FROM her soccer mum saloon to her penchant for foot spas and real ale, it is fair to say Lucy Porter has fallen drastically short of the rock 'n' roll life of the bride of Morrissey she once pictured living.

If she ever had any doubts she would be anything but a monumental disappointment to her bright-eyed and rather deluded 16-year-old self, she was put to rights when she was asked to pen a letter to her inner teen by a women's magazine.

Young Lucy knew exactly what she wanted and being a monogamous, cat-loving, meat-eating, caravanning yummy mummy (albeit an acclaimed comic to boot) was never part of her well laid-out plan.

Needless to say this stock-taking exercise was not the ego-boost the harried mother-of-two, just fresh from sorting a pile of socks when she picks up the phone, was anchoring after. Though it certainly gave her a good chuckle and a nifty opener for her new show, Consequences.

"In some ways I'm quite glad I didn't marry Morrissey now. I think I might have dodged a bullet there and Morrissey as well," she deadpans. "It all came out of this letter I had to write to give myself advice I would have needed at that age. It made me think about the way you end up doing things you never thought you would. You have to make compromises along the way. But would I really want to be married to Morrissey, be living in New York and driving a classic car? There's no way of knowing. I would have been horrified to leave the house wearing my husband's old painting jumper, not having brushed my hair for three days. In my 20s I was getting my nails painted and spray tans," laughs the 44-year-old at the recollection. "The problem is that there are various sides of your personality and you end up disappointing all of them.

"At the end of the show I read a letter from myself in ten years' time. If people want to know what the future holds, they should come to my show. I'm the Mystic Meg of stand-up comedy," she quips.

While a tiny part of her wishes she ticked some of the boxes on teen Lucy's inventory for success, scribbling down advice to her naive and ambitious 16-year-old self, she reached a pleasant if unexpected conclusion. Despite being an undeniable failure in her own youthful estimation, she was blissfully happy with her 'sedate' life.

"Although on the one hand I think I would have expected to be much cooler than I am, the beauty of age is that with it comes acceptance. I'm quite happy to make the best of what I've got. I was obsessed with classic cars, but I've ended up driving a Ford Fusion, this old lady car but she's the pride and joy of my life."

That being said, she knows her sub-par performance (or appearance at all for that matter) in the semi-final of University Challenge defending her Alma Mater, Manchester, would probably have left her adolescent self hanging her head in shame.

"I didn't get nervous in the first round and our team did quite well. We were all so shocked to be there, we just got on with it. Then we got into the semi-final and started to panic and we fell apart. The most annoying bit was that there were questions on Indie music. That was my special subject and I ended up not doing well at all," she sighs. "Louis Theroux was in the same series but I never got to meet him," she gets to the real crux of her frustration.

As can be gleaned from her candid answers and utter lack of self-preservation or filter, when it comes to poking fun at the workaday and mundane, she finds her own existence and shortcomings to be an endless source of laughs. In short she is "the target of [her] own shows."

"I'm a comedian, we have a profound sense of own ridiculousness," she observes. "It's hard to take yourself seriously when you're slightly unusual physically. I'm 4ft11. My husband is massive, 6ft5, so we both have that thing of being outside the normal range of human height."

In Consequences, she takes a sharper aim at herself than usual, she admits, perhaps out of guilt. After picking mercilessly on her childhood friend Marie in her last show, painting her in the process as an razor-tongued ice queen - with a visceral dislike of her pal's bairns - she subconsciously "got revenge for her by taking it out on" herself. Although, Lucy is not quite as repentant as she'd like to be.

"Mostly, my husband takes the place of Marie in this show," she adds sheepishly.

She makes another small exception to her self-deprecating rule in the tour to bow down to the uncontested master of the ridiculous and moronic: Donald Trump. Politics after all, in one form or another, always find their way into the left-winger's routines.

She may have a fondness for foot spas and caravanning but some of her best stunts and rather grandiose stage entrances, which include but are not limited to, rolling in atop a washing machine and crowd-surfing back to her dressing room, would no doubt ingratiate her with her thrill-seeking young self. While the machine is “retired”, immaturity and youthful vim are not quite out of the picture just yet.

She has not outgrown her habit of openly bribing fans with sweets and other "loyalty bonuses".

"I always bring sweets, drinks and an optimistic attitude - at this point I will use any tactic no matter how low or pathetic to get people to come,” she stifles a giggle. “And in exchange I hope they will carry me out of the venue at shoulder height!"

Lucy Porter will be at the Arts Centre on February 9. To book go to swindontheatres.co.uk or call 01793 524481.