It's Johnny! That beery, boozy geeza

Soho Square is silent apart from the heart-rending howl coming from a man slumped on one of the benches.

The couple kissing on a seat nearby have broken off their passionate embrace to stare at the drunken spectacle and passers-by are leaning over the railings to see what all the commotion is about. "You don't know what it's like to be me!" rages the short, tubby, tousle-haired man in the stained brown flares. But the thing is, we do - this is no standard-issue park wino, but failed Redcoat, third-class potter and entertainer extraordinaire Johnny Vegas, playing up for our photographer.

Straining at the seams of his lamé suit, Vegas burst on the stage two years ago in an act that had Steve Coogan championing him as the finest comic of the next generation. The creation of 28-year-old St Helens comedian Michael Pennington (who studied ceramics at Middlesex University), Vegas is by turns belligerent, bullying, morose and self-pitying as he blubs out the story of his miserable childhood, disastrous career as a Butlin's entertainer, descent into boozy loserdom and subsequent renaissance courtesy of clay.

Now he has yet another party trick up his ruffled sleeve - woodwork. His latest tour, Swingin, which is at the Talk of London until Saturday, is all about the fictional comedian's desperate attempt to move on and keep his act fresh.

Pennington himself is perfectly clear about the comic potential of joinery. "There's none at all," he admits cheer-fully. "People have said stick with the pottery, it's funnier. I know it is - that's the point." The audience at his show will help him make a table. "It's like the Amish community building a barn. Obviously, it just ends up looking crap. The comedy mileage is in how bad people are at DIY."

Pennington uses "Johnny", "I" and "he" virtually interchangeably, but he appears nothing like his messy stage persona when we meet for a largely liquid lunch (he has been up all night and sheepishly confesses to not being ready for solids). He is bright, friendly, easy-going and immaculately polite. A bit surprising, given how autobiographical he admits Vegas to be. "It's part of me," he shrugs. "What's happened now is people say, 'Which do you prefer - Michael or Johnny?' It's got to the stage where I say I'm not bothered. It's getting more blurred."

On stage, he talks up the sob story of his tough childhood, during which his father cooked his pet rabbit and gave him pig's trotters to suck on instead of a lollipop. "All the stuff with my dad happened, but he's not this terrible person," says Pennington. "I just put a bad slant on it to make it look like I've had a hard time."

In fact, no one is more pleased about his success than his parents. His mum was particularly impressed that Hobnobs sponsored his last tour. "Three boxes of biscuits turned up and she was over the moon," he laughs. "She thought, 'My son's a winner' and gave them out at bingo, saying 'courtesy of my son and Hobnobs.'"

Despite this, neither of his parents has actually seen his show. Pennington is endearingly worried about what they would make of the small amount of bad language. "Some girl brought our next-door neighbour along last week. I was horrified. I said to her on stage, 'Please don't tell my mum anything you have seen or heard here tonight.'"

Vegas may not appeal to his parents but it has done wonders for his pulling power - he met his ex-fiancée, Jenny, at a gig in Manchester. "She was an occupational therapist and I suppose I was one of her case studies," he says. "I think she might have been the woman who could have kept me sane."