1: Having served his apprenticeship as the class clown, Kevin Bridges was inspired by Frank Skinner's autobiography to take the plunge and booked his first open spot by emailing The Stand at 2am during a restless night. A month later, he got the call while playing PlayStation with a mate, having concluded that no one had taken his application seriously.

2: He worked so hard on getting his material boiled down to the minutest detail that he wrote absolutely everything on paper, working on a script which began with the word 'hello'. In the end, he got his first laugh by pointing out that he was a 17-year-old who had just been served a pint.

3: When he went to Glasgow Caledonian Uni to study social sciences ('a cop-out purgatory degree passing the time between school and the real world'), he was still doing gigs across the country, recalling missing a class the morning after a night entertaining the people of Newcastle.

4: One of his toughest gigs to date was for the inmates at Shotts, where he made jokes about murder sentences and prison officers. While Bridges recalls some prisoners heading back to their cells rather than listening to his act, in the main his filthier material went down well.

5: A couple of weeks after his SECC date, Bridges will be headlining the RockNess comedy bill which takes place at Howard Marx's boozer, the Howard's End Pub. (Brian Donaldson)

SECC, Glasgow, Fri 28 May.