On a winning streak – (cover tittle- We choose to start the story now…)

A few years ago, no-one even knew what radio star The Sandman looked like. Today, we know rather. Too much.

The moment he came on to the stage, The Sandman knew he was going to be in for tough ride.

It wasn’t that the crowd was hostile, or that his material wasn’t up to scratch. It was more, well, he felt his show might just work much better somewhere else.

So, with that thought, he rounded up the entire audience, but them in his car and drove them to the pub.

"There were only four of them," he recalled, cheerfully. "And we had a pretty good night in the end."

For a while The Sandman, aka comedian, guitarist, writer and occasional straight actor Steve Abbott, is today enjoying the kind of fame he once never even dreamed of, there have been plenty of low points along the way.

Like the nights playing downstairs at the Belvoir St Theatre when his best house numbered 15. Or the tours of country RSL clubs before audiences who had no idea what he was on about.

"I was so unfunny, you could hear the seagulls squawking outside as I was doing my material." He observed in his trademark monotone.

Or that memorable Christmas night of 1987 which saw his and best mate Mikey Robins celebrating in a northern NSW Chinese restaurant with a $4 smorgasbord, the most depressing evening either of them can ever remember.

"It was when we were at our lowest ebb." Abbott said. "It was very disheartening, but also quite funny at the time."

Even Robins can recall the laughter amid the gloom: "We spent a lot of time together on tour," he recalled. "It was then that Steve invented the Unrequired Lunch. You’d have lunch, wander around shopping centres and by 4pm you’d be bored, so you’d go and have lunch again."

Indeed, Steve, who invented the deadpan, emotionally stunted, childlike Sandman after playing a tortoise in a kids’ Theatre-in-Education show, even considering giving it all up and going back to his plans to become a school teacher until he was finally, in 1993, offered a gig on Triple J.

On radio, he immediately won a loyal following, although fans, fondly picturing him as a 1.98m blond, would discover him, he claims, and remark crossly, "Oh! You’re squat and bulbous!"

And now, his crossover into TV, with regular appearances on Ten’s Good News Week after ABC chiefs finally decided to go ahead with Dog’s Head Bay rather than his own planned sitcom, a choice they now no doubt regret has earned him the kind of recognition that he often finds quite bewildering.

Kids yelling "Sandy!" at him from buses. Adults shaking his hand thanking him for the laughs. Even grannies approaching him to credit him with reviving a proud Australian vaudeville tradition.

Indeed, after one Good News Week special, where he stripped naked for a sketch in which he accused Paul McDermott of stealing his clothes, he’s become feted as one of the hottest talents in the country and certainly not for his body.

"I’d thought about that gag for quite a long time but I never had the guts to do it," said Abbott, 43, lounging on a sofa in the Good News Week offices at Fox Studios.

"Then we were talking about what we could do, and I suggested very timidly walking on stage naked. Later, I tried to back out of it, but they wouldn’t let me.

"I was so nervous all night, but it was memorable. The whole evening felt quite cathartic. The legal people said they were going to pixelate me as it went to air, but they didn’t. They sucked me in. But while my 12-year-old son begged me to wear underpants, my mother rang up and said she thought it was very funny."

Abbott even repeated the streak when he was offered $10,000 for charity to walk down Ultimo’s Harris Street naked. He did, but that’s the last time, he vows, he’s going to bare all.

Yet there’s still plenty more to be revealed. Ted Robinson, executive producer of Good News Week, describes Abbott as an enormous talent, making a great contribution in bringing back the great Tivoli days of Australia variety. "I like his stuff as much when he’s being poignant and serious as when he’s being outrageously funny," Robinson said

Even in Abbott’s off-stage personality there’s plenty of paradox. While he looks a shambolic creature, wandering around distractidly in his track pants and baggy top, he’s actually an extremely clever, ambitious and determined man, said another of his friends, fellow ex-Castanet Club member Warren Coleman.

"He looks like he’s completely disorganised, but I bet he’s written down more ideas than anyone else," said Coleman. "He carries those big legal pads everywhere and for years he used his car as his office. He’s always been a pretty good entrepreneur, a great observer of people and terrific showman."

Abbott himself these days, however still has trouble believing his success. Yet others believe he’s only beginning. "His success is long overdue," said Robinson. "To me, the extraordinary thing is that the talent hasn’t been recognised earlier."