How absurd is that? Harry Hill is horsing around again on stage. His new show has proved so popular it has already spawned a return to York, reports Charles Hutchinson.

Harry Hill is horsing around again in his new touring show, Hooves.

"Who'd have thought that the same man who described the horses as 'dirty' for touching our Queen, would then, ten years later, be riding one on stage in his new show? But I am! A spirit of forgiveness pervades my show like an entrenching tool through fresh topsoil," says Harry, whose last tour in 2003 also had an equine title, Wild Horses.

Hooves is romping towards a sell-out at the Grand Opera House, York, next Friday, prompting Hill to add a second show on October 18, fully six months away. Such is the popularity of the surrealist's ITV shows, The All New Harry Hill Show and Harry Hill's TV Burp, that his 43-date spring tour will be supplemented by 19 more live shows in the autumn.

The overgenerous white shirt collars and the fixation with badger parades and Stouffer the Cat remain the same; the daft jokes roll on: "I knocked a pizza delivery boy off his bike the other day," he says. "I felt bad about that, but even worse about eating his pizza while I waited for the ambulance."

In Hooves, his comic turf will be space shuttle trips and suicide, dogs and horses, and all manner of surrealist fun and games. Not content with the stand-up's conventional armoury of one-liners and putdowns, he will call on the traditional recipes of English Saturday night entertainment: farce, slapstick, games.

"'Stand-up can get monotonous," he says. "I get fed up with the sound of my own voice droning on. I like to give the show more of a variety feel."

Witness the second half of Hooves, where the comedy will take a turn for the outlandish. "From a factory in Germany, I've tracked down a set of 25 bulb-horns that go over two octaves, so I'm planning to do a horn disco. The only problem is, the horns are extremely loud, and as we had a baby in the summer it's been very difficult to practise at home. I can only do it when my wife and baby are out," Harry says.

"But I've still managed to work up a medley of songs including the White Stripes, Herb Alpert, EastEnders and the theme from Animal Hospital. That'll please the punters! In the warm-up gigs, I've been trying to encourage people to dance, but they've just sat there open-mouthed thinking 'Can this really be happening to me?'."

Harry's fertile imagination has contrived the latest in absurdist spectator sports for the second half. "I'm organising a game of inter-species Swingball," he reveals.

What happens? "'I invite a member of the audience on stage to take on Abu the Hamster - geddit? He's only got one paw. I flag it up as a test of self-esteem: 'Can you beat a one-handed hamster at tennis?'. If they shy away from playing against the hamster, there's a bee they can challenge. The irony is, the bee is actually bigger than the hamster. It's a hot-water bottle cover I got in the chemists for £9.99."

At 40, Harry's work diary is busier than ever. Meanwhile, at home there are responsibilities of marriage, fatherhood... and watching endless TV for his parody show, Harry Hill's TV Burp.

"It's quite a painful process because there's no limit to the amount you can watch. Every week, I get in over a hundred tapes, and there just aren't enough hours in the day to watch them all. If you've got workaholic tendencies, you can always say, 'Yeah, I've got an hour to spare, I'll watch another Wife Swap'. It's very boring for my wife. She sits in the kitchen a lot of the time," he says.

"'When the series comes to end, I need a complete break. So the only thing I've watched since the last series has been Auschwitz. TV Burp has even turned me off EastEnders. I used to be a genuine fan, but now I've even lost the will for that."

Looking to the future, Harry has a spoof "'extreme soap" in development. "It would be written by the TV Burp writers, who have had to become experts on the soaps. It would be full of those big, significant looks at the end of every scene and that embrace with a smile over the shoulder which suddenly turns to worry," he says.

He hopes to direct his newly written screenplay about a man who steals dogs: "'I relish the idea of directing. Above all else, I love the catering on films - those great big catering vans serving up delicious three-course lunches. Yummy."

Mad ideas are spilling out of him, as ever, and so next Friday's audience can anticipate a nutty ending to Harry's night in York. "I want to lead a parade out of the theatre," he says. "The American stand-up Andy Kaufmann once arranged for coaches to meet the audience outside Carnegie Hall in New York and took them all off to his favourite restaurant for cookies. I love the idea of parading out of the theatre like a carnival with as many people as possible in stupid costumes."

Dress code? Bring coconut hooves, of course.

Harry Hill, Hooves, Grand Opera House, York, March 18, 8pm; newly added show, October 17. Tickets: £17.50 on 0970 606 3590.

Updated: 15:51 Thursday, March 10, 2005