SOMEWHERE in the background behind stand-up comedian and novelist Dominic Holland there is the sound of a printer whirring away.

"As we speak I'm printing off my second novel," says Dominic, whose first novel, Only in America, is currently a best-selling hardback.

"It's in the editing stages now but by the time I come to Worcester it should be just about finished."

But when Dominic does come to Worcester he will be performing the kind of stand-up comedy that first brought him into the public eye 10 years ago.

"I'm just a bloke talking," said the Perrier Award-winning comedian, who has made a string of TV appearances and has his own BBC Radio 4 show.

"I'm not a trendy comic. I haven't got an edge, I haven't got a minority. I'm just a middle-aged dad. I reflect the audience.

"I don't play the guitar. I don't do impressions. I don't even do voices. There are no gimmicks. There are no props or music or lighting cues. It's all stripped down. It's just me talking.

"I don't write my material, I just talk about stuff that has happened, like going on holiday or my kids. I don't sit down and think: 'Right, now I'll write a joke about mobile phones.'"

This brand of comedy has set Dominic in good stead since he emerged in the early 90s, picking up the Perrier award for Best Newcomer in 1993.

He described this time, when he was living with comedy legend Eddie Izzard, as the best of his stand-up life.

"In 1993 I had just started and I was heralded as the new thing, and I didn't have to worry about being trendy because I was new.

"Over the next seven years I only got one good British broadsheet review and my confidence ebbed away."

And in the world of stand-up, confidence is everything.

"Even if you've got dreadful material but you

are confident on stage, the audience will go along with you. You have to look omnipotent and be a bit edgy. If you look nervous then you will lose the gig," he said.

But that's not to say Dominic has been wandering a comedy wilderness since then.

He has his own shows, Dominic Holland's Happy Hour and Holland's Day Sauce, and has appeared on the likes of Have I got News For You, The Clive James Show and Bring Me the Head of Light Entertainment. And then there's the bestseller.

Only in America tells the story of a screenplay by a British writer that lands on a Hollywood producer's desk. It causes a sensation in America but no one knows who wrote it and the Brit writer has no idea it's a hit.

"I was working on a film in 1995 and it was all going well. It had been bought by Pathe, but then it all collapsed, and that's when I started writing this."

Now, ironically, BBC films want to turn this novel into a movie.

In the meantime, the ink on his second novel, Ripple Effect, is drying.

"It's about a small football club that is being asset-stripped by developers and a hero tries to save it. "I've been working on it for three years but now it has become really quite pertinent in these days when players get paid a hundred grand a week, which I think is ruining the game."

Still, he has no plans to give up the world of stand-up just yet, despite one or two

gut-wrenching moments.

In one club a woman heckled him and, noticing she had strange hair, he drew attention to it. At which point the woman informed him and the entire audience she was wearing a wig because she had cancer.

"It was the longest half-hour of my life. I think the audience felt sorry for me but even so it was still a case of yeah, go home now."

Dominic Holland plays the Swan Theatre, in Worcester, on Saturday, September 14, at 8pm. Tickets are £11.50 (£9.50 concessions) from the box office on 01905 27322.