Dave Spikey has come across a lot of things while touring the country over the past two years, not least a naked clergyman with a potato up his backside.

That is one of hundreds of weird and wonderful stories the Phoenix Nights co-writer and star has unearthed from local papers while travelling the length and breadth of the UK with his Best Medicine Tour.

He has now put them all in a new book released last month called He Took My Kidney, Then Broke My Heart, and will no doubt be trawling through the pages of this very paper at Fairfield Halls next month.

"I always take the local newspaper on stage for the first 10 minutes of a gig and dissect it," says the 58-year-old.

"It's a good ice breaker and I always find two or three stories to do, so I must have read hundreds of them by now.

"I was going to use them as a base for my next tour but then a publisher approached me about a book and as I still had all the papers it was just a case of getting them in some sort of order.

"I was in Hastings the other night and the main story was a con man trying to get into people's homes pretending to be a tree surgeon.

"I thought you haven't thought that through really have you, 'Hi I am a tree surgeon, do you have any trees I can look at in your house?'

"I love the clergyman taken to hospital with a potato up his bottom saying he fell backward on to his kitchen table when putting up curtains naked - it's just got everything that story.

"The last few months I have done stuff with ridiculous song lyrics too.

"I was listening to Roy Orbison singing I Drove All Night which is a great anthem but the lyrics are ridiculous.

"'I drove all night to get to you, Is that all right? I drove all night, crept in your room, Woke you from your sleep to make love to you. Is that all right?'

"You should have asked that question first really Roy!"

Spikey co-wrote Phoenix Nights alongside Neil Fitzmaurice and Peter Kay, but insists he knows nothing about a third series Kay says is ready to go.

"I think it is something he trots out every now and then," he says.

"I was in a film with Neil recently and neither of us have ever heard about a new series so if there is one we don't now anything about it.

"I would like to do it though but maybe do a Christmas special first just to test the water as it's been a long time since the last series."

Dave Spikey, Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, November 19, 7.30pm, £18.50. Call 020 8688 9291 or visit fairfield.co.uk.