Oxfordshire comedian tells Gill Oliver why Donny Osmond has made his life easier

You can take the boy out of Didcot but you can’t take Didcot out of Matt Richardson.

The 23-year-old has hit the big time, touring the country with his comedy act, presenting ITV’s The X Factor spin-off The Xtra Factor and appearing on prime-time panel shows.

But despite all that showbiz success, he’s staying true to his roots, having only fairly recently moved out of his parents’ South Oxfordshire home.

The punch line is that, although he’s now living in London, he’s sharing his flat with three friends – all from Didcot.

“We’ve all just transferred, so have taken over a little corner of London and made it a sort of mini-Didcot,” he quipped.

That’s invaluable, he readily admits, because it keeps his feet firmly on the ground.

He explained: “My friends are so unimpressed by the whole celebrity thing.

“They have all got jobs doing important stuff – one is a lawyer, another is a primary school teacher and when I’m moaning on about what a terrible time I’ve had a gig, she’ll be like ‘a kid did a poo in his pants and I had to deal with it’ and it sort of puts everything in perspective.”

Appearing on BBC2’s hit panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks was not the joyful experience he had hoped.

He explained: “I found it very hard.

“I didn’t know anyone else on it and was very intimidated, so wasn’t as good as I could have been.”

Back home, he complained how “awful, terrible” he’d been and felt sorry for himself.

He added: “My friends told me: ‘I would kill to go on that show and you got paid for it. How dare you moan about it?”

Recently, he spent a week in Los Angeles, having meetings with TV production executives and plans to go back later this year.

“I like it and it’s really quite glamorous and exciting but I couldn’t live there,” he said.

“It swallows you up. It takes itself very seriously but as long as you are aware of it, you can survive it.

“Having said that, I would like to gig abroad more.”

He can’t resist adding: “Abroad more. Not Broadmoor”.

It’s easy to see why he was talent spotted by star-maker and X Factor guru Simon Cowell at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and propelled to TV fame.

He’s funny, of course, but it’s laced with boyish charm and self-deprecating humour, though it’s hard to tell how much is real and how much is the act.

Everything’s fair game, including his love life.

“I have a horrifically failed relationship behind me and it’s OK, you can laugh, that’s what I do.

“I talk about my horrific failures and people laugh at them.

“Last year, I was living with my girlfriend and we had a dog.

“Now I am single and living with my mates but it works perfectly because there’s loads of material,” he added.

He claims to be a social misfit, while casually dropping the names of the UK’s biggest music events and pop performers.

“I was at a party after the Brits and got left with Katie Perry.

“She wasn’t in a good mood and it was so painfully awkward, because I am not very good socially in those situations anyway.”

The comedy bug bit him aged 14 when, after watching a Jimmy Carr DVD, he fell in love with the idea of becoming a stand-up.

Four years later, in his first year of studying for a degree in publishing at Oxford Brookes University, he grabbed his chance.

Ironically, despite being surrounded by hundreds of fellow students, it was through Facebook he was invited to a student union comedy event.

He recalled: “I didn’t do any preparation, just ignored it until the day, when I scribbled something out in longhand.

“I talked about the student union building, how rubbish it looked and it was probably terrible but it went very well.”

After a year-and-a-half of performing and winning a few awards along the way, he quit his studies to focus full-time on comedy.

His mother and father were not pleased, until they saw him perform at the Cornerstone in Didcot.

He said: “Dad said to me afterwards ‘OK, you can hold everyone’.

“I think he was just worried for me because they had seen me early on when I was rubbish.”

Success has its perks, not least being able to introduce his mother to her long-time idol, Donny Osmond.

“She loves him,” he exclaimed.

“So, whenever she gets annoyed with me about something now, I say ‘remember mum, I’m the one who introduced you to Donny Osmond’.”

Although it seems he’s an old hand at performing to thousands of people at top venues such as Glastonbury, as he did on his mammoth 54-gig tour last year, things go wrong all the time.

Oxford Mail:

“You have to get over it and think on your feet.

“When people are yelling things at you, it’s tough but every comedian has to develop that survival skill.”

As for those massive audiences, from thousands at gigs, to millions watching him on TV, he has a sanguine approach.

“You just have to not think about it.

“And anyway, if half of those thousands like you, that’s better than two thirds of 20 people in a club liking you.”

He still loves performing stand-up in comedy clubs. What’s different now is that he is bumped up the bill because of his fame.

“You don’t have to prove yourself when you are telly as much as when you are starting out.” But he admits he had a few worries about going on tour with his own show last year.

“I was more nervous about that, because I had been doing comedy clubs since I was 19, so I know what works well and what doesn’t.

“But a 20 to 30-minute set, compared to an hour or hour-and-a-half on stage is very different.”

Failure, or the threat of it, is a constant possibility.

“I still die on my backside – everybody does sometimes,” he pointed out.

“Afterwards, you think ‘maybe I went in too aggressive at the start, or not aggressive enough’.

“The only time I beat myself up is when I can’t work out what went wrong and those are the ones I sit up at night thinking about.

“You still have shows where it doesn’t click, then the next night, you have an amazing one, so you go from crippling lack of self-confidence and self-hatred to thinking ‘Yeah, I am really good at this’.

“If you have two gigs in a night you can go from one state to the other in hours.”

Not all established comedians are encouraging to new talent, something he’s had to learn to deal with.

“Some of the older guys when you do a panel show with them are brutal and not very nice to be around but others are incredibly gracious.

“It’s like anything. I am just blagging my way.

“You have to take it in your stride and if it ends tomorrow...”