“Hi, Dan?” “Er, yeah.” “How are you? I wasn’t sure who I’d be speaking to, Dan or Angelos?”

“Mmm, that’s a problem. Usually it would be Angelos, but that would be a bit weird now, wouldn’t it?

“Do you want me to get him?”

Welcome to the weird world of comedian Dan Renton Skinner.

Things like this happen all the time in Dan’s world, or they do since his comic creation, Anglo-Greek burger van owner, Angelos Neil Epithemiou, appeared on Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer’s hugely popular Shooting Stars.

The bone-dry, not-fussed, deadpan Angelos replaced comedian Johnny Vegas on the revival last year of Vic and Bob’s uniquely out-there comedy quiz, joining regular co-stars Matt Lucas, Ulrika Jonsson and Jack Dee.

“Life has got stranger and busier since Angelos took off, but that’s great,” says Dan, an established comedian who was nominated for a Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005 as part of the Dutch Elm Conservatoire.

“I’ve never had a plan – beyond get out there, get really good and get to as many people as possible – so I guess all the other things I’ve done have been stepping stones to Angelos.

“He makes me laugh, and other people seem to enjoy him, so it’s all good.

“This is all a bonus because I never ever expected to get to this place. Sure, I wanted to be popular, but I never actually thought I’d do it, so anything that happens now is all a bonus.”

Angelos has been out and about a lot since Shooting Stars put him in the nation’s living rooms – and now he’s making his first visits to Dorset to play Bernard’s Camedy Coboret at Verwood Hub tonight and Funnybone comedy club at Centre Stage, Westbourne next Friday.

“He’ll turn up on time and get on stage, but he won’t know why he’s been booked and it’s all a bit of a hassle for him. He’s really not all that bothered, but as he’s there he’s asked a few people what he should do in a comedy club so he knows a few rules to follow.

“He’s got two or three jokes, which he ekes out over 20 minutes or so, plays some music, does a bit of dancing and has a serious section where he chats about serious stuff. That’s Angelos in a nutshell really.”

It turns out Angelos is an amalgam of a few people who have crossed Dan’s path over the years.

“I don’t even know I’m doing it really, but there was one base character that set me on this path.

“He’d always rather be somewhere else – if he ever won an award he’d be like: ‘Oh, right, I’ll just fling it with the others then.’ It’s very British. I really like him, though. You have to really love a character if you’re going to take him out.

“You can get away with saying so much more when you’re in character. It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s just Angelos, he does what he wants!’ “It’s been like learning a language, like learning French, so I’ve learned the language of Angelos and now I can take him anywhere and into any situation and know I can handle it.”

Which is an act of supreme confidence – for which Angelos’s creator owes a huge debt to Reeves and Mortimer.

“It’s a showbiz cliché, but they really are so warm and so generous.

“There isn’t another show on telly that’s so well-established and long-running that would take an unknown act and let them do what they liked.

“Bob just said, ‘Well, we like what you do. Everyone else is going to have to get used to it and catch up.’ “That was basically all the brief I had. It was like when they started – they got six episodes on the strength of someone at Channel Four seeing a gig in a pub. We hadn’t seen anything like it in those days, it was like punk rock.

“And there’s still nobody like them. The Mighty Boosh tread a similar path, but they’re young good-looking guys, while Jim and Bob, well... aren’t!”