Despite always making people laugh comedy didn’t come easy to Dave Spikey, he tells Laura Davis

“I had a massive area of expertise that I’d developed over the years in a really obscure type of haematological problems and I wasn’t using it. I was in my office doing personal development plans.”

He had taken time off work to co-write That Peter Kay Thing in 2000. Then Phoenix Nights was commissioned and it was time to quit the day job.

RUMOURS abound that the show, set in a Greater Manchester working men’s club, could be returning after a 10-year break, but Spikey can’t see it happening. Things are made trickier by his reportedly rocky relationship with co-writer Peter Kay.

“I doubt it very, very much,” he says. “Peter said something on the radio about it but (co-writer) Neil’s not heard anything and I haven’t.”

He is however, working on a new project with the other Phoenix Nights writer, Liverpool-born Neil Fitzmaurice.

“It was put to us that we should write a sitcom on ballroom dancing because it’s so popular,” says Spikey.

“It felt like jumping on the bandwagon a bit but we thought if we set it at grassroots level where it’s not really glitz and glamour, and create a great set of characters, maybe it’ll work.”

They are currently waiting to hear if the BBC will pick up Glitterball, which is set in a Blackpool hotel.

“They’ve paid us to do the script so that’s quite promising,” he says. “I really hope it gets made. We’ve got all the series mapped out in our heads so it would be such a shame if they go ‘no’.”

DAVE SPIKEY: Words Don’t Come Easy is at St Helen’s Theatre Royal on February 18 and the Liverpool Empire on March 15.