‘It made sense of a lot of things’: Johnny Vegas on ADHD, stand-up burnout and Ideal's comeback

“It’s about another of Michael’s pastimes,” he concedes. “I’ll always be trading under the name of Johnny Vegas, but I’m doing less comedy now, so Johnny is getting squeezed out as Michael comes into play. I love being Johnny, but it’s nice to take people by surprise and show my artistic, creative side. I don’t just go from pub to pub, making people’s dreams come true!”

Like Channel 4’s Johnny Vegas: Carry On Glamping, his new series depicts the establishment of a genuine enterprise, telegenic charm and ballast provided by Vegas’s inquisitive, acquisitive nature and his double act with long-suffering assistant Bev Dixon. It came about as Vegas was considering thinning out his own collection, and the production company all but dared him to do so. By way of demonstration, he’s speaking to me from his home in St Helens, seated in front of a Star Wars pinball machine, a neon champagne-bottle wall fixture and some faintly terrifying dolls.

“I’ve only ever bought to keep,” he explains. “I’ve traded with other people and I’d started befriending other dealers, but would anybody out there share my taste? It was exciting to go shopping for a living without getting into trouble for bringing another bizarre item home.”

His children – 22-year-old Michael from his first marriage and nine-year-old Tom from his second – are used to it. Tom apparently told him that if his house continued like this, it could look like a municipal dump. Vegas erupts in that familiar wheezing laugh. “It’s beautiful chaos! My biggest fear is getting hit by a bus and my children selling things for a quid at a car-boot sale. I’ve got a lot of stuff, possibly too much, but everything has a resale value or is something, like the bricks and scrap metal in the garden that I’ll use for my art. I’m not holding on to stacks of newspapers.”

Nonetheless, he acknowledges, there is also a psychological reasoning behind his acquisitions. “Alzheimer’s has been rife in my family, so having constant memories is something I find important. I know the story behind every object. My house is a visual diary of my life.”

That life changed significantly in 2023 when, at the age of 52, he was diagnosed with ADHD – an impact he explores in the forthcoming Channel 4 documentary Johnny Vegas: Art, ADHD and Me.

“Personally, it made sense of a lot of things,” he explains. “Talking to other people about it, as well. There are behavioural traits I now understand around timekeeping, tidiness, hitting deadlines, not getting overwhelmed at the start of the day and being motivated in the direction you need to be. ADHD is like having a head full of butterflies, and sometimes you’ll catch one. It’s good to share and not beat myself up about not doing something, but I don’t want to trade off it or use it to make excuses.”

It also means that, when I suggest he could be the latest self-made mogul to join Dragons’ Den, he’s spluttering into his tea. “I am the least entrepreneurial person! With ADHD, you’re always moving on to the next idea. I’m not very practical but I don’t fear failure, I fear not giving something a go – I just need people around me like Bev to bring these ideas to fruition.”

One such idea is the stage revival of Ideal, Graham Duff’s cult 2005–11 BBC3 sitcom, in which he’ll reprise the role of Mancunian weed dealer Moz two decades after its launch.

“This one’s for the fans,” he says. “So many people were coming up to us, going: ‘Love that show, why can’t I see it?’ So we finally got it back on iPlayer and thought, after seeing the success of Early Doors on stage, we could investigate it more. We never got to finish the story on the telly.”

Vegas’s own story began in St Helens, but a happy childhood was scarred by a difficult time at secondary school and then a violent attack in his late teens. “For a while, I became quite agoraphobic,” he recalls. “It really sent me into myself. Getting to college and working behind the bar gave me a new confidence in myself. I knew I could entertain people, singing and messing about, then I saw Dominic Holland doing a gig in St Helens and comedy made sense to me, that whole notion of: how can somebody be so consistently funny for so long? I understood it, became obsessed with it, realised I’d been absorbing it for years – all my VHS tapes were comedy shows recorded off the telly. Johnny awakened at college and I started sneaking out to do stand-up – you only find out you’re funny when you start gigging.”

Does comedy still make sense to him? “I remember Bob Monkhouse interviewing me years ago, and it was astounding how up to date he was, talking about all of us new comics with such exuberance rather than going: it was better in my day. I don’t keep on top of it like I should because I’ve got other things going on, but I’ll never resent comedy for evolving.”

The occasional compering gig aside, it has been three years since Johnny went on tour – he’s in no great hurry to return. “Has Johnny had his time? I don’t know. I’d have to wake up and really want to do it, because if I planned it, I’d be anxious about it. You only ever want to do stand-up when your heart is completely in it.”

Vegas’s act often involved retreating to a potter’s wheel to throw some clay on stage. Far from a gimmick, it was instead an opportunity to pursue a passion hidden in plain sight: he has a degree in art and ceramics from Middlesex University, his work has been acquired by the V&A and, over lockdown, he started on a display for Liverpool’s Walker Gallery.

“Art is a part of my life again, thank God. Like stand-up, it’s not done by committee, it’s you and your idea, and I don’t mind standing or falling by those. There’s also a permanence, that this will outlive me, this will be in somebody’s home. The feedback from the Walker has been incredible, people saying it affected them, sharing details about their mental health. I take real pride in that.”

Still, it wasn’t the art, the sitcoms or even the stand-up that brought the sort of fame where people do double-takes in the street. “It’s bizarre what can make you a household name,” he says of his pairing with Monkey, a knitted puppet voiced by Ben Miller. Their adverts for ITV Digital and then PG Tips eventually even made him a household name in his own household: son Tom was thrilled to find one advert online in which they made a cup of tea using a digger. The campaign has recently been revived with Emily Atack, but Vegas – or the more reflective and contented Michael Pennington, at least – bears no malice to the Rivals star.

“Good luck to her! Not to Monkey, though. We’ve had words. I’ve sat upstairs with my Monkey, just shouting at him: how could you do this to me?”

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