IT’S something not many people might know about comedy writer and performer Andy Hamilton.

The fact that he has cornered the market in cartoon dentists.

“Yes that is a bit bizarre,” he admits. “The first one was for Bob and Margaret. Someone heard me on the radio and called me up saying ‘we think you’ve got the perfect voice for this character’, which at the time I took as a compliment, until I read the first line of the script which said ‘Bob is a menapausal dentist’ and I thought ‘great, I obviously sound like a menopausal dentist’.”

His second voice over role as a dentist was Dr Elephant who features in the popular Peppa Pig cartoons for pre-schoolers.

“That has created an odd moment or too while I’ve been doing my shopping,” Andy adds. “You’ve got this parent trying to explain to their child that the man in front of them is Dr Elephant and they’re looking back at them as though they’ve gone completely mad.

“You just know they’re thinking ‘er mum/dad, the clue’s in the name, Dr Elephant, and this man is clearly not an elephant’.”

Fortunately they’ll be no such confusion when Andy arrives in Colchester later this month as part of his latest UK tour.

In his new show Andy is looking at change. Why it’s an inescapable part of the human condition, how some changes are good, some are bad. Why there are no sparrows anymore.

“I’ve always hestitated writing about looking back,” he tells me, “but I was getting to that age. You know it’s that time when your doctor starts every sentence with ‘well at your age...’ and so I thought may be I am old enough to chart some of the things that have changed in my life and of course some of the things that haven’t.”

In some respects just getting out of the office is a bit of a change for Andy himself.

Perhaps best known as co-creator and writer of shows such as Outnumbered for BBC1 and Ballot Monkeys and Drop The Dead Donkey for Channel 4, Andy seldom goes out on tour, his last foray into the theatres and arts centres of the country being back in 2012.

“I suppose if I had to choose,” he says. “it would have to be the writing but I’ve always enjoyed going out on the road. For a start it helps with the writing. You get a bigger sense of what is going on in the country.

“As we’re going along I expect the show itself will change. That’s the exciting part of performing, you never really know what’s going to happen.”

It was performing which got Andy started in the comedy business in the first place.

Born in Fulham it was while at Cambridge that Andy first took to the stage.

“Rather than the Footlights,” he says, “I was a member of the Cambridge University Light Entertainment Society. Even before that I’d always loved watching comedy and me and my mates at school would always be mucking about trying to make each other laugh.

“I remember writing my first sketch, which was a Match of the Day parody about the crimes of the day, and really enjoying the process but it wasn’t until I went up to Edinburgh and met producer Geoffrey Perkins, who asked me whether I had thought about writing as a job.”

Andy started his career writing for BBC Radio, which ‘taught you how to keep it short and funny’, from where he quickly moved into television.

Since then he has had a number of noteable successes perhaps the most famous of which was the BBC 1 smash hit Outnumbered.

“It was scripted,” he reveals, “but we never showed the scripts to the kids. We would give them some idea of what we wanted to happen in each scene and you would often get that back pretty acurately but in the way kids normally express these things.

“Experience tells you a lot of it is down to luck in why some shows work and others don’t so you don’t really think about it too much and just get on with making it.

“There are always things on the go at any one time but for the moment I’m enjoying this tour. Who knows what will come up next. There are lots of things I would still like to do. For example a musical, I’ve always wanted to do one of those.”

Now that’s something I would really like to see!

• Andy Hamilton: Change Management Mercury Theatre, Balkerne Gate, Colchester.

October 29. 8pm.

£25. 01206 573948.

www.mercurytheatre.co.uk