Comedian Babatunde Aléshé has become a fixture on Celebrity Gogglebox, provided hijinks in the jungle on I’m A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!, and hosts a parenting podcast with his wife, Leonie.

His latest stand-up show, High Expectations, is touring the country this autumn, including a stop-off at The Alexandra during Birmingham Comedy Festival. What’s On spoke to Babatunde to find out more...

Comedian, actor & podcaster Babatunde Aléshé has embarked on his second major stand-up tour - titled High Expectations - and will be travelling across the nation until the end of November. His first date in the West Midlands - at The Alexandra early this month - coincides with the Birmingham Comedy Festival, which showcases some of the biggest names in stand-up, as well as the city’s home-grown talent.

Well-established on the UK comedy circuit, Babatunde is a familiar face thanks to appearances on Celebrity Gogglebox, his season on Channel Four’s Taskmaster, and his time in the jungle, during the 22nd series of I’m A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!

“I am equally as nervous as I am excited about the tour; nervous because this is the second show. The first tour I did, Babahood, was off the back of I’m A Celebrity, and I don’t have that now. Now it’s just me, and I have to prove to people that I’m worthy of making them laugh and being a comedian they can rely on to deliver, to bring the jokes and the fun. That’s why I called it High Expectations, because there’s a pressure that I’m trying to live up to. But also there’s the pressure of being a family man, as well as a husband; stretching myself to meet everybody’s needs.”

Babatunde trained as an actor, but he set his sights on a comedy career from a young age,  realising that he had the necessary talent while he was still at secondary school.

“I was always distracting the other students, making them laugh, getting in trouble, obviously! That’s when I realised that I was funny. It was that constant disrupting of the class… I was one of those children.

“Eddie Murphy is my comedy hero. When I was young, I saw Delirious. My aunty had the VHS, I watched it, and I was just like, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do.’ I knew straight away.”

Since then, he’s appeared on numerous TV shows - and it’s not unusual for fans to reach out: “People recognise me on the street, come up for pictures, or sometimes people just want to greet me. The town I live in, Stevenage, I’m always walking up and down the high street and going into shops, so people around there are kind of used to me. When it happens, it’s always nice - I’ve always got time for people.”

Previous tour Babahood cemented Babatunde as a significant player on the UK stand-up scene: “I remember when we did the tour, I said to myself, ‘If I sell 4,000 tickets, that’s a dream come true. That would be the best thing ever.’ At the beginning of the tour, it was just small, small rooms, like 90-capacity crowds and stuff like that. And then it just grew and grew and grew - and we went on to sell over 30,000 tickets. That, to me, is amazing. I don’t care if there’s five people in the audience or 2,000, or whatever the venue. I never, ever thought I’d do this, so I’m proud of every single venue that I play, no matter how big or small they are. For people to come out and see me, it's a blessing.”

It might be a blessing, but he points out that creating a hit show comes with its fair share of hard work.

“Comedy isn’t easy. It’s not easy at all. Coming up with material - it’s all about experience when it comes to stand-up, so you’ve got to experience life before you can talk about it… It takes a considerable amount of time to actually come up with a routine that hits hard, that people can relate to and laugh at.

“It takes one joke to kind of spark things off. I’ll experience something major, and then it will just spark off all these different ideas, and then everything revolves around this one bit that I wrote. That’s how it usually happens… I actually have to get up and speak it out. I think that comes from my acting background. I have to act out the jokes until I actually find the joke.”

Babatunde admits that he would be tempted to return to the acting world.

“I want to go back to acting for a bit and just recite lines that somebody else wrote! Let somebody else do the writing - I'll just rehearse and act! I enjoy being a dad so much, so I want to spend some time with my kids. I did say after this tour is done, I’m going to spend some time just with the family and just really, really enjoy being a father and a husband.”

When appearing on reality TV, there is no script or rehearsed routine to hide behind - as the comedian discovered on I’m A Celebrity.

“I mean, telling Matt Hancock that he was grabbing the booty… that’s the moment that people remember the most. I will never, ever live that down - that always comes back to haunt me.”

As well as his memorable stay in the jungle, Babatunde is frequently seen performing with fellow comedian Mo Gilligan - they provide armchair TV commentary together for Channel Four’s Celebrity Gogglebox.

“There are moments on Gogglebox that I just absolutely love, because me and Mo were friends before any fame came into the picture. We’ve been friends for probably 20 years now. All those moments I share on screen with him and other friends stand out. We’re all coming from the British Black comedy circuit - myself, Mo Gilligan, Judy Love, just to name a few. Any moment that I get to share with them on TV is always a highlight because we’ve seen each other come up, and it’s just beautiful to be in the spaces that we’re in.”

Although seeking fame can be a cutthroat business, he has a chilled-out approach to his career: “I’m not one of those competitive types of people. I shy away from that kind of stuff. What's yours is yours, what’s meant for me is meant for me.”

And when it comes down to what’s meant for Babatunde, the sky’s the limit.

“Things have just been building and building and building. I think the barrier for me personally is finding the balance between being a ‘type’, versus being a human… I didn't want to fall into that trap, where people know me for one type of thing. With Babahood, I think people were like, ‘Okay, this guy’s scared of everything.’ And I can’t keep delivering that in every single tour.

“I’m trying to have fun; I’m not trying to change the world. I’m not trying to be this super political comedian type. I’m not even trying to be the smartest. I’m trying to have fun - the same way I approached comedy when I was young. Come out, have a nice time, have a laugh and go home. Done! Go get some drinks afterwards, go party, do whatever you want to do. But when you’re here and you’re with me, we are going to have fun. That’s it!”

Babatunde Aléshé performs High Expectations at Birmingham theatre The Alexandra on Saturday 4 October as part of Birmingham Comedy Festival. He then tours the show to the Royal Spa Centre in Leamington on Thursday 16 October and Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall on Saturday 15 November

By Jessica Clixby