Looking back over the almost 60-year career of Des O’Connor, it’s not so much the biggest names in showbiz that he’s interviewed or the fact that he’s been on our TV screens almost every year since 1963 that stand out in your mind – rather it’s the perennial image of him collapsing back into his sofa, pink-cheeked, dissolving into fits of laughter that you remember.

If you grew up watching him on Des O’Connor Tonight, as I did, you could be forgiven for thinking he spent the whole of the 1980s and ‘90s in a state of near hysteria, gasping out questions in between bouts of giggling.

“I loved sitting down with the comics, but I used to get told off because I giggled too much,“ laughs the 82-year-old entertainer. “A lot of the jokes were a bit cheeky and they were edited out, but then they’d cut back to me laughing.

“But yes, I did laugh a lot, and I loved it, sitting down with the up and coming young comics and the masters of comedy, the Benny Hills and the Norman Wisdoms. I was very fortunate, I got paid for it.“

Since he started out in the business in 1956, Des has worked his way up to become one of Britain’s most popular and best-loved entertainers – a comedian, a singer, entertainer, chat show host and presenter, and now musical theatre star.

He will be talking about his glittering career, singing a few songs and, presumably, giggling a lot with the audience when he brings his show to the Watford Colosseum next week.

“I’m doing small little theatres,“ says Des, who was born in Stepney and now lives in Buckinghamshire.

“I love to do that, we just ad lib and have so much fun. I ask them ‘has anybody got any personal problems?’ and you’d be amazed at the things they come out with! And sometimes I’ll say to them ‘Does anybody want to come up and play the piano?’ We had a little boy come up one day and played Chopsticks and he brought the house down.

“So if there are any local people reading this article, they can ask me questions or come and play with me and I’ll sing with them.

“I never know what’s going to happen, what they’re going to ask me but, after you’ve interviewed Rod Hull and Emu, Stan Boardman and Oliver Reed, you know you can handle anything!“

Des’ career started while he was doing his National Service in the RAF in Northampton.

“I was standing on the table in the mess hall doing an impression of the commanding officer and of course he was behind me. He said ‘Very funny O’Connor, the whole camp should see that. Week on Friday, talent competition’. I said ‘I’m going home, Sir’, and he said ‘No you’re not’.

“I must be the only person that was ever ordered into showbusiness.“

He entered showbiz doing variety in theatres up and down the country for about ten years.

“It was at a time when a lot of theatres were closing. Don’t blame me! They were closing anyway.“

Then he got his break in television with the Des O’Connor Show, followed by Des O’Connor Entertains, Des O’Connor Tonight, and then as a presenter on Take Your Pick, Today with Des and Mel and Countdown.

He has performed all over the world, including more than 1,000 times at the London Palladium, sold millions of records, and has received the Special Recognition Award at the National TV Awards and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

His latest ventures include playing the wizard in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Wizard of Oz at the Palladium and a three-month stint in Dreamboats and Petticoats, the hit West End musical, and now he is putting the finishing touches on his first book of comic verse, Laughter Lines, to be published in November by Pan Macmillan.

“I write about things that drive me crackers,“ he says, “like which bin do you put your rubbish in, driving, and airlines. There’s one about the security at an airport I wrote. Then they took away my noseclippers / Saw them as a threat, I suppose / Like I’d burst in the captain’s cabin / And pull all the hair out his nose!“

Des will be treating us to many more like this when he comes to Watford, so be warned. They’re very silly but they’re sure to have you in fits of giggles of your own.

  • Des O’Connor is at the Radlett Centre, Aldenham Avenue, Radlett, on Thursday, October 30 at 8pm. Details: 01923 859291, radlettcentre.co.uk