Jim Davidson speaks ahead of Shrewsbury and Lichfield shows

Jim "Jimbo" Davidson is an avowed fan of the Midlands. Shrewsbury, Telford, Wolves, Cannock... name the place and he'll give you the memory.

The funniest is Telford.

"Oh God," he says, remembering the time he was banned after a row with a local hotel. His memory is as clear as day. He had bad service, so he says, and threw the world's biggest hissy fit.

Oh, and he didn't like the roundabouts either. But then, who does?

Telford, however, holds a permanent place in his affections. Having sworn in 2007 never to visit the town again after HotelGate, he returned in 2013. It was the day after he'd been arrested as part of Operation Yewtree on charges that were later dropped. And he remains grateful for the warmth that local fans showed him.

"We all like to be liked. But I love it in this part of the world. I like them and they like me. Telford, Cannock, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, I just adore it. You can give me Wolverhampton any day of the week. I love it. I used to play at the Civic but now I'm at The Grand. The days of filling the Civic have gone. But I love it."

Jim's heading back to Shropshire and Staffordshire early in the new year to play Shrewsbury's Theatre Severn on January 25 and Lichfield's Garrick Theatre on February 8 and 9.

His new show is called 40 Years On and celebrates four decades of showbusiness.

"It starts with growing up in south east London and the first half ends with winning New Faces in 1976. The second follows on and ends with me winning Celebrity Big Brother 38 years after I won New Faces. I'm taking the mickey out of myself.

"I'm very much looking forward to sharing 40 Years On with audiences in theatres across the country. The piece is an honest and raw reflection of my life over the last 40 years both in the spotlight and personally.

"Much of my life has been lived out with the nation watching, so what better way to set the record straight and hear the stories but from my perspective and in my own words. It's all about how life is different as you get older."

And how is life different, when you're Jim 'Jimbo' Davidson?

"You take less risks as you get older. You try to find the easiest path. You don't come off stage and think where's the nightclub? That's what I did in the 1970s. And I talk about that. I talk about the extravagance of chartering my own aeroplanes to fly from Blackpool to London when I was 23. But when you've been married and had five wives and loads of houses and drinks bills you can't to do that any more.

"These days, I come out of the theatre and go and get a curry and a pint of Cobra beer. I don't stay overnight. Hotels are rotten in this country. There's the Hyatt in Birmingham but there aren't many others. Where do you stay if you've done a night in Telford? You don't do you, not really." And he laughs at his own joke.

The 40 Years On show has received good reviews. It's part of an ongoing renaissance that has continued in recent years. For though Davidson earned himself the world's worst reputation for jokes about women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals and the disabled – not forgetting yoghurt-knitting left-wing journalists – in recent years he's found some sort of redemption.

In 2011, he toured with a new play, Stand Up….And Be Counted, about the failing career of a washed-up racist comic. And then in 2014, a year after his Operation Yewtree-inspired annus mirabilis, he won Celebrity Big Brother.

All of those things – and more – will feature in his show.

He'll also talk about money and the amount he has lost to ex-wives, the taxman and through cancelled shows.

"It starts with me sitting in the dressing room and I tell the audience what can go wrong and what it costs and what I get paid. I tell them. It's all silly. I work out the vat, the credit card charges, the theatre's share, commission, PRS, lighting and sound, then the truck and the advertising. The audience always wonder what I'm being paid so I just tell them.

"It's funny, I make it funny. There's a couple of reflective bits, but not much.

"I've never considered myself to be controversial and neither do the people that like me. It's controversial to some of the people in the press and more often people who read the press but don't see me. I get attacked: Tory, fattist, wife-beating, homophobic. And you never change those people's views. I'm working class and I'm a Tory. That's what it is.

"Honesty is great. It gets things off your chest. I don't mind telling anyone about anything at all. I have never been afraid."

And so it goes.

He loves theatres in the Midlands – not because they're particularly comfortable or glamorous, though one or two certainly are – because the staff make a go of things. They put in a shift to sell his shows.

"The thing about theatres isn't whether they are nice or not. It all comes down to whether the people who work there can be bothered to sell the tickets. A lot of theatres are run by councils or private trusts that are funded by councils. And in some of those cases – not all – the people are making a salary whether they sell a ticket or not. In the little independent theatres, it's different. They book the right shows and put the posters up. There have been so many times when I've turned up at gigs and there's not a poster outside. I was in Birmingham recently, standing outside the theatre, and a woman came and said: 'What are you doing here?' Whatever happened to having your name up in lights?"

He doesn't have too many regrets. For all of the controversies that he's met during one of showbusiness's more colourful lives, he'd do most of it all again.

"I regret putting a roofrack on my Rolls Royce," he says. "They asked me to remove it."

He fixed it to his car because he couldn't get his fishing rods in the boot. "Yeah, I used to go fishing in my Roller. John Entwistle, from The Who, gave me the idea for the roof rack. He had a Rolls Royce made for him, it was designed as an estate car so he could take his dogs. It was fun."

He had plenty of rock'n'roll mates, back in the day.

"They were all rock stars. It was Gary Numan and Denny Laine, from Moody Blues. We all drove Ferraris or Rollers and had horses. We'd meet up for parties.

"One of your guys, Roy Wood, from Birmingham, was funny. He caused me the most terrible accident on stage in Birmingham. We used to go for a curry in Brum and the place we ate at would put wine in the tea pot because they didn't have a licence. We'd have a couple of cups of tea and be two sheets to the wind. Anyway, the next day, after I'd been on the curry and wine, I had a terrible accident while dressed as a Bay City Roller. I thought I was passing wind – but I wasn't." The costume was never seen again and Woody thought it was the funniest thing ever.

"Roy was never keen on drugs and someone said to him at a party round at mine once: 'Do you want something for your nose?' Roy didn't get it. He said: 'What, a hankie?'

"Mind you, he was a great drinker. I remember he had a bit of a throat so he was on the port and brandy. He was with Rick Wakeman, who was drinking Southern Comfort and port. The two got together and mixed it all up, there was gallons of it. But they still played. They were both geniuses.

"I love the Midlands. Some of my best wives have come from there. Roy Wood is a great mate of mine too. He should have been dead years ago. He's got a liver the size of Walsall, bless him."

However he won't be hitting the bars or clubs of Shrewsbury and Lichfield after his forthcoming shows. "I'll be looking for a curry house and then I'll get off home."

Tickets are available from Theatre Severn and the Garrick Theatre.