Lord knows how many shows Hardest Working Man in Comedy (TM) Robin Ince has clocked up over the years. Here, ahead of his appearance at the marvellous My First Gig comedy club on Feb 10, he regales the story of gig #1 back in 1990 – including his Rik Mayall obsession, tech-ing for Eddie Izzard and boozing with Jo Brand.

After the early career dreams of a boy – farmer, zookeeper, Action Man beard applicator – I realised what I really wanted to do when I was ten years old. I wanted to be a writer and/or a performer. I wasn’t quite sure what sort of writer or performer I wanted to be, but by thirteen I knew.

The rise of alternative comedy, in particular The Comic Strip Presents and The Young Ones, was as potent for me as the Clash had been to teenagers a few years before me. Channel 4 arrived when I was thirteen and it seemed as much the TV station for me then as it is not the TV station for me now. The first week offered a Boris Karloff season, The Avengers and The Prisoner, shows I had pieced together in my mind from the pictorial clues offered by Starburst magazine, and most importantly, Five Go Mad in Dorset.

Though I may have been disappointed in the lack of Rik Mayall – a hero of mine since he created Kevin Turvey for Kick Up the Eighties – the disappointment was short-lived once the cycling and snotty racism began. Unlike punk, which had parents frothing over its raucous caterwauls of riot and rebellion, my mother loved Five Go Mad in Dorset. Having been brought up on Enid Blyton, she laughed out loud through the dialogue of the snotty racists and constant hunger for ham and turkey sandwiches with lashings of ginger beer.

By the time I was 15, I would go to London and sit on the skeletal chairs of the old Comedy Store. There I saw Joan Collins Fan Club, Nick Revell, Mark Thomas, Jeremy Hardy, Kit Hollerbach and Tony Allen. Then it was the Chuckle Club, hosted by Eugene Cheese then as now, and visits to numerous other clubs above, below and in pubs. By the time I was sixteen there was only one choice, I had to be a stand-up comedian.

Izzard, Ian Cognito, Earl Okin

When I was first asked to write this I believed my first gig was at Greyfriars Kirkhouse in Edinburgh in 1990. I was helping out on the barely technical side of a venue that held Eddie Izzard, Owen O'Neill, Johnny Immaterial, Ian Cognito, Earl Okin and some theatre. But that was theatre, so I didn’t pay much attention to that.

Izzard was brilliant. By dint of teching for him (ie switching off a light switch by the door and pressing start on a video camera), I saw him every night at 6pm. He talked of being in the catering corps in Vietnam, the spawning of salmon, and people who had vomit on their head that they had parted and “it looked quite nice”. Even now, if I tried very hard I could probably start to piece together every line, as back then I was still young enough to have an absorbent brain.

By night, before falling asleep in a damp squat which had become prestige accommodation for the Fringe, we would all stay up late and I would have the excitement of getting drunk in Jo Brand’s flat with people who shone with youthful exuberance, and the sort of fame that came with an appearance on Channel 4 at 2am.

My college friend KP found me the job at Greyfriars and, thanks to her, I became drink friendly with Barry Murphy, Kevin Gildea and Ardal O'Hanlon – known then as Mr Trellis. One night, knowing I had dreams of being a stand-up, they told me to come and do a bit at their midnight show. I’d been keeping notebooks of stand-up ideas since I was 15 (all safely burnt in an allotment incinerator now), so looked through my latest one. I think it was some things about wearing glasses, men in pubs, and Michael Caine (punchline – “oh look – a shark”).

I went on in my big jumper and someone else’s glasses. I was not wearing someone else’s glasses for theatrical effect – someone had accidentally thrown my contact lenses away, and I had nothing else to stop me bumping into things apart from a friend’s spare glasses with nearly the same prescription as mine. They remained my only way of seeing things in focus, but with warped edges, for six months. This remained even after one of the lenses dropped out, like a monocle with a walking frame.

I went on in front of the thirty people gathered for Mr Trellis, including KP, who to this day has been very generous with her laughter during my gigs, and I mumbled amiably for ten minutes. I then put my jumper over my head as I realised what I was doing, and walked off.

So that’s what happened at what I thought was my first gig, but it wasn’t. My first was three years before at North London Polytechnic where a nervy ents manager called Jon Ronson hosted a gig. My friend Alex, who bought me Making Plans For Nigel for my 10th birthday and introduced me to the music of Joy Division some months later, encouraged me to go on. I don’t really remember it, but I am quite sure it was rubbish.