5 minutes with: Patrick Kielty – 'I've stumbled into happiness'

Never trust anyone who says they're a reluctant performer, but I was essentially bribed onto the stage by a games teacher at school. I was the goalie in the football team and I was quite a decent mimic, so he pulled me aside and said I had to do something for our Christmas concert or he'd drop me from the team. I didn't have much choice in the matter but it actually went well, which I suppose was the beginning of my path into comedy.

In my first year at university there was a freshers' week talent competition, and the lads I was living with thought it would be a good idea to enter because the prize was a keg of beer. So I did, and I won it – though of course by the time I got home the guys were at least halfway through the prize! So it was more persuasion than determination that set me on my way.

I started working at the Empire comedy club in Belfast in the early 90s, a time when comedy was the new rock 'n' roll. I was asked to compere there – I remember my very first night, Owen O'Neill and Lee Evans were on the bill. I said to Owen "I've only got ten minutes of material", and he replied "well you'll never have any more unless you do this every week". So I did – and soon I was walking round with proper money in my pocket for doing one gig a week. I felt I might be on to something.

The Comic Relief St Patrick's Day special in 1995 brought me to the attention of a much wider audience and that's when other doors began to open for me. But after a few years I started seeing myself being referred to as a presenter rather than a stand-up, and decided I needed to change things. I wrote a new stand-up show back in 2006 and began to do things like Live at the Apollo; so my Edinburgh show this year is really just a continuation of that mission to get back to my stand-up roots.

This is my Edinburgh debut, and I worry that other comics who've been doing it for years will look at me and think 'here he comes, swanning in to do a week – let's just see how this works out for him'. But the truth is Cat [Deeley, Kielty's wife] is filming in the States all summer and I don't want to be away from her for a month. Though I do feel a bit that by coming in at the end of the festival I'm like a substitute coming on when all the other players are knackered.

Most people get to my age and have a midlife crisis, but I'm not. So I've been asking myself 'am I right to be happy?', which forms the basis of the show. I spend a lot more time in America now. I like the fact that Americans don't have problems, they have issues, which are essentially problems they don't want to confront. So I wanted to talk about how I've stumbled into happiness but then also how I worry that it could all as easily fall apart. I put my own views out there then there's a bit at the end where there audience get to put theirs.

Unless you decide to make yourself happy in the moment you're in, nobody else is going to do that for you. Sometimes we get ourselves into worrying too much about what other people think, and most of the time it's either not right, or it's completely insignificant. The truth is that nobody really cares about you as much as they do themselves. So you have to learn how to make yourself happy. In a similar way you have to accept success when it comes your way, and enjoy it for what it is.

Patrick Kielty: Help is at Assembly George Square Studios from 24 to 30 August