Norman Lovett, the deadpan comedian who appeared in Red Dwarf as Holly the computer, tells JULIAN COLE about coming to terms with life, being accidentally funny and why he now hates cars.

NORMAN Lovett is having a bit of trouble with his mobile. His voice is distant because he is on speakerphone. “I used to get this pain in my hands,” he says. “And I find this helps, but the trouble is I don’t really know how to use it.”

Norman is heading to York on his Old And New Tour. The title doesn’t mean much. “Well, I’m old and the material is new,” he says.

Norman has been a comedian for 35 years, starting at the age of 32. Down the years, comedy has been good and bad for him in different ways. Stand-up has kept him in work and he has strayed into television, most notably as Holly the computer in the first two series of Red Dwarf.

The bad came after six or seven years, when he had a heart attack at the age of 39. “They called it a mild heart attack but it was still a big shock.”

Looking back, he blames the lifestyle. “Up until 32 I lived a healthy life – I played football and looked after myself. Then with comedy I picked up all these unhealthy habits, smoking and drinking.”

He is now happy and healthy at 67 – more content, he says, than ever before. Although he complains on stage, that being his thing, he likes to be nice in life. “Help someone with their pram, talk to the lady at the checkout and treat them as a person, rather than ignoring them…” – such are the daily niceties that make us feel better, he says.

His stand-up act comprises talking about stuff, with the occasional slide thrown in – from a projector in the past, but now on his iPad. Is he a fan of technology?

“Yeah, it’s all right. It’s here so you might as well use it.”

He also dips into social media, mostly to promote his stand-up. He put a picture on Twitter after he was a runner up in the Stand Up For Labour act of the year. He is not particularly political: “I have only voted twice in my life, but that was for Labour.” The picture showed Norman with his two daughters, both lovely young women. “Someone responded by saying, ‘How did someone with a face like that have such attractive daughters?’”

Norman wasn’t impressed, but he is able to shrug these things off, although he did enter into a social media spat with the comedian Rufus Hound, after he went online to accuse Hound of pinching one of his jokes. The joke went like this: “No man is an island, except when he’s in the bath.”

“We met eventually,” says Norman. “And Rufus said that his grandmother used to say that. And I said, ‘Well, perhaps she saw my act, because it was in the Eighties,’ He said he was three at the time.”

The complaining comes from his Italian mother, Norman says. “She lived until she was 84 – you know what they say about the hypochondriacs living the longest. And she used to complain all the time.”

In person and on stage, Norman is a cheerful complainer and there is something uplifting about his moans. In our chat, he touches on the way the English don’t respect older people properly; there being too many comedy panel shows; and his antipathy towards Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson.

He dislikes cars so much he has given up driving. “I’m not going to drive again until they introduce the self-drive car. I think that people can’t even be trusted to get themselves around, never mind drive a car.”

The older he gets, the happier he is, and the more prone to talk. He says he is getting like the veteran comedian Barry Cryer, who can talk for hours.

His stage act is a version of this talkative, gentle, moaning self. At a recent gig he overheard a member of the audience commenting on his stand-up. “This woman said, ‘He’s accidentally funny’. And I thought, ‘Hang on.’ Then I thought, ‘No, that’s all right’.”

He writes all his own material, never having used a scriptwriter, but does respect a good script, saying that’s why the first two series of Red Dwarf have endured.

“That’s the test of anything, comedy or a book or whatever, that if people still think it’s good 25 years later, then it must be.”

He still attends Red Dwarf conventions, last year going to Melbourne, Australia, where the reception was rapturous. “It was as if it had just been on last week, not 25 years ago.”

He is still busy, with a TV pilot coming up for a David Baddiel sit-com on Channel 4, called Sit.Com, about a computer-obsessed family, in which he is cast as the grandad.

He would like to do more television, and has put his name forward for QI and Would I Lie To You, two of the comedy quiz shows he does admire.

“But nothing’s happened yet,” he says.

• Norman Lovett is at the Hyena Lounge Comedy Club, The Basement, City Screen, York, on Sunday; doors open at 7pm. Tickets: hyenalounge.co.uk or 0871 902 5726.