VETERAN stand-up comedian Mark Steel still has an axe to grind – some 30-odd years after he first started to grind it.

The axe (or the grinder that sharpens it?) is as sharp as ever though and his tour, Every Little Thing’s Gonna Be Alright, is storming venues up and down the country. It stops off at Pontio in Bangor on Saturday, February 24.

According to the comedian, “not long ago, it seemed highly unlikely the UK would vote to leave the EU; we had a reasonable opposition to the Tory government; Donald Trump was a buffoon who surely wasn’t going to beat Hilary Clinton”.

Steel, meanwhile, was living “the married suburban ideal”. A year later, however, “it’s all gone horribly wrong”.

“But don’t worry,” Steel says. “Every Little Thing’s Gonna Be Alright.”

Steel’s sell-out show, Who Do I Think I Am?, revealed that his natural father was a world backgammon champion.

Now the star of Radio 4’s Mark Steel’s in Town and newspaper columnist of the year is back on the road with a new show. He has written and presented many series of Mark Steel’s In Town on BBC Radio 4 (the eighth series is currently transmitting at 6.30pm on Tuesdays) and toured with it around the UK.

He has presented the BAFTA-nominated Mark Steel Lectures for BBC2 and is a regular on BBC One’s Have I Got News For You and Radio 4’s The News Quiz.

He’s also appeared on BBC2’s QI and Room 101. He has written several acclaimed books, including Reasons To Be Cheerful and What’s Going On, and he writes a weekly column for The Independent, for which he won columnist of the year at the Press Awards in 2015.

He recently started filming his columns for The Independent and they’re proving hugely popular.

Further information and tickets are available online at www.offthekerb.co.uk and www.marksteelinfo.co.uk