AT age 47, comedian Alan Davies is  relatively mature to be a first-time father, and he’s finding the experience immensely useful.

“My small children are paying their way,” he tells “CityNews” by phone from London.

Readers need not fear, Davies is not sending Susie, 3, and Robert, 2, out to work in a big Dickensian blacking factory. What he means is that they are providing him with material for his stand-up comedy.

Davies, who is coming to the Canberra Theatre in March, has become so famous for his TV roles as the magician/detective Jonathan Creek and as the dunce of Stephen Fry’s quiz show “QI”, that many people don’t even know that he started out as a comedian.

“I’ve gone back to stand-up comedy in the last couple of years,” he says, “with two small children I can just work three evenings a week and spend the rest of my time with the family… It’s much better than a filming schedule of six to 12 hours a day”.

Besides which, he says: “I’ve always thought of stand-up as my trade.”

So how do you become a stand-up comedian?

Davies explains: “I did theatre studies at university, but I was always wanting to get into stand-up, and in my final year I did.” The alternative comedy circuit was just beginning which gave him his first five years of work.

He’s worked in stand-up, he’s worked in film, and he’s worked in TV, but has only done a couple of plays.

“I’ve always found the repetition quite difficult,” he says, “but I was offered a part in ‘A Day in the Death of Joe Egg’ [the play by Peter Nichols] and I regret not doing that.”

So how does Davies feel about playing a lovable buffoon and the class idiot in two of the longest-running shows on the BBC?

“It’s the way it’s worked out,” he says. “People who come to see the stand-up show will see that I’m neither… lots of people don’t know me as a stand-up, but after the first 10 minutes, they will.”

As for playing the dunce in “QI”, it wasn’t intended “It happened over the first four weeks – I didn’t realise I’d fallen into the trap.”

And what are the “Little Victories” in his coming show of the same name. “It’s autobiographical, it’s a bit of nostalgia,” he says, “like most stand-up,” with its basis in parenting, the relationship with his own father and how he now comes across as a father.

I press him for examples of little victories.

“It’s about getting one up on your dad when you’re little – people enjoy that,” he says.

Fearful of revealing too much, he tells me one story about his father’s hatred of blackcurrant jam. I agree not to tell “CityNews” readers the punch line.

“This is a whole new show,” Davies says, “I’ll do eight cities in 12 days.”

He has never been to Canberra, but used to come to the Adelaide Fringe regularly.

“My mum died when I was six and her only sibling moved to Adelaide, so I like to spend time there asking questions about my mum and spending time with my four cousins.”

As well, he’s made lots of friends in the comedy business and his best mate from school migrated to Sydney.

Davies has just finished shooting three new episodes of “Jonathan Creek” and in May there’ll be more “QI”s. That will keep him busy, but in the meantime, he can hang out with the kids, who will doubtless provide him with even more material for his comedy.

Alan Davies, “Little Victories”, Canberra Theatre, 7.30pm, Tuesday, March 18, bookings to 6275 2700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au