day before and telling everyone what’s inside, then I’m happy with that. We try to do it as documentary style and I think that’s why Storage Wars beat us on air because our first group of bidders didn’t want to stick around for hours. We discovered that we had to pre-screen our bidders because we soon realised that we might be filming criminals or someone who shouldn’t be seen there.”

The most expensive items “found” in Storage Hunters are a helicopter, worth about £70,000, and a small aeroplane.

“I wasn’t happy when they found the plane because the producers had the great idea that the winners could go up in the air with me. I’m scared of small planes and they put me inside and this pilot said, ‘Let’s go up and see if it flies’.”

n Tour dates: Friday, September 25, York Duchess. Box Office: 08444-771000

Saturday, September 26, Whitley Bay Playhouse. Box Office: 08442-481588

@seankellycomedy