By Hilary Porter

COMEDIAN, actor, performance poet, cartoonist, radio presenter and more...Phill Jupitus is the first to admit that it is impossible to pigeon hole just what he does.

"Variety" is probably the best word he says.

But as he heads to Southampton Mayflower to play Lord Scrumptious and Baron Bombast in Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang ( February 10-21) following his success in The Producers and Spamalot, the term comedic actor currently seems most apt.

Of course, in terms of longevity and success, Jupitus - who was born at Newport on the Isle of Wight - is best known as a team captain on BBC Two's popular music quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks from its inception in 1996 right up to its end last year.

When the Daily Echo caught up with Phill just two days into rehearsals with cast members Martin Kemp, Jason Manford and Michelle Collins, he was chatty, amusing but also somewhat reflective about his own mortality. Music icon David Bowie had died two days earlier.

In terms of the rehearsals he said it was: "very early days. It's like the first day at school with people to meet and stuff to do, like writing your time table in the back of your exercise book. It's the 5th or 6th play I've done touring or in the West End so I should have a process by now but I don't! "

Most accustomed to working alone and improvising as a stand-up, he was enjoying but admitted to having to adapt to being part of a team.

"To work on stage with people like this is such fun with this social structure. As a stand-up you are often alone and like a wild- running animal. So doing this can be like getting rid of bad domestic habits, " he laughed.

"I've been doing work on accents and dialect and I said it's about telling me what NOT to do. I tend to start bad and get better!

Because I do a lot of improvisation I'm use to instantly deciding it will be like that; the beauty of a director is he can take the madness and shape it and give it gravity and a centre."

I point out that there was a real sense of unhinged madness to his hilarious portrayal of the crazed Nazi Franz Liebkind in The Producers ( alongside Jason Manford) which I saw at the start of its tour last year in Manchester. He laughs in agreement.

"I kept waiting for them to say something but they said just do what you do. The only 'no' I got was they asked me to speak a lot clearer. So little things I did like licking Jason Manford's face or holding Jason by the testicles that was ok!"

Phill says he changed how he played the role every single night, adding new bits in, taking Jason and Cory English ( who played Max Bialystock) by surprise.

"It's good to be working with Manford again, and I met Martin (Kemp) when he did an episode of Buzzcocks, and Michelle [Collins]I met for the first time last year : she's from North London and has family living near me. "

Pushed to state his chief job Phill says:

"I can't say. I genuinely wish I could . In one sense, at 53, I'm still looking for one thing, but the main thing is 'variety'. I've done acting, TV, singing...I was even in a band a few years ago with Ade Edmondson 'The Idiot Bastard Band' just because I like playing."

As we speak it is just a couple of days since the death of David Bowie and Phill tells me:

"I've been very thoughtful the last 48 hours with David Bowie dying. He's the first from the 70's to go through natural causes and he meant the same to the elite- to the snobs as he did to ordinary people. All people liked him: civilians and arty- farty people: he crossed taste boundaries. I don't think there's an equal in comedy- except maybe Morecambe and Wise.

Bowie is the first of that lot to go. Cancer will touch one in three of us. His death wasn't through drugs, a plane crash or car crash and the outpouring from people is unreal.

"Bowie was an outsider. Bowie made it ok to wear eye-liner and Spandex and to walk in a pub in a pink tank top. In the 70's if you were gay who did you have? My daughter is a lesbian and what is great is that this is normal. Imagine in the 70's two women getting married - it would be unthinkable. "

I ask Phill about his ambitions and plans for the future but he is reflecting on his past and tells me playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray stand out as a career highlight.

"I've given up on the rock n roll dream but standing on stage in the West End in a dress singing 'I can't Stop the beat' with your mum sat watching takes some beating. I enjoyed playing the role of Edna very much because you are a man playing a woman. You must be a sympathetic, vulnerable woman with weight and drug issues whose not achieved what she wanted and is ironing for a living. She's always put herself second for her useless husband: I think she's a great character."

He is already having a lot of fun working out how to play his two roles in Chitty: "I had a few ideas about Lord Scrumptious being a northerner and that's an on-going discussion!"

He adds:"It's terrific fun and we wear great outfits - I do love dressing up! I was never cut out for conventional life because I'm a change addict and do like the ability of something to surprise you: I've been doing this life for 30 years but it's still exciting and has a newness. I admire people who can persevere with normal jobs."

Surprisingly Phill started his working life with the Manpower Services Commission - working in the Job Centre but he says it brought him some satisfaction. "At least if you help someone get a job that's important. People were interesting. Some people would come in completely broken after they had been sacked while others would be practically dancing for joy - that was interesting!"

He is sorry that never Mind the Buzzcocks ended so abruptly last year after a 20 year run and 28 episodes.

And he says no one was more surprised than him.

"Both me and Noel Fielding got a phone call saying they were not doing any more. I use to like meeting new people and loved doing it with Noel because it felt like anything could happen.

TV is in a state of change what with the internet; everything is up for grabs now. There's something quite reassuring about walking on stage and an audience being there and enjoying it! People would say to me 1.4 million viewers for Buzzcocks was great but I'd say so 68.5 million couldn't give a toss!It was a very niche minority. "

But he says what viewers saw was a poor reflection of what had actually happened once the editors had worked on it.

"It's a very fake show. You sit on set for three hours and that gets cut down to 27 minutes so it's a compromise medium and there is so much editing that I could never take credit for it. It's the editor's art. It's like having a dinner party and only showing 20 minutes of it. I stopped watching it ten years ago as a result!I watched the first series and I thought well it wasn't like that! They re-arrange events because they want to make it entertaining. You realise it's a compromise medium. TV is a funny old animal.

It's a shame we didn't get to say 'goodbye and thank you' to Buzzcocks viewers and say it was the last series. Imagine how many viewers we might have had who would have watched out of curiosity. Instead they just ripped the Band Aid off. There is trouble ahead. I don't think people realise how much they will miss the BBC once it's gone."

Asked to name his favourite career moment he says:

"My favourite job was doing the Glastonbury coverage a few years ago. I introduced Amy Winehouse and I was buzzing when Chas n Dave played my favourite song 'Aint No Pleasing You. I thought 'that'll do!'When it's great showbiz is magical but then there's the crap with it. It's a weird and wonderful life. It has ups and downs but that's life.

"I don't really have an ambition now. I just want a dignified exit strategy to ease out of showbiz without making a fool of myself.

You know I'm in massive trouble if you see me on a reality show!

I understand why people like them but I wouldn't touch one with a barge pole. All of us get offered them- I've been offered them all and every year a new bunch of kids call me up and every year I say no!"

He was horrified that Celebrity Big Brother broadcast the moments after Angie Bowie was told of her ex-husband David Bowie's death.

"That was so wrong. That someone had the idea to show that - something that was so real rather than think about that woman's life is just awful."

So what would be your price ? What sum of money would persuade you to go into one of these shows?I ask Phill.

"There ain't no price. Ultimately the question is do you want to do it. I'm aware I'm on my way out and, going back to Bowie, he did it his way. It's a ludicrous cliche but do what you want to do because ultimately at the end of the day when you are on your death bed you will wish you had.

I was at my most popular from 1996-2000 and then it's the downward slope unless you work hard at keeping your profile at that level. Instead of struggling to maintain that I just do lots of things, like I went on tour with Billy Bragg. I did drawings and wasn't paid for it- he just put me up in a hotel for free.It was great fun. Life's too much fun.

When I realised I wasn't built for regular life this life found me- and that's better than a lottery win!"

*The UK & Ireland Tour of Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang opens at Mayflower Theatre from Wednesday 10 to Sunday 21 February 2016.

Tickets are available from Mayflower Theatre Box Office tel: 02380 711811 or online at mayflower.org.uk. Ovation Restaurant bookings: 02380 711833