Fame hasn’t changed Paddy McGuinness one bit – KATHERINE MACALISTER finds out why.

Paddy McGuinness tells a fantastic story about how his boss at the leisure centre in Bolton tried to talk him out of resigning once he’d landed a part in the Peter Kay show.

“I'll never forget my manager at the time saying 'Oooh, are you sure you want to do this?' And every now and then, when I'm driving through Bolton in my Aston Martin, and I see him, I give him a little beep of the horn and say hello.”

Yup, Paddy McGuinness has made it big since his days as a lifeguard.

His stand-up comedy tours sell out everywhere he goes, he’s on the TV, has a DVD out and parts in everything from Paul O’Grady to Peter Kay. This is his time.

So he’s enjoying it right?

“Well I’ve been on tour since August,” he says, “so I’m just looking forward to Christmas,” talking to me on a crackly line from Belfast. But considering his last tour was 120 gigs long, you realise that Paddy is not only a glutton for punishment but a professional through and through.

And yet his was not an obvious or quick road to success.

Straight from school the Lancashire lad studied a two and a half year diploma in science to become a lab technician, before deciding it looked boring. And on the day he graduated began a job working on a building site.

Since then Paddy has seemingly done every job imaginable, including a stint at Warburton’s, before finding his way on to the comedy circuit. He worked in Morrisons warehouse, as a silver service waiter at a hotel, spent a season in Corfu as a holiday rep and then settled at the local leisure centre in Horwich where he worked as a lifeguard, gym instructor and receptionist, as well as experimenting with comedy in his spare time.

“I did my first gig at Lancaster University” remembers Paddy, 35.

“And the compare said, when I had finished, ‘Well, thank you. That was Paddy McGuinness, ladies and gentlemen, and he claims that was his first time’, so I thought it must have gone pretty well.

“The funny thing is I never planned on a career in comedy, it was just something I began enjoying to do and had no idea I’d ever be able to leave my job and make a career out of having a laugh. I just wanted something that paid the bills and it all kind of happened by accident.”

Paddy went on to work with friend and colleague fellow Boltonian Peter Kay in That Peter Kay Thing and Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights, below. And it was only during the second series of Phoenix Nights that Paddy left his job at the leisure centre when he couldn’t do his fair share of the shifts as filming became more demanding.

Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere, left, came next which follows the two doormen from Phoenix Nights, played by the comedy pair.

And subsequent TV work led to his own one-man stand up show, now touring the country with great acclaim. The tour is receiving rave reviews and Paddy admits he’s having a ball.

“I’m really pleased with the tour so far,” he says. “I do more than just stand up and tell jokes, I’m getting the audience involved this time. With all the doom and gloom at the moment with the credit crunch people don’t want to be shedding out for tickets to an average show, so we’ve been having a party, and you get your money’s worth.”

His fame, however, has not changed Paddy, who says he will never leave his hometown no matter what the future holds or how much money he makes.

He said: “Bolton is where all my friends and family are. I love it. I’m just an ordinary bloke. I like to play footie with the lads, doing a bit of golf as well and everything, I always have. My life hasn’t really changed and that’s the way I like it.”

As far as the future, careerwise Paddy has no great plans in the pipeline. “I’ll just see what happens,” he says. “Rehab maybe. On a serious level I want to do more TV but when this tour’s over I think I’ll just need a good rest.”

l Paddy McGuinness is at the New Theatre on Wednesday. Box office on 0844 8471588