HAL Cruttenden is in the throes of an acute mid-life crisis.

He has been through all the familiar stages – machismo, anger (understand whining), grief, denial – and is now entering the less reported but genuine ‘gangsta’ phase as evidenced by his latest show Straight Outta Cruttenden.

“Maybe it was my mid-life crisis but I thought I’d like to listen to this angry music,” he says ruefully. “It’s all really silly. I used to listen to gangster rap as a student and earlier this year I downloaded NWA’s album again. I hadn’t listened to it for 20 years.

“I always think I’m quite angry in a manly dangerous way but nobody else thinks that I am. Clearly it comes out as a whimper.

“Part of my comedy is about trying to be taken more seriously and failing.”

He may pretend to hold a candle to the virile raging comic he once hoped to be but really he made peace with his unshakeable 'camp middle class' image long ago.

In fact this battle of the Hals has become his bread and butter on stage – a perceived weakness turned into a weapon.

“I think I’m maturing,” he laughs. “As a comedian you become more yourself as you go along.

“I do things about being totally ashamed of who I am but really there is nothing I can do about it.

“A lot of comedy in the 90s was comedians pretending to be rougher than they were saying they were blokey blokes when they were public school boys.

“I think there’s something refreshing about saying yes I’m middle class, I’m camp, I’ve had it easy all my life and I’m furious about it.

"Comedy is good therapy.”

Juggling fun asides, personal anecdotes and his trademark rants, in Straight Outta Cruttenden he tackles the true evils of the modern world head on and the list goes on and on, and on.

“It’s all about me ranting about the modern world, family, marriage, all those things that annoy me about people my age, about how young people don’t enjoy their youth.

"There is definitely a lot of moaning.

“I never said it was a very high concept,” he chuckles.

Mid-life crisis aside, Hal insists his latest show is his most candid to date (the acceptance stage is just around the corner it seems).

“I just think that I’m getting more honest the longer I go. I’m doing jokes about what things I really want to talk about now.”

In the spirit of bearing all, he delves into the decades of yo-yo dieting.

He won’t spare audiences any details about his latest brush with the ungodly 5:2 diet or his newfangled weight gain theory.

“With the 5:2 diet you just eat 750 calories two days a week and you eat normally the rest of the week. It doesn’t really work.

"All my life I’ve trying to lose weight. It’s like a hobby for me.

“But the dieting has been a big failure. I have a really unhealthy relationship with food – I’d love to have a salad but it’s so boring.

“My goal is to get really fat like 30st because you can lose 5st in a month when you’re that fat. And the thrill of losing that much weight is brilliant. You’ve got to nearly kill yourself to get to that point though.”

Despite a late start – the wannabe actor turned radio traffic reports writer was 27 when he did his first gig – he is now a television fixture with appearances on Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News For You (BBC 1), Mock the Week (BBC 2), The Royal Variety Performance and a healthy following.

But he makes short shrift of any suggestion he has made it.

“If anybody could say to me me, ‘Don’t worry Hal you’ll be fine you won’t have to do cruise ships, then that would be me making it.”

Hal Cruttenden will be at the Arts Centre on December 1 at 8pm. For more details or To book go to swindontheatres.co.uk or call 01793 524481.