NOW that Frank Skinner is in his seventh decade he is as prone as the next comedian to time's odd sliding tackle. There are aches and pains, he says, and maybe there’s the odd night when, he says, he hears "the sound of the shovel hitting the soil at three o'clock in the morning."

But, really, he is at home in his body as he’s ever been. "I think I was probably a 60-year-old man in waiting for most of my life,” he admits. “Even as a child I had something of the man in my sixties about me. So, I probably feel more at home in myself now than I've ever done."

We have arrived at late(ish)-period Skinner, the 62-year-old who has become a father in extra time (his son Buzz Cody was born when Skinner was 55), who is now post-Room 101, who still turns up on the radio every week (I used to listen to him every Saturday morning on Virgin when I was taking my daughter to acting classes. I miss him now that she's stopped and Skinner is on Absolute, but I'm presuming he's still playing The Fall every week) and who is in Edinburgh this month to remind us that despite a 21st century spent mostly on the telly, that he is first and foremost a stand-up.

There have been other Frank Skinners. You may remember Serious Frank, in the earlier years of this century, the one who might turn up on Newsnight and Question Time and Radio 4 talking about politics and faith. Some 20 years ago or thereabouts there was ubiquitous Frank, the guy who was never off the telly ("I had a seven-year contract with ITV where I knew what I'd be doing in September in six years' time," he recalls). The best-paid bloke on the telly (£3m a year supposedly).

TV Frank overlapped with, and was the result of, Frank the New Lad, the bloke (and bloke is the operative word) who presented Fantasy Football with his mate David Baddiel, supported West Brom, sang Three Lions every time England won a game of football and made jokes about porn. The perfect comedian for the Loaded generation.

And before that, well, there was Frank the unemployed alcoholic.

This morning, as he sits in the top room of his home in London, sun streaming through the window, we will touch on most of them.

His show in Edinburgh is titled Showbiz, partly, he says, because some of the stories are showbiz-related, partly because he likes the juxtaposition of the word Showbiz, spelt out in big pink letters on his poster, alongside a picture "of my raddled old face".

As for what to expect if you go to see him? "It's so easy for the new comics who can say things like: 'It's about my relationship with my dying grandfather' and they'll do a whole show. Mine is basically about me and things that have happened to me that I think are funny. I'm sort of old school, where the joke is the thing if you like. That's what it's about."

Even though he was badly burnt during the credit crunch when he lost millions from an investment in the American investment bank AIG which had to be bailed out by the US government, Skinner doesn’t have to do this.

"The truth is I don't need the money. I'm doing it for love really. There are nights that go better than others and there are bits that don't work, as ever with stand-up, but the pursuit of those moments where you honestly feel you could step from the stage and hover over the heads of the audience on sheer joy ... The pursuit of that keeps me going."

When was the last time that happened, Frank?

"I think it was Friday."

Edinburgh has played a central role in the Skinner story, of course. "It's got lots of brilliant associations," he admits. "It was incredibly significant."

He first came up in 1987 in a play of all things, where he appeared as a hard-bitten Cockney copper. That was when he saw, rather late in the day it might be said, his first example of alternative comedy. It was something of a revelation for him. “I didn’t know comedy could be like this,” he recalls. “Because on the telly in those days it was Little and Large. This felt very different."

Soon he was trying his hand at stand-up, but it was Edinburgh again, he says, where he worked out how to do it properly. A five-minute gig at the Fringe Club. "This was the first year I did stand up. For the guy on before me, people had gone up onto the balcony and were pouring beer on his head and making flyers into paper aeroplanes and throwing them at him.

"I shuffled through a carpet of paper aeroplanes and beer and I was terrified, and I went on and I spoke like I had never really spoken on stage before. I went after the audience a bit and I stormed it. That was when I really thought: 'You can do this.'"

In 1991 he then won the Perrier Award (as it was then) for "doing this."

"It's hard to overstate its significance. In those days if you won the Perrier even at the celebratory party after you would have TV executives asking you to come in for meetings. It did open a lot of doors.

"It didn't make you a better comic. It makes you a better-known comic."

This year his partner Cath and their son are coming up to spend time with him. He'll take them to the castle and do all the touristy things. But that's what he does normally, anyway, he says. "I do museums, a couple of art galleries, three or four things at the book festival. I always go and see the Lewis Chessmen at the museum. I love them.”

Over the last couple of decades, the range of Skinner's interests has become more visible publicly. Initially there was a disconnect between this version of the comedian and New Lad version, the man in the England shirt, slagging off footballers' haircuts and talking about his sex life. Which, if anything, reflects how a cartoon image can overwhelm everything else perhaps.

Or maybe it shows that irony – because the New Lads’ obsession with birds, booze and football supposedly came with a glaze of winking irony – doesn't always translate.

He’s happy to defend the phenomenon while suggesting he wasn’t a fully paid-up member.

"The New Lad thing, I was part of it, and I was not. I must have been one of the few New Lads who was teetotal.

“It's an interesting thing, the New Lad, because it's seen now ... It's associated basically with Elizabeth Hurley in a basque and a drunken bloke in a football shirt standing next to her. But if you look at those Loaded magazines suddenly young men were talking about books and film and fashion and stuff in a really rich, interesting way. There was a lot more to it than the pin-ups."

Well, yes, but the pin-ups – Liz appeared in the first issue of Loaded wearing a pair of see-through knickers – were also very much the point. The New Lad was a reaction to the eighties New Man, a more raucous, testosterone-heavy, juvenile alternative for men who didn’t want to grow up.

But maybe that’s the New Man in me talking. Skinner suggests the New Lad is ripe for reassessment. "I saw a thing in the Sunday Times magazine. It was all these black and white pictures of skinheads looking very romantic and glamorous and it was an article about how they loved ska music and stuff like that.

"I look back on the skinhead movement in the West Midlands as almost exclusively associated with violence in various forms, often racially motivated. But people are able to glamorise and look back on it wistfully. You don't read anything about the New Lads unless it's a passing attack."

As he said, Skinner says he never quite felt part of it because of the not drinking. What he does align himself with is alternative comedy, "and we had this thing of non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic comedy and we policed each other, if you like."

There might be some who are raising their eyebrows at this moment, but he thinks his comedy is in opposition to what came before.

“I did a few mainstream clubs in Birmingham when I started out. Racist comedy was absolutely the norm. Every act was doing it and when blokes talked about their wives or women in any way it was always derogatory."

Today, of course, you say something and it's a Twitter storm within seconds. Ask Jo Brand.

"I think the problem now is the gun has been turned not on people who are doing racist comedy in clubs, but on fellow politically correct people looking for more and more minor offences, slips of the tongue,” Skinner suggests. “It's become a bit of a parlour game. You can say the wrong thing."

Still, this is not the 1970s anymore, he says. "When West Brom had three black players in the seventies every week was monkey noises and bananas on the pitch from opposition fans. If that happened now it would be an absolute major event. That's progress."

The reason that Skinner wasn't drinking through the New Lad years was he'd done enough of that in the years before he became a comedian. The first half of his life was the story of a smart working-class kid from the Midlands who got an English degree at Birmingham Poly and a Masters from Warwick University. But he spent his late twenties on the dole and drinking sherry for breakfast.

On his 30th birthday his best friend's girlfriend asked him: "What's it like to be 30 and on the scrapheap?"

"I suppose I hadn't thought of it in those very straightforward terms," he says when I bring it up. "But also, to misquote one of your fellow countrymen 'what a gift to gie us, to see ourselves as others see us.’

"In a way being seen on the scrapheap hurt more than being on it, if you know what I mean. But I think it was a reasonable observation. I was on the dole. I had a drink problem."

He pauses and then tells me a more recent story. "I was sitting outside a cafe and a homeless bloke with a blanket over his shoulder came up to me and asked me: 'Can I have some money. I'm 27 and my life is over.'

"And you're not really supposed to do this, but I said: 'Look, when I was 27 I was an alcoholic and I was out of work, blah, blah, blah. And I turned it round.

"I don't think you're supposed to give life coaching to people who are asking for change, but I do think it's true. I was pretty well in the gutter and then turned it round."

He asks himself a question. "If I could have changed it would I have been in the gutter? Would it have been a more gradual and enjoyable ramp? I don't know. David Baddiel told me that he went straight from Cambridge into being a professional comedian. His work career before comedy was two days working in a second-hand bookshop.

"Now, although I did some jobs that I really hated doing, my God, they really make you appreciate it when you get a job that you love doing."

What did it take to change himself from that man he had been? Fear, he says. Fear and the flu. "I got the flu and couldn't keep any fluids or solids for about three days. I hadn't gone three days without a drink for years and that made me think it was possible. Now, if I hadn't got the flu would I ever actually have got around to it? I'd had a couple of scary incidents. I was blind for about 20 minutes from drink. And I also had that spiders on the ceiling thing. And those frightened me.

"So, more than a big motivational quest to go forward, I think I was more trying to just climb out of a dark hole that I felt was getting more frightening with each binge."

Do you still dream about drinking? "You know what? I used to dream about drinking, on average about twice a week for 20-odd years. Since I've become a father, I have not had that dream. And I think it's probably because I can't equate the two things.

"My dad always drank. I do remember that feeling of tension in the house from about 10.40pm onwards as to what mood he would be in when he got back from the pub. And though I loved my dad very much, I don't want to recreate that at home."

His dad, he says, "had a lot more testosterone than I did. I really saw him as a rock. Literally. If there was a problem in my street my dad would go round and threaten them. 'I'll put my fist right through your chest,' was one of his catchphrases. I don't really have that in my game. It sounds a bit scary, but it was very secure-making to have that kind of man running the household.

"But he was also very funny and sang a lot and encouraged me to go into showbiz. He said: 'Don't work in a factory like I did. Go and do something more exciting.'"

Of course, when it comes to fatherhood it’s Skinner's turn now. Does having a young son keep you young, Frank? "Well, I find myself crawling about on the floor being a crocodile, which is something I don't do much ... Since I stopped drinking, at least."

I remind him of what Martin Amis once said. Before 40, you never think about death. After 40, you can't understand why you ever thought about anything else. Now that you're in your sixties is it a pressing concern?

"What, death? I never ever thought about it until I had a kid and then you get a sense of leaving something important unattended, which obviously you don't want to do. But I don't know what can be done to avoid that. You've just got to keep your nerve and your fingers crossed. I'd like to get him through to university.

"I don't want to let my child down, I suppose. That is the dilemma of the older dad."

We are back to ageing again. He has given up on exercise, he says (“I’m thinking I will have to pay for it at some point.”) And TV has kind of given up on him. With Room 101 being cancelled last year, we are, repeats apart, in something of a post-Skinner TV world. He doesn't seem overly bothered. His years on TV, he says, "were great for accumulating cash and security. But I didn't really come into the job for security. I came into sort of avoid that.

"I don't know what the next phone call is going to be. I don't have any resolutions about: 'I'm not doing that,' or 'I am doing that,' or 'I want to do this.' Career-wise, I like being slightly blown in the wind.

"I suppose my ambition it to keep having those nights where I feel like I can levitate."

Frank Skinner: Showbiz is on at the George Aikman Theatre, Assembly George Square until August 18.