LIFE is never dull for Lucy Beaumont from Hull.

So much so that the erstwhile Hull Truck actress switched to stand-up comedy, telling stories from her own life with just an ounce of exaggeration, like the time a crow landed on her head. Or when she went to audition for Disneyland, only to discover she was an inch too tall at 5ft 2 and a bit to be Mickey Mouse because "they won't change their costumes".

Fellow comic Johnny Vegas reckons Lucy has the comic timing of Les Dawson, while fellow comic Arthur Smith calls her "the next Victoria Wood in the making", and you can judge for yourself when Lucy presents We Can Twerk It Out, her debut one-hour tour show, at the Harrogate Theatre Studio on Wednesday night.

The Junction in Goole will provide a further Yorkshire chance to see her on April 11, trademark handbag slung over her shoulder, on a tour that runs from January 29 to June 18.

"Theatre is what I loved doing; I love live performance; I was never a TV actor, I was a stage actor, but it all changed for me when auditions would say, 'Only come if you've done TV, a soap, or you're a name'," Lucy recalls. "I was a bit stuck; I'm northern, and I was never going to play Juliet for the RSC."

York Theatre Royal audiences had seen Lucy in comedy roles in the Hull Truck Theatre tours of Amanda Whittington's race-day drama Ladies Day in 2005 and its Aussie sequel Ladies Down Under in 2007.

Then there was her gobby teenager in Lisa Evans's pregnancy caper Up The Duff in York in November 2009, and she was still appearing in Hull Truck shows as recently as January 2012 in Tim Firth's Christmas drama The Flint Street Nativity.

By then, however, her gifts as a surrealist, offbeat stand-up comedy turn were blossoming too after she decided she needed to do more than rely on auditions for a life on stage.

"I had an NVQ in cleaning and a BA in drama from Hull University but seven years after I graduated I was back there working as a cleaner," says Lucy.

"But it was brilliant because the cleaners were real women, who had banter that could have been heard on a building site; it was pure comedy.

"I also worked in pubs, as a barmaid, or doing any job under the sun, as you do as an actor, but I realised I could talk about my experiences on stage as they were funny. Funny things keep happening to me, so I could talk about what I'd done over the past few years and write gags to tie them together as I like to be an old-fashioned gag teller.

"For me, everything has to be word perfect. I have to write it, try it out, change the rhythm if necessary. That's the old-fashioned way. It's all about rhythm. I've seen the difference where I can be a millisecond off in the timing and a joke won't work."

The BBC New Comedy Award came her way in 2012, and an Edinburgh Foster's Comedy Newcomer award nomination too, along with appearances on BBC Three Live At The Electric and sold-out shows at the Soho Theatre in London, her career building to the point where the Observer has tipped Lucy to be one of the four rising comedians to watch in 2015.

Now, in her thirties, at she finds herself performing in the theatres where her acting career had first taken her. "It's only recently that I've realised I'm doing stuff that gets me back into theatres," says Lucy.

Analysing her style of comedy, she notes: "A lot of comedians like to have a poignant aspect to their comedy, but I'm more into surreal comedy. In theatre shows you have to break 'the fourth wall', and you'll see actors trying to do that when they have a go at comedy and failing, but I just went on stage and winged it, with my handbag beside me, and I just took on this persona without knowing where it came from. Women in their 60s seem to love me; they think, 'bless her'."

The Hull factor is part of her appeal. "All my family say 'you're just being yourself' but because I have such a broad accent, other people think I must be putting it on. I say: 'Why would I choose a Hull accent?!'. All I know is my comedy goes down best in Yorkshire."

We Can Twerk It Out, a spin on an old Beatles lyric for the age of Miley Cyrus, is an eye-catching show title. "Well it was a good title at the time, when I started the show, but twerking's not in vogue anymore," says Lucy. "Miley is linked to the story in the show but I don't do any twerking [a gyrating dance move], though I've had a lot of men coming on their own to the shows thinking I'll be twerking. I won't be!"

Meanwhile, Lucy has been making her mark on the radio. Last year's Radio 2 pilot of her sitcom To Hull And Back, starring Lucy, Hull actress Maureen Lipman as her mum and Norman Lovett as their neighbour, is to be turned into a four-part Radio 4 series.

"It's like a modern-day Steptoe And Son with the mother in her 60s and the daughter in her 30s still living together," she says. "I'm writing it at the moment and we'll be recording it in August for broadcast in October."

Did you know?

Lucy Beaumont became engaged to comedian Jon Richardson, from Channel 4's 8 Out Of 10 Cats, during last summer's Edinburgh Fringe. She now lives in Surrey but returns to Hull as often as she can.

Lucy Beaumont, We Can Twerk It Out, Harrogate Theatre Studio, Wednesday, 8pm; The Junction, Goole, April 11, 8pm. Box office: Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Goole, 01405 763 652 or junctiongoole.co.uk