I love the people round here, says Jasper Carrott

Jasper Carrott's pockets looked like the Royal Mint. So he spoke to a friend. And his friend sent him to Duke.

"The guy's name was Duke," he says. "I vividly remember it. I had got all this cash and wondered if there was a way of, you know, erm 'protecting' it from the tax man. Duke was the accountant for a few of my friends, they told me he'd sort me out."

So Jasper arranged a meeting. His star had risen, he'd become one of the nation's biggest TV stars and he was playing to packed houses up and down the country.

"I said to Duke, 'Look, I've earned rather a lot of money. Is there a way of, erm, keeping it?'" He taps his nose and winks, as he tells the story.

"And Duke looked at me and said two things. He said: 'One, if you live in this country you pay tax. And two, if you don't want to pay tax you can get lost.

"And that was that. That advice cost me £25 and it was the best advice I've had. I've never been one of these Jimmy Carr types. If I earn it, I pay it."

Though Jasper Carrot was born Robert Norman Davis, his middle name ought to have been 'shrewd'. He's exhibited an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time throughout his career. As a kid, when he was educated at Acocks Green Primary School and Moseley School in Birmingham, he hung out with Bev Bevan, the rock star who helped found The Move, ELO and drummed with Black Sabbath, among other things.

Carrott founded his own folk club in 1969, The Boggery, so that he could play his own songs. He soon realised, however, that his real talent was in booking the acts and entertaining the crowd. "The banter between the acts was better than my own act," he says. And so he became a stand-up.

He was one of the first alternative comics in the UK, along with Billy Connolly. Billy, however, was too broad for TV, so Carrott was the first to get on the box. "My life changed," he says. "I'd talk about normal stuff that people could relate to….." Like zits, the nutter on the bus, moles and whether or not anybody had seen his camel.

Carrott became so successful that he was given a one-hour live-to-air show on ITV. "I'd got enough material, but doing an hour straight to millions and millions of homes was scary. I had a guy with a cue card on the front row, holding up numbers. Eight minutes, seven minutes, six minutes and so on.

"At one point, I over-ran. I used to do a sketch about a BRMB presenter called Tony Butler, who used to say 'on yer bike'. I hadn't been looking at the cue cards and I'd got about five minutes to do on Tony. Suddenly, I looked up. Two minutes to go. I was editing and editing and editing to cram it all in, before being cut off."

He got involved in a production company, earning a cool £10 million when he sold his shares in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. "Originally, it was called Cash Mountain. It took us three years to sell it. Nobody wanted to know.

"We went to the guy at ITV and other members of the team pitched it to him. They actually did the show in his office. They asked him a question, which he got right, and gave him £100. He got to £1,600 and he couldn't answer. They said he could stick or twist, so he stuck and kept the money.

"Three months later, we heard he'd taken it on. He cleared the schedule for two weeks and the rest, as they say….." is money in the bank.

Carrott was offered a similar gig, hosting ITV's Golden Balls, during the late 2000s. "I didn't want to do it. I'd turned down Millionaire and was going to turn that down." He affects the conversation: "I can't do that, I'm a rac-on-teur…… But then I looked at what they were going to pay me. I'd have been a fool to turn it down."

He has few regrets. "I ought to have done another series of Carrott's Lib. I turned it down. I don't know why, maybe arrogance?" It also took him a while to learn to say no to all the free booze he was offered.

But his wife, Hazel, kept him grounded. The former local journalist has been the bedrock of his career. Though he now lives in leafy Lapworth, he's not forgotten his roots. "I could have gone to LA, but I went 12 miles down the road. The people here don't let you get carried away with yourself."

His daughter, Lucy Davis, found fame as Dawn Tinsley in The Office, though he shielded his children from the media. "We're a normal family. That's the most important thing."

He's back on the road soon and will play gigs called Stand Up and Rock with his old mucker, Bev Bevan. Comedy and music will feature at Wolverhampton, Solihull, Dudley, Birmingham, Redditch, Shrewsbury and Lichfield from September to November.

"It's for fun," he says. "We did a few shows last year and couldn't believe how much fun they were. I started my career round here and I love the people." And they love him, too.