AFTER chatting to Stewart Francis about his last tour, he finally gave away his comedic secret that he has kept from his audiences for the last 30 years.

Stewart is known for his famous one-liners and he has finally revealed how he writes with these hilarious puns.

He said: “Now I am leaving, I can tell you my secret. What you do, is you come up with the punchline first and then work backwards and you can then chop and change it slightly.

“For example, someone said to me ‘I refuse to be spoken to in that tone’ and I created a one liner about a helium gas factory.”

Final tour for Stewart Francis

Into The Punset is Stewarts final tour. He is ending his stand-up career 30 years later (almost to the exact day), that he started performing. He is leaving the comedy industry to pursue his other love, acting.

“I’m going to step away from comedy and focus on acting which is another passion” Stewart explained. When you’re a comedian, casting directors can be a bit lazy and think, ‘well he is just a comedian’ but I’m not.

“I think I have some significant acting skills and I want to prove that to myself and to the world.

“But when you’re wearing both hats as a comedian and an actor, you can be taken less seriously; so I want there to be a real separation.

“I am very much looking forward to the end of the tour – I will be going out on a high.

“I am not driven by money, I am driven by morals and I like the fact I am like that. I would never keep doing the shows and taking money from the audiences if my heart wasn’t in it anymore.

“It is my must successful tour so far and I am at the top of my game, I wouldn’t want to leave it any other way.”

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Into the Punset

He started his Into The Punset tour last October and there are 157 shows altogether. His final performance is at the Eventim Apollo, formerly the Hammersmith Apollo and it is an ambitious room to fill, but Stewart feels this is the best place to end his comedic career.

He added: “When I was younger, I always wanted to be a cartoonist and the original cartoon I wrote was called Hammersmith, so it was only fitting for me to end there.”

Before becoming a comedian, Stewart worked in a post office but knew he always wanted to be in showbusiness and decided that the easiest route was comedy.

He explained: “It is pretty natural. It is weird to do comedy in a room full of people, but it does come naturally to me – I have never had problems when performing on stage.

“I love one-liners – who wouldn’t want more jokes? I think that telling stories is too self-indulgent for me.”

There were some jokes that Stewart found funny when he was younger but didn’t have enough stage confidence to use them.

Now, he has the confidence to tell any joke – any surprisingly, he has never had an unusual audience reaction to any of his one-liners.

He added: “I like all my jokes – for whatever reason they have popped into my brain. My legacy joke is probably the one about swimming back to the shore.”

Stewart Francis has now featured on many TV programs, such as Mock The Week, Live At The Apollo, as well as live shows including Tour De Francis, Pun Gent and Outstanding In His Field.

He won the Dave Joke Of The Fringe Award at the Edinburgh Festival of 2012, for his one-liner: “You know who really gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks.”

Into The Punset is coming to Westlands in Yeovil on November 7 and so if you want to see Stewart in action one more time, then you need to make sure you save the date.

“I will just show up, face the right way and do the rest” Stewart explained. “There will be chunks of jokes with similar topics but there is no theme other than the jokes being hilarious of course.”

Stewart will be at Westlands in Yeovil at 8pm on November 7. To book or to find out more visit www.westlandsyeovil.co.uk or call 01935 422884.