The 52-year-old star comes to Stokes Bay and Southsea Folk & Roots Festivals this month with his beloved combo The Bad Shepherds. He tells me how the transition from funnyman to rising folk star came about.

'I was 19 when punk arrived and it was very exciting.
'Before that I used to be a bit of a "folky". Well, we didn't really know it was folk – bands like Fairport Convention and Lindisfarne were all in the charts at the time,' recalls Ade.

'Once punk arrived, I kind of turned my back on all that and really enjoyed punk until I was playing the Sheffield City Hall.

'There are two gigs in the one venue and they share a sort of dressing room corridor and, during my interval, I could hear this music in the other venue and it was John McCusker and Kate Rusby and it was just fantastic. That was about seven years ago when I got the folk bug back.'

It was a chance purchasing of a mandolin that led to Ade playing punk songs on a folk instrument and he soon became fascinated with the 'amalgam of punk and folk' – two of his favourite things, he says.

He hopes his band, formed early last year, will tour Europe and America in the future.

They recently released a live album, Yan, Tyan, Tethera, Methera!
Aside from Ade, who sings and plays 'thrash mandolin', The Bad Shepherds also features Maartin Allcock (twelve string guitar, bass, vocals), Troy Donockley (Uillean pipes, cittern, whistles, vocals) and Andy Dinan (fiddle).

Devoted family man Ade, who has previously toured with The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, has three daughters, Ella, Beatrice and Freya, with award-laden wife comedienne, writer and actress Jennifer Saunders, who he met on The Comic Strip series. Ella, 23, will also play Stokes Bay Festival on the same day as her dad's band.

Fame and fortune came calling for Bradford-born Ade in hit BBC comedy The Young Ones (1982 to 1984) where he played punk Vyvyan Basterd opposite Nigel Planer, Rik Mayall, Christopher Ryan and Alexei Sayle. The series became a cult success and I ask Ade if he misses all the madness and mayhem – things seeming more sedate these days.

'I don't think things are calmer or more sedate particularly. All that madness takes an awful lot of organisation, you know?' says Ade. 'It's not nearly as mad as it looks.

'I've got a feeling at the minute that's very like the feeling I had when I first started out with Rik. We started doing our stuff and we just do it for fun and we have a good laugh and, luckily, it's turning over enough cash to live on. So, if anything, I'm back where I was, which is very nice,' he explains.

During his popularity with The Young Ones, the cast enjoyed a number one hit with a cover of Living Doll featuring Sir Cliff Richard.

'We were very strident, young, political comics at the time and Cliff had just been playing some city in South Africa during apartheid, which we all frowned upon and we took it upon ourselves to tell him why,' he sniggers. 'He didn't talk to us much after that.'

Ade's foray into comedy started when he met Rik Mayall whilst studying drama at Manchester Uni. They moved to London in 1979 and after lauded stints at The Comedy Store as 20th Century Coyote, they went on to co-star in hits such as The Young Ones, Filthy Rich & Catflap and Bottom as well as performing live dates.

'Rick and I both just thought we were going to be actors and we turned up at Manchester University drama department and found that everyone took themselves very serious and, being of a non-serious mind, we found it easy to take the p*** out of them,' Ade explains.

'Then we heard you could get your Equity cards down at this pub doing lunchtime theatre. So we thought, "Let's make up a couple of plays and go get our Equity cards". We started making stuff up and it was just kind of funny and, in the end, we became comedians.'

Ade, who makes his panto debut this year in Canterbury, reveals despite the ongoing success it was his decision to end the partnership in 2003.
'I'd had enough,' he says.

'I'm terrifically fond of Rik and I'm proud of everything we've done, I just wanted to do something else. It's like, I like Caviar, but I couldn't eat Caviar every day of the week for every year of my life.'

Ade cites being on stage with The Who in 1996, as Ace Face/Bellboy in The Who's performance of Quadrophenia in London's Hyde Park, as one of the highpoints of his career to date. He's also directed music videos for The Pogues, Sandie Shaw and Squeeze and published a comic novel entitled THe Gobbler.

Last year he appeared in and co-created Teenage Kicks for ITV and has signed up for a diverse array of roles on TV, including appearances in Holby City and Jonathan Creek and on stage including The Rocky Horror Show and Waiting For Godot.

One half of one of the most successful couples in British entertainment, Ade and wife Jennifer married in 1985 and are famously guarded about their life together. I can't resist pushing for an insight into their life behind closed doors, but journo-savvy Ade's immediately on to me.

'Ah, you see this is why we have a long marriage – because we don't talk about it! We don't talk about our private life as a kind of commodity for the papers,' he playfully slams me.

It's a safe bet Ade and Jennifer don't need the money, but I'm still curious why the reluctance to cash in on their joint popularity by doing the odd magazine shoot.

'Because that's not what we're about,' he muses. 'We're a couple, you know? We don't have a 'showbiz relationship', we have a private, personal relationship which is about ogling what's for tea and what's on the telly tonight and can we be bothered to go out! We don't go to many openings and we don't do red carpets much. People make that decision. Some people love living like that but they usually hate living like that by the end because their lives are a soap opera.

'Less is more,' he wryly continues. 'You keep people thinking, "Ah, I wonder what they're like?". It's better than them being told – better than seeing a picture of our living room with us sitting there, pretending like it's always that tidy!' he laughs.

The couple live primarily in central London and have a farm in Devon.
When I chat to Ade, Jennifer is in Australia with comedy partner Dawn French on their French and Saunders farewell tour. So is there a lot of texting between the couple? No. He proudly informs me they Skype.

Ade recently came second in ITV's Hell's Kitchen where a crowd of celebs put their culinary competence to the test under the watchful eye of no-nonsense chef Marco Pierre White.

He says there's a lot to consider before an undertaking like Hell's Kitchen.

'I've done a kind of benign thing like that before, Fame Academy, and the offer came, and you get lots of offers for these reality shows, and I don't mind reality shows – I watch them enough!' he jokes.

'When any offer comes in you think, "Would I enjoy it?", and, "Could I be any good at it?", "Could I do what I do inside that format?" And I thought I could and I thought I did. I managed to find a role to play. It was quite gruelling at times – the tiredness gets you down,' he says of his time on the show.

'Most people who do things like Hell's Kitchen end up being the red-top fodder, don't they? But you can do it and not be that.
'You just have to not go to nightclubs and get out of cabs with your knickers down! You just have to live a regular life.'

Ade says he wasn't at all disappointed to lose the competition to 66-year-old ex-Dynasty star Linda Evans.

'I love Linda, she's a lovely woman,' he says warmly. 'We're still in touch – she's a good lady.'

Being kept in so late in the show meant he missed wife Jennifer being presented with a BAFTA, but Ade cheekily admits every cloud has a silver lining.

'She was alright about it and we did manage to do a double of hogging BBC 1 and ITV on the same night!'

You can see Adrian Edmondson and The Bad Shepherds at Stokes Bay Festival on Sunday and Southsea Folk and Roots Festival on Sunday August 30. Tickets for Southsea cost £44 for the weekend and £14 for the day from southseafolkfestival.co.uk.