1 Carr's distinctive toothy look was due to a childhood accident when he fell and banged his chin on the caravan-towing bar on a family holiday.

2 Before he got proper famous, Carr had a litany of awful-sounding temp jobs: putting shampoo in boxes, degreasing gearboxes and filing at a dog food company. His dad harboured different ambitions for his boy, given that he was once manager of Northampton Town FC. It wasn't to be.

3 At the Edinburgh Fringe of 2001, Carr won the BBC New Comedy Award beating off some stiff competition from the likes of Des Clarke, Rob Deering, Justin Moorhouse and Russell Howard. Carr went on to do three full Fringe runs before being snapped up in 2005 by Channel 4 for The Friday Night Project.

4 A statue of a brightly-coloured lion in Northampton was made to look a bit like Alan Carr (dubbed, unbelievably, 'Alion Carr'). Last summer, the beast's glasses went missing in a curiously unexplained incident. Carr clearly saw the funny side, tweeting: 'They need two people to steal the teeth'.

5 Admitting to having been approached for every reality show under the sun, Carr revealed the oddest programme he's been asked to appear in. The plan for Up, Up and a Gay was that he would learn to fly a plane and jet across the world meeting other homosexuals with a pilot's licence. Don't expect to see that show on screen anytime soon.

SECC, Glasgow, Fri 7 & Sat 8 Oct.