MICKY Flanagan doesn’t have a warm-up act because he doesn’t want to support new talent, he tells the Barbican audience.

You wouldn’t blame him for making the most of his success. Now approaching 50, the Cockney comedian famed for his sauntering stage presence has only recently become a household name. He is the star of the moment, comedy’s latest success story, made all the more famous by appearances on Mock The Week and Have I Got News For You.

On his sold-out Back In The Game tour – which has shifted more than 300,000 tickets – Flanagan focuses on the battle between the life he has left behind of pubbing and clubbing and his newfound family-man lifestyle of BBC Radio Four, organic food, over-protective parenting and encroaching middle-aged grumpiness.

Flanagan’s more adolescent predilections continually rally against his new life – one of the biggest laughs comes when he tells of his ongoing urge to shoplift sandwiches – and one foot is firmly in the past as he tells of how packs of stray dogs roamed the 1970s East End council estate of his childhood when people did get a dog just for Christmas, and of nonsensical conversations with his expletive-prone war evacuee father and his six-year-old son.

Age is a recurring theme as he talks of the ailments his hard-drinking group of friends have accrued, his paranoia about eating processed meat and the trauma of prostate examinations.

While some of Flanagan’s material could be accused of being on the mundane side – such as tales of making a sausage sandwich and racing to catch a bus – his charm and cheeky delivery guaranteed laughter from the audience.

Micky Flanagan is in the mainstream now, both in the personal life he speaks about and professionally, but far from being annoying, his common touch and sharp humour are a winning combination.