COMEDIAN Rudi Lickwood was working as a waiter in a cocktail bar... ok, it was a hotel in Holborn, with aspirations of opening his own catering company, when a chance meeting with American jazz legend Art Blakey set his path on a completely different course.

“He told me I looked like this guy, Eddie Murphy,” the Harlesden comic recalls. “I had never heard of him, so I rented Delirious and spent the next hour and half rolling about on the floor laughing. It was around 1985 and I started getting work as an Eddie Murphy look-a-like opening shops and doing promotional work, but I wasn’t actually considering doing stand-up.”

Quickly hit by the comedy bug, Rudi, who headlines The Comedy Club at the Waltham Abbey Marriott on Friday, decided to experiment with his own material during one look-a-like competition, with dire consequences.

“I didn’t want to wear Eddie’s leather suit and tell his jokes, I wanted to do my own stand-up so I came out as me and did my own routine,” Rudi shares. “I got booed off stage, but I thought if I can handle 15,000 people telling me I’m crap, I can do this.”

Now recognised as one of the top black comedians on the UK comedy circuit, Rudi is the recipient of a prestigious Black Entertainment Comedy Award for outstanding contribution, has founded a school for black comics, run comedy workshops in prisons and toured Iraq and Afghanistan entertaining the troops.

“I have been everywhere Tony Blair has been and caused trouble,” Rudi utters in his matter-of-fact tone. “I have gone in to create laughter and to make the boys feel good. I want to let them know they are supported by the people back home, even if the politics are not. Rather than sit at home and moan, I would rather be part of the solutions.”

Rudi’s tool for using laughter as the solution to a problem has been something he has adopted since a young age, as he candidly reveals: “Growing up, my parents never really got on, so I would tell my mum jokes to cheer her up, but I was never the funny kid, I was the guy people would listen to for sensible reasoning.”

Now a father, Rudi says his three children are a constant source of laughter, in fact, the majority of his act is now focused on his offspring. And, like his standing with his peers, the comic, who is known as Uncle Rudi on the circuit, clearly takes his position as a role model very seriously. Indeed, it has largely informed his decision to stay in his home town of Harlesden, despite calls that his particular brand of humour would work particularly well in America.

“I think it’s a defeatist attitude to turn my back on Harlesden and head to America. If I am going to be any sort of role model, I can’t be running round the world saying you can’t be successful here, but you can be successful over there, you have to be successful where you are, and the only way you can have any pride is to understand that, not to say, ‘I should go back to the West Indies or America where I can make it’.”

And the UK comedy circuit would certainly be a lesser place without him, not to mention the local school’s Halloween party!

“Of course, I’m going to get dressed up,” Rudi tells me while on the school run. “I’m going to do the devil horns and the lot. But I’m not going trick or treating, I don’t beg!”

Rudi Lickwood headlines The Comedy Club at the Waltham Abbey Marriott on Friday, October 30. The evening will also include performances from John Robins and Martin Beaumont. Over 18s only. Tickets: 01992 717170 or www.hahaheehee.com (£12/£10)