JUSTIN Moorhouse will always be a crowd favourite locally, thanks to his association with Peter Kay.

He’s an actor, comedy quiz show panellist, radio DJ and writer, but first and foremost, he was, and still is, a stand-up comedian.

But on stage, at least, he is starting to break away from that link with Kay.

Unshaven and sporting the modern-day comedian’s regulation wear — thick-framed black specs — Moorhouse looks more like Keith from The Office than Young Kenny from Phoenix Nights.

“I’m morbidly obese,” he says. “That means I’m so fat I’m going to die — my aim is to be just obese.”

His show is dark. He describes the love of his life, the mother of his two children, as “all right... but that’s fine, that’s the best you can hope for”.

Then, his children. “I love my kids, because you have to and it sort of comes naturally — but they’re boring.”

He has a 13-year-old hoodie-wearing son. “It’s like living with an asthmatic Sith Lord.”

He also has a five-year-old daughter. “She’s my favourite,” he adds, to unbelieving howls of laughter, because he has broken one of the unwritten laws of parenting — you are not allowed to have a preference, even though everyone does.

It is a show that will certainly strike a chord with mums and dads.

Moorhouse isn’t a fresh-faced funky comic, he’s a grumpy young man — but he has a glint in his eye and a broad grin on his face, which allows him to get away with so much more — you can’t help but like him.

l Justin Moorhouse is appearing at the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, at 9.30pm, August 5 to 29.