As a stand-up comedian Alan Davies specialises in pointing up the oddities of modern living and the weird characters who inhabit our world. Otherwise he seems pretty normal.

He dresses normally, unless you think it daring to wear a shirt over trousers. He talks normally, with the unaffected nasal non-accent of his native suburban Essex.

Davies is the original unstyled bloke with a shaggy mane of hair and loping limbs. On the terraces of Arsenal where he has held a season ticket for seven years he would be indistinguishable from the crowd were he not on the telly.

He is an inoffensive everyman for all tastes and seasons.

It is a mark of Davies' talent as a comic performer and actor that when he is on the stage or screen we can find his different worlds equally believable. We can be drawn into his surreal comedy routines that describe bodily malfunctions in aching detail, and cows feigning they have BSE to save their hides.

He can be just as convincing in his role as BBC TV detective Jonathan Creek, a shambling, rather withdrawn, asexual character with a brilliant knack for thinking laterally.

Last march Davies joined the elite group of comedians able to sustain a West End run with a two-week season at the Duchess Theatre. He would spy the crowds milling in the foyer and be in awe that they were there for him.

The feel of the run is caught in the video Urban Trauma released by PolyGram Video on November 23. The genuine delight of the crowd is evident as they watch a smooth deadpan Davies seemlessly linking hilarious and quite barmy sketches.

He is bemused, and not a little flattered by the awareness that he has become an unlikely sex symbol. In the Urban Trauma audience you can see an unusually high proportion of attractive young women.

What people see in Davies the stand-up comedian is not just a famous or cuddly face, they are recognising themselves at some deep level. "I think most comedy is that really. You are always filtering everyday experiences for people.

"People have said to me, 'Well, Jonathan Creek. You're just playing yourself.' Though it's not meant to be, it's the biggest compliment you could have. If you are appearing to be that natural then you are doing something right."

There is a darker deeper side that mostly stays hidden. "I make people laugh, that's all I do," he says.

His mother died when he was six. His father, a City accountant, brought up Alan, his younger sister and older brother, mostly on his own.

He did manage to get 12 O-levels, went off to a further education college and then to the University of Kent, and it was while there he made his first public appearance as a stand-up comic.

Five months after that he left college and was earning his living on the comedy circuit.

Within six months hesecured his first TV spot. In 1994 he won the Critics' Award at the Edinburgh Festival, and has gone on to his current success.

His stand-up career culminated in a two-week run at the Duchess Theatre in the West End in March and released as the video Urban Trauma.

Alan Davies is at the Cliffs Pavilion on Febuary 25, 8pm.

Everyman -- Alan Davies is a comedian who suits all

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