Rhod Gilbert's diary

I moved back to London a few months ago. For the past five years I’ve been in Cardiff but I was missing the buzz of the big city. In London I am pretty anonymous, which I like. Cardiff is so small that on a night out I tend to get a lot of people asking to have their photo taken with me. It’s quite nice for me but it’s pretty miserable for my friends. I have a mate who takes a black cloth out with him now, like an old-fashioned photographer. When anyone approaches us, he immediately chucks the cloth over his head and holds his hand out for their camera. It’s pretty funny, but even that joke wears thin. It reached a point where I had to move to London.

Moving house (and city) before a 115-date UK tour was absolutely pointless, given that I’ve been in my new rented London place for a grand total of eight nights in the past four months. I worked it out the other day; it’s cost me more in rent per night than if I’d stayed at The Ritz. I live in a block where all the mail gets put to one side in the hall. It always freaks me out when I see the names on the other doorbells. It’s like walking past dressing rooms at The Palladium. I’m too embarrassed to write mine outside my flat in case they look at it and think, ‘Must be the new night porter.’

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do a lot of charity gigs recently. It’s great to give something back (I wiped a tear from my eye as I wrote that). I was in my dressing room before the Teenage Cancer Trust gig recently when there was a knock at the door. For a laugh, I just shouted, ‘Whoever that is can f*** right off.... and bring me some red M&Ms and a good-looking sheep.’ Then I opened the door to a rather sheepish Roger Daltrey. He said, ‘I’m really sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to say thanks for being part of the show tonight.’ That was awkward.

I met Kylie on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and found myself blabbering away like a child. I have no idea why I was so nervous. I never know what to do when I meet people like that. I ended up standing behind her for a big group photo at the end of the night, and whispered in her ear, ‘When I worked at Currys in Carmarthen in the 1980s I used to watch you in Neighbours on 48 TV screens.’ She looked at me like I was a stalker.

I’m on tour by night, but by day I’m putting the finishing touches to the third series of Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience. I have tried being a primary school teacher, drag artist, policeman and zookeeper. I fell in love with teaching but I hated being a drag artist. I can’t sing, I can’t dance, and the closest I’ve ever come to impersonating a woman before is holding my girlfriend’s handbag while she makes a phone call. I went to a makeover company called Femesque to try to find a feminine character inside myself to draw on. When I arrived, they were kind enough to point out that I was the hairiest man they’d ever seen. Basically, I went in looking like Chewbacca and they shaved, waxed, plucked and polished me until I looked more like C-3PO. Then they tried to give me feminine curves as I have no discernible bottom. They gave me a bum ‘transplant’, literally strapping on some bootie. They say there’s a woman in all of us struggling to get out, but when mine did finally emerge, the struggle had clearly taken its toll. And going into a busy pub dressed as a woman was a very odd experience. Some men look fabulous dressed in women’s clothes; I looked physically repellent. I did find the whole thing quite erotic, however.

One hundred and fifteen nights on the road is as unglamorous as you’d think. We are travelling the country in a VW Caddy (a small builder’s van), which belongs to Simon, my tour manager. It stinks. The back is rammed with equipment, and there are suspicious stains all over the floor and dashboard. I’m squeezed in the front with my suitcase on my lap. I get people pointing and laughing as we rock up at gigs. I’ve even seen autograph hunters change their mind and walk away in disgust.

The DVD of Series 1 & 2 of Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience is out on Monday. He will be playing the Hammersmith Apollo from 4 to 7 July