The gag with the £10,000 punchline

Peter Kay meets me in the foyer of Granada Television's Manchester offices, where he is editing his Channel 4 comedy-drama Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights. The series focuses on a social club in Bolton. And apart from a well-publicised bit of bother with a fire prevention officer from Bolton called Keith Laird - who seemed to think that Kay's fire prevention officer, Keith Lard, was based on him - Phoenix Nights has gone down a storm. Even Keith Laird might have let it pass, were it not for the fact that Keith Lard, in emphatic contrast to Keith Laird, enjoys a spot of bestiality in his leisure time. As a result, Keith Laird's colleagues have apparently been barking at him, so you can understand his indignation, and why it cost Channel 4 £10,000 to settle the matter.

Peter Kay meets me in the foyer of Granada Television's Manchester offices, where he is editing his Channel 4 comedy-drama Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights. The series focuses on a social club in Bolton. And apart from a well-publicised bit of bother with a fire prevention officer from Bolton called Keith Laird - who seemed to think that Kay's fire prevention officer, Keith Lard, was based on him - Phoenix Nights has gone down a storm. Even Keith Laird might have let it pass, were it not for the fact that Keith Lard, in emphatic contrast to Keith Laird, enjoys a spot of bestiality in his leisure time. As a result, Keith Laird's colleagues have apparently been barking at him, so you can understand his indignation, and why it cost Channel 4 £10,000 to settle the matter.

In a press statement released last week Kay insisted that it was just an unfortunate, albeit uncanny, coincidence. "The name Keith Lard was delicately chosen for its inanimate and descriptive nature," he explained. "We took time to check that there were no Lards in the Bolton phonebook."

So that's that, and here we are in the Granada foyer, discussing where to have lunch. "Shall we just have a bap in canteen?" says Kay, eschewing the definite article in a Lancashire accent broader than the mouth of the Ribble. Not for him 'owt with sun-dried tomatoes at some local brasserie. He remains firmly attached to his roots, in comedy and in life. A brilliant stand-up comedian much in demand, he tends to refuse gigs unless they are close enough to Bolton for him to get home afterwards. Also, the Granada canteen provides him with some choice comic material. "They're filming that A&E with Martin Shaw here at the moment," he says, looking around. "You keep getting people in here with their heads hanging off. They had to provide a separate room for them because it were a bit disturbing."

Kay is a cherubic 27-year-old who could extract comedy from that Bolton phonebook, Lards or no Lards. After leaving school he worked in a toilet-roll factory, a cash-and-carry, a petrol station, a video shop and a cinema, where his job was to tear ticket stubs. But he never felt fully engaged in these jobs. "Comedy's a vocation," he says, through a mouthful of tuna bap. "A lot of people have got into it because of money, but true comedians do it because they can't help it, and feel slightly removed doing anything else. They're never at ease until they're doing comedy. That were case with me. When I first stood up on stage, people said they couldn't believe it were my first time. And my friends said, 'it's not, he's been doing it for us for years'."

Kay might have been slightly removed during his succession of jobs, but that didn't stop him merrily plundering them for material. At Bolton's ABC cinema he would eavesdrop shamelessly on his colleagues Pamela and Marie.

"One day," he recalls, "Pamela was working in box office while Marie was changing roller towel in loo, so she said to a customer, 'I'll tear your ticket here because Marie's upstairs changing her towel.' And this chap looked disgusted and said, 'That's more information than I needed, thank you.' You couldn't write that, could you?"

Actually, Kay probably could. He is an assiduous chronicler of the absurdities of everyday life; indeed, he fishes out a crumpled scrap of paper on which he has scribbled some random observations at a recent wedding.

"First slow song were 'I'm Not in Love', 10cc, which seemed a bit wrong at a wedding, somehow. And there were this little kid, and her parents didn't want to lose her, so they tied a helium balloon to her arm. They kept watching this helium balloon float round room, and they'd jump up if balloon floated near a fire exit. Then there were aunties going, 'you'll be next'. That always happens at weddings, doesn't it, and christenings. Someone always says 'you'll be next'. I'm waiting to see them at some funeral. They'll come up and say 'you'll be next, love. It'll be your turn, this time next year'."

Kay's stockpile of funny banalities came in handy in 1998 when Channel 4 invited him to contribute to a series of half-hour one-off comedies. He delivered The Services, a beautifully observed spoof documentary set in a motorway service station (on the M61 near Bolton, naturally) with him playing most of the characters. It was given a terrible time-slot, shortly before midnight, yet the fortunate few who happened upon it, myself included, knew they were in at the birth of a successful television career. Sure enough, he was given a series, That Peter Kay Thing, which duly won him the Best New TV Comedy statuette in last year's British Comedy Awards. The awards were dished out just before Christmas at the London Television Centre in front of a celebrity audience. But there was no chance of Kay getting any fancy ideas.

"No, because a week later I were doing Eccles Masonic Hall. The British Comedy Awards were on the Saturday, and this were Friday after. I were on after a Cher lookalike, although she looked more like Shania Twain. The DJ said to me, 'How do you want your lights?' I said, 'What are me options?' He said, 'On or off.' So I said, 'I'll have 'em on, then.' He said 'You can't use my lights because they're voice-activated. Every time you shout they rotate.' You know, because he were a DJ, like.

"I did raffle and all. It were for my fiancée Susan's Auntie Anne, to raise money for motor-neurone. You can't say no to family, can you, especially your fiancée's family." Kay is marrying Susan, a demure red-head who works at Boots, in September. It will feel like familiar territory, because weddings have always loomed large in his stand-up act. And he has very precise ideas about how his own wedding should unfold.

"I had it planned before I even met Susan. I'm very anal about it. In fact, I want to do disco but Susan won't let me. We'll have a bit of Eighties, a bit of Nineties, some Seventies dance music, a bit of Motown. I know I should relax, but it's important, disco. There's nothing worse than some gobshite asking for something like 'Eloise', The Damned, and they mither you until you put it on, then everyone sits down and they don't even dance themselves. They just sit there and sing it. I did a disco once in Clitheroe, and I got everybody up for two hours solid. I were thrilled to bits. It's just the same as doing stand-up and keeping 'em laughing."

I ask Kay what will be the first song at his wedding dance. "Oh, 'Dancing Queen', Abba. It's got to be, hasn't it? It's one song that everyone gets up and dances to. It were first song I danced to. You've got to. You can't be suicidal and play 'Dancing Queen' without feeling a lot better. You just think, 'Ohhhhh, never mind war, never mind death...' "

Not that Kay spends much time pondering war and death even without "Dancing Queen" to distract him. "I feel really content," he says. "I've got everything I want. I've got Susan, my family and friends, and I don't feel like there's something missing. I sometimes feel guilty for saying that at 27, but that's how I feel. And I'm so lucky to be up here and not in London. I'm not knocking London, I'm just happier being near things I love."

When they are married, the Kays will live, of course, in Bolton. Success will not entail a move to a large detached house in Chiswick or Totteridge, even though that is the sort of success Kay seems destined for. Because with Phoenix Nights he is adding a new string to his bow, controlling his own material from script to performance to editing suite. He credits this development to his manager, Phil McIntyre. "He's keen on his people doing whole thing. He's got Caroline [Aherne] and Craig [Cash] and Victoria Wood, too. I've never done it before, but it's good. Because if you're an artist you don't just do outlines, do you, you colour it in as well." Indeed. And Kay has a bigger and brighter palette than most.

'Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights' continues on Channel 4 at 9.30pm on Sundays. It is repeated every Thursday at 11.30pm