SIR Clement Freud knows how to give a performance. The nightclub owner, television chef, journalist, politician, after-dinner speaker and radio wit always comes prepared, just in case, because experience has taught him to do so.

"I'm not at all a born performer but I'm such an habitual performer that if I go to a dinner and I'm asked 'Would I say a few words?', I would have thought about it in advance," he says, speaking at the Sunday driving pace so familiar from his petfood commercials and many years on BBC Radio 4's Just A Minute.

Next Friday, the request to speak will not be sprung upon him. Instead, the raconteur's raconteur has long accepted the invitation of the Pocklington Civic Arts Centre to offer his irreverent thoughts on his life as the Freud of all trades and, in particular, the art of after-dinner speaking.

Those thoughts have been collated in 78-year-old Sir Clement's latest book, Freud Ego, published last September by BBC Books and sure to be available for signing next Friday at Oak House.

As ever, when preparing to address an audience in new territory - in this case Pocklington - he will apply his own rule of thumb or maybe foot. "Always keep your left foot in front of your right: that's hugely helpful," he says, applying his aphorism with customary deadpan timing.

If he judges himself not to be a natural performer - a surprise on a par with that British gold medal at the Winter Olympics - then he has had practice aplenty at perfecting the art. "I think my life has been helpful to after-dinner speaking. I used to introduce the cabaret at my nightclub, and I wasn't very good but I hung on because it was my club," says Sir Clement.

"Then there was Parliament. Being one of only eight Liberals in the House, I had to speak every second day." Speak he did, on education, the arts, sport, whatever. "There weren't too many Indians, only chiefs," he says.

The art of political speech making, or more specifically the art of saying more than a snappy soundbite, is no longer top of the list of essentials for an MP, by way of contrast with 1973 when Clement Freud was elected Member of Parliament for the Isle of Ely in that year's famous Liberal by-election surge, which also delivered Cyril Smith to Westminster.

"To be an MP today it helps if you're not supremely boring but really you speak only to be recorded in Hansards, as part of your party's record," he says. "But if you want to be an after-dinner speaker, the ability to speak is important, otherwise your fee will be negligible.

"In Parliament you can say the same thing over and over again, because no one is listening." Yet, Sir Clement reckons that being an MP was his most exciting job: "You don't get bored, you get peeved. If you want to raise something you have to get up at six o'clock to stand outside the Bill office. Then you would find the only people attending were those who wanted you to sit down so they could talk instead."

No such impediment will stand in his way when speaking at Oak House. Instead, the challenge is to judge his audience. "It's a bit like a family tree. You try something out, see how they react and then get broader or naughtier, or not. You see whether they want sport, or jokes, or stories about ladies, or Parliament, and you quickly find out how they feel because nothing is more indicative of how it's going than being confronted by silence," he says.

How should an after-dinner speaker respond to that unwelcome sound? "I think if you're a masochist like me, you would analyse the silence and explain that the people in the next village got up and roared at that joke.

"Or if it's a long joke, you can feel the reaction and it's better to move on to something completely different."

Whatever story is told, it is the manner of the telling as much as the content that marks out the dry-witted Sir Clement. His voice, as doleful as his bloodhound eyes, is his trump card. He was aware it was distinctive by the time he was serving in the Army.

"People would say 'Well, you can come out with us, have a drink, but keep your mouth shut," he recalls.

As his career testifies, he did not follow that advice.

Clement Freud Entertains, at Oak House, Pocklington Civic Arts Centre, next Friday, 8pm. Box office: 01759 301547.

Updated: 10:20 Friday, March 01, 2002