David Hoyle tosses his head back and regards his reflection. His outfit - leather miniskirt, fishnet top and cut-off leather jacket (plus red dog collar) - pleases him, with its whiff of Nancy Spungen. “I'm quite into the S&M look at the moment,” he says airily, “I think it happens as you get older.” He glances over at me and twinkles.

We are in the Candy Store costumiers, Hoyle trying on outfits in preparation for his new show at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, the pioneering alternative gay venue in South London, which launched Lily Savage, Amy Lamé's Duckie and the comedian Scott Capurro. Dave's Drop-in Centre “is loosely inspired by a psychiatric daycare centre,” Hoyle explains, “and all the activities that go on, from occupational therapy to hobbies to empowerment, group catharsis.” Each of his six shows will have its own theme and Hoyle will collaborate with different performers from the alternative scene. “The one I'm working on with [the burlesque comedian] Fancy Chance will touch on issues of nationalism, nationality and immigration; when I'm working with Dickie Beau that will be to do with the past and childhood. I think that's going to be a very emotional show.”

If it sounds worthy, it won't be. Hoyle's shows are car-crash, rage-fuelled, issue-based comedy. Even when it goes horribly wrong, which it occasionally does, it's always horribly funny. “Laughter makes us feel better,” he says sweetly. A lot of what we do in life is displacement activity as we wait to die,” he says. “I'm quite conscious of that so I think we can play around with it.” It's a dark view, but that's Hoyle's trademark (that and the terrifying makeup). It's also part of his own character.

In the new show Hoyle draws on his experience of therapy during a six-year break from the stage from 2000. After several years of performing as his notorious, screeching alter-ego the Divine David, and a whiff of mainstream success on Channel 4, Hoyle found himself mired in drink and drugs. His reaction was to kill off the Divine David in an ice-show spectacular at Streatham, Ice Arena, move to Manchester and cut himself off from the London performance scene. “At the end I was pretty burnt out,” he admits.

Hoyle, 46, grew up in Blackpool. For an obviously gay child it was, he says, “horrendous. Especially secondary school, it was like walking to your death on a daily basis. Knowing that you were going to get assaulted, knowing that you didn't have anybody to talk to.” Teachers were unsympathetic. “They would watch as my bag was emptied out of the window, three storeys up. They would allow it because they believed that by subjecting me to violence it would make me heterosexual.” He found no comfort at home either. “Your life is a nightmare but you can't tell them why, because what you are is so massively wrong that what people are doing by assaulting you is the right thing. You should be assaulted for being a homosexual. That's what was going on in my mind.” His soft Lancashire accent belies the pain in his face.

It was this isolation that propelled him into performance. He started at around 17, in the Belle Vue, a working men's club in Blackpool. “I created this character who was the illegitimate offspring of the Duke of Edinburgh and Dorothy Squires. His name was Paul Munnery-Vain, taken from the pulmonary vein in your heart.” The punters warmed to it, some even giving his bottom the odd squeeze and inviting him back for a beer. “I never did.”

At 21 Hoyle left Blackpool for London, where he had “a lovely time. It was like going out for a night and it carried on for three years.” Then HIV and Aids hit the scene and “people started to drop like flies. In our early twenties, we were losing our friends similarly to people of pension age”. He fled north again, to Manchester, where he has been based ever since. He returned to performing in 2006, under his own name, to the delight of an alt-gay audience which fondly remembered his previous incarnation.

Hoyle is scathing about the gay mainstream, objecting to its “off-the-peg” identity and points to the growing salon scene, “where people get to talk about serious issues. Of course humour is very important, but it's not just about what make of underpants you've got on or talking about Kylie all the time.” He resists the word “drag”, uncomfortable, he says, with female impersonators, whom he finds chauvinistic. “It tends to just focus on woman as a sort of glamorous cypher, as a clothes horse.” Last year, in one of his most outrageous shows, he challenged the post-op transsexual Lauren Harries for having had a sex change. Both Hoyle and Harries were heckled, a fight broke out between a transsexual and a lesbian. Hoyle said later that it was a turning point for him. Before the audience had always been on his side; this time they turned against him.

Dave's Drop-in Centre will be more structured than previous shows, but his determination to involve his audience will still mean that anything could happen. “It is a social event, we're all in there together. Group therapy, group support - group everything hopefully!” He makes a naughty face, “always look on the bright side.”

Dave's Drop-in Centre is at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, London SE11 (www.theroyalvauxhalltavern.co.uk; 020-7820 1222, ), Thursdays from April 30 to June 4

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