Sara Pascoe on Success Story tour before shows in Middlesbrough, Hull, Leeds and Harrogate

“Moving the goalposts all the time is a recipe for being miserable, actually, because it means you never really appreciate what you've got, you always just want more or different. And you do have to find parts of your life where you're like: ‘Oh, it's really nice walking the dog. It's really great having a night off to go to the cinema’. We have to have that balance. Well, I certainly do.”

It is a subject Pascoe explores in her show Success Story, which she continues touring this year with dates in Yorkshire.

The show takes punters on a journey from Pascoe’s desire to be famous at 14 to anecdotes about how she “auditioned for (Michael) Barrymore, scared Pete Burns and ruined Hugh Grant’s birthday”. She examines what success really is with tales of her ambition and “weird stuff that’s happened” as a result of being on television, such as meeting Buzz Aldrin and Jeremy Clarkson sharing his colourful thoughts on her dog. Things have changed a bit since the birth of her son, Theodor, last year with husband and fellow comedian Steen Raskopoulos.

She tells The Yorkshire Post: “When I started doing IVF, they kept talking about ‘success rates’ and for 40 years, success was all about career stuff for me. And it was when I was going through it (IVF) that I thought a lot about the different versions of success. And now having a child, my ideas of success are really different.

“The second half (of the show) is a lot about infertility and being a mum to a baby. But I guess the thing is, when you have a child, your idea of success for them isn't what you have as success for yourself. You just want them to be happy and well and don't really care about those other things. I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, whereas when you really just adore someone you just want them to be as happy as possible and really comfortable.”

Pascoe, 41, was born in Dagenham and aspired to become an actress but realised her calling was stand-up.

But in addition to that life, Pascoe has written and starred in her own BBC2 sitcom Out Of Her Mind and hosted The Great British Sewing Bee, BBC’s Last Woman On Earth, Dave’s Comedians Giving Lectures and Comedy Central’s Guessable, among others. She also wrote and performed the BBC Radio 4 series Modern Monkey and the BBC2 short Sara Pascoe vs Monogamy, which was inspired by her first book Animal. Her second book, Sex Power Money, was a Sunday Times bestseller, and the accompanying podcast of the same name won millions of listens and multiple award nominations during its run. Pascoe has now written a novel about the inner monologue of a woman who works in a pub, with a release date to be announced. She has, of course, also appeared on numerous comedy panel shows. Her acclaimed last country-wide live tour, LadsLadsLads, culminated in two shows at the London Palladium which was also filmed for the BBC2 stand-up special. Career success, then, has not evaded her.

Perhaps some advice from her jazz musician father, Derek Pascoe, played a role. After university, she told him that she would do a teaching qualification to get by. He replied: “Don’t do a teaching qualification. Make it work or starve to death.”

Pascoe says: “I didn't realise at the time how rare it was, especially coming from a working class background, it wasn't like we had money and so there was safety in trying to work in the arts or in a creative field. But because my dad was a musician, when I told him I was going to do a teaching qualification - the kind of thing where most parents would go: ‘Oh phew, okay, she is going to be able to afford her rent’ - it worried my dad because he had seen too many people going: ‘Well, if you've got something else that will actually pay you properly, you have less desperation to make sure you get a gig to pay your rent’. So that's what he meant and in some ways it's really bad advice, but there is a logic to it, where you go: ‘If this is what you want to do, then commit to it. Don't have a back-up’. But yeah, I'd be very wary of saying that to anyone else's children because I think their parents would be furious.”

Success Story is, funnily enough, billed as her biggest tour to date. But that sense of simply wanting to be known for the sake of it has “really dissolved,” says Pascoe. “When I started working on panel shows and TV, I felt quite greedy - everything you do, you then want something bigger or you want to be rebooked, it's never enough to just do it. You keep thinking: ‘Oh my god, that's so great, I'm going to be on Have I Got News For You’. But everything then also felt like an audition for the next time, or the bigger thing, or you’d see one of your peers doing something and you think you want that as well.

“But it did settle down in my late 30s. I was worried I would always be hungry for more and actually I became really, really happy and content with what I had.”

That’s partly because she’s able to appreciate things like having a dog, or getting a mortgage on a flat, “which actually really calms me down,” she says. “I’ve got a base, I've got a dog, I really like my life. This is enough. And when I say enough I know it’s a huge amount, but I was glad because, again, I know people who are very unhappy because their ambition never stops.”

Sara Pascoe’s Success Story heads to Middlesbrough Town Hall on January 28; Leeds City Varieties on March 5; Hull City Hall on March 17; and Harrogate Royal Hall on April 21.