WATCH: comedy ventriloquist Steve Hewlett shows his skills

Accompanying him will be his right-hand man Arthur Lager – all part of the success Steve has enjoyed since coming fourth on Britain’s Got Talent in 2013. For the show Seve is promising pure ventriloquism in a night of laughter, characters and audience participation.

Steve has performed all around the world, from birthday parties to holiday resorts, from cruise ships to the Royal Albert Hall, from Bognor Regis to Branson, Missouri, USA. His big break was BGT ten years ago: “I was a wild card in the finals and I came fourth in the competition. It was such a great experience. It has opened so many doors for me. It has been fantastic. I actually went to America with The Osmonds for a couple of years which was brilliant.”

Steve moved to Eastbourne in the year 2000 to work in a summer season at the Hippodrome: “I met a dancer. All entertainers meet dancers! She is an Eastbourne girl and now we've got two little Eastbourne girls, aged 11 and six. We are real Eastbourne people now with lots of friends here.

“My thing is comedy ventriloquism and I've been doing this for about 35 years. It was in 1987 that I saw a vent on TV called Jimmy Tamley. He won New Faces in 1987 and he is one of the best in the business. He is a really great ventriloquist who was a really big influence on me. He is still working on the cruise ships and we're great friends. I roadied for him for about ten years and everything I learned about the business I learned from being with him and watching him doing his shows all those times a week. We still swap ideas and we godfather to each other’s children. We share stories and we are just the best mates.”

Steve is now distilling all his own experiences plus all the wisdom he gained from others into a new book which will be called Ventriloquest – the name of the current tour – which he hopes to be getting out in time for Christmas: “I've interviewed ventriloquists from around the world, and the book collates all those interviews and all my own experiences and all the things that I have done and learned in my career so far.

“I love doing it. We're being deceived in the audience. It’s vocal illusion and it's almost like a cartoon on the stage. I did a show on Saturday night and there was a little four-year-old boy just laughing and laughing, not even at anything I was saying, just at the way that the puppet was moving. And just having him laugh like that was just fantastic.

"It was a beautiful sound and he was there with his grandparents who were laughing as well and it was just wonderful. I have various characters in the first half and then the second-half it is me and my old man character, Arthur Lager.”