Stand-up comedy may have rebranded itself in the past couple of decades as a young person's game (often played by someone with a young person's haircut and young person's pair of skinny jeans) but still kicking around are very notable exceptions to that rule. Frank Skinner first turned to comedy at the ripe age of 30 while in 2007 Micky Flanagan became the oldest Best Newcomer nominee at the Edinburgh Fringe at that point (he was 44) before finally reaching the stage of selling out those hyperdomes.

Sindhu Vee had also lived a fair old life before deciding that comedy might be her thing, having worked as an investment banker before leaving that profession to start a family. 'Stand-up is my calling but I don't mean that in some kind of wanker way,' says Vee who began comedy in her early 40s before earning her own Best Newcomer nomination in 2018 with Sandhog. 'When I did the Edinburgh Fringe it was the first place I went to leave behind the mantel of being a mother. That had been my single biggest brand: between banking and comedy, I was a stay-at-home mum.'

Now she is firmly ensconced in the public eye as an accomplished comic who talks about her own life and is adamant that everything she tells you is 100% true ('there's no need to tell people shit about yourself'). Vee has also got her feet on the acting ladder with roles in Sex Education and Feel Good, with upcoming projects including a part in the movie of Matilda The Musical while her own sitcom, Winning, is currently in development at Channel 4. Showbiz success may have come late for Vee, but she believes that the timing could not have been better.

'I'm glad I wasn't 19 on the circuit as I wouldn't have got to 25: I would have been wildly unable to deal with the highs and lows of stand-up. Do I wish I had come to it at 30? Yeah, but I didn't. I don't think it's possible to have it all at the same time, and I just couldn't have peeled away my maternal instinct to have left extremely tiny children at home.'

In terms of her new show, Alphabet, Vee is eschewing the model of most UK stand-ups who conceive an hour or so of comedy based around some grand theme. There's no arc to follow in one of her shows, just an over-riding determination to make people laugh. 'If I want to talk about my hair I'll talk about my hair. There's no chronological story with lots of jokes that have to happen here so you can get there at the end. I have anecdotes that I try to make funny. My biggest admiration is for those comics who can just write jokes. People can write jokes about a bus. For me, it's more about what happens to me when I was sitting on the bus. But I wish I could just write a joke about a bus.'

Sindhu Vee: Alphabet tours until Friday 18 February.