WHEN the BBC decided not to recommission Lee Mack's sitcom Not Going Out he decided to spend most of 2010 on tour.

Then they changed their minds. Now he has to write it on the road.

"I'll have a breakdown in August," he predicts.

"It was a six-month gap between the cancellation and the recommission and in that time I booked in a 100-date tour."

Writing six episodes is at least six months' work, he says.

"There's so much more to it than writing the jokes. There's all the boring bits like the structure. And 70 or 80 per cent of the workload is mine. I'll write three of the scripts on my own and three with one other person. Then we'll read it all out to a live theatre audience, to test the jokes. The deadline for that is the end of July."

Tonight's gig in Buxton, next week's Derby Assembly Rooms date and an extra May date in Nottingham have all sold out but the good news is that a further new Nottingham date has been added for November. But there will be no more after that, says Lee.

"The DVD of the tour will be out in November. Once that's out you can't do the same jokes. And I'll be sick of them by then anyway."

I'm not so sure. Some gags are worth repeating. The Angel Delight routine from the last tour (about his senile nan), I could hear again.

"That joke is one that people shout out a lot. 'Do your Angel Delight joke!'. Of course, once you've said that the joke's finished because that's the punchline."

In Not Going Out, Lee plays ice-cream man Lee, flatmate to the pretty and successful Lucy (Sally Bretton), sister of his mate Tim (Tim Vine).

It centres on his pursuit of Lucy and Lee sounds mildly irked when I suggest that he couldn't pull such a looker.

"You are on about the characters, yeah?" Obviously.

"Well, I know what you mean," he adds. "To a degree. But would you really stay at a hotel like Fawlty Towers? Probably not. The most important thing anyone told me about sitcom was that it had as much to do with drama as it did with pantomime. You've got to meet somewhere between the two."

In the last series Lee and Lucy almost shared a kiss. So what of series four?

"We go through it at the beginning of every series. Right, are these two characters going to get together or not? And it's a dilemma because the general rule of sitcom is, don't change it.

"It's a difficult one. I wake up every morning and change my mind. Right, this series we get together and start a family and it's a family sitcom next year. Then the next morning I think, no, we'll keep it as it is."

LEE MACK: GOING OUT WHERE: Buxton Opera House tonight and Derby Assembly Rooms on March 25 (both sold out). Also at the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham on November 26, starting at 8pm.

TICKETS: £20.50.

BOX OFFICE: 0115 989 5555.