Kerry Godliman is the sort of performer you feel you know better than you actually do. It’s partly down to her relatable stand-up routines about maxed-out credit cards and never-ending to-do lists; partly her acting roles – she excels in sympathetic portrayals of everyday characters.

This everywoman quality has become the South Londoner’s calling card; when Ricky Gervais was looking to cast the part of tough-but-tender care home manager Hannah is his Channel 4 drama Derek, he didn’t bother auditioning anyone else. It paid off.

Godliman was widely hailed as the break-out star of the otherwise controversial show.

There were murmurings about what the show might mean for Godliman; would she follow in the footsteps of previous Gervais protegees Martin Freeman (The Office) and Ashley Jensen (Extras) and head to Hollywood?

Needless to say, Godliman didn’t entertain such fanciful ideas... or not seriously at least.

“I’m 38 with two kids at school... my life feels quite established here. Of course it flashed through my head.

What actor doesn’t wonder what life might be like in LA?

If this had happened when I’d just come out of drama school I’d have been over there like a shot. But no, I can’t really see it somehow.”

It’s enough, she says, that Derek is set to return for a second series later this year.

Godliman has been in enough unmade pilots not to take any success for granted. She had hoped 2009 sitcom Home Time, in which she played “a brilliant ballbreaker” of a career woman, would prove to be her big TV break but the show was sadly overlooked.

“I suppose I knew working with Ricky would be different but he isn’t very starry and when you’re immersed in his world you don’t really think about whether it’s going to be a ‘big break’ or not. You’re just making a thing you hope people will like.”

Godliman has enjoyed steady work in acting, popping up in Extras, Miranda and Life’s Too Short and more recently as a pregnant council estate mother-of-seven in BBC One drama Our Girl.

“The parts I’m offered tend to be working-class, down-to-earth people. I think it’s my ridiculous accent.

I’m resigned to the fact I’m never going to get a costume drama. Or if I did, I’d be playing the bawdy maid not the lady of the manor.”

But her acting is somewhat eclipsed by her love of comedy.

“Acting is great but it isn’t particularly fulfilling either financially or creatively. You don’t have a lot of control.

Much of it just involves being told where to stand and what to say whereas in stand-up you hold all the power.”

While Godliman trained as an actor, graduating from Rose Bruford College in 1997, she had always harboured secret ambitions to become a stand-up. “I think I didn’t have the bottle to admit it.

Drama school seemed a more legitimate path.”

Then she took an evening class in stand-up at London’s City Lit and didn’t look back.

“I did a presentation at the end of the course – a gig, basically – and it went really well so I decided to book myself some real gigs. I wish I could say it was a more mysterious and magical process but it really was quite straightforward.”

Since then she’s taken two well-received shows to the Edinburgh Fringe, appeared on the BBC’s Live At The Apollo and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and been given her own Radio 4 show, Kerry’s List. The programme builds on the themes of her 2012 Edinburgh Fringe standup show Wonder Woman, namely, juggling the demands of being a parent, wife, circuit comedian and jobbing actor.

This month she is out on her first national tour with new show Face Time, about the trials and tribulations of maintaining relationships in a digital age. It’s the first time she’s done a national tour and she cheerfully admits she has “no idea” how it’s going to work out. “Ask me in six months time!”

It’s a show that’s a little lighter on parental anecdotes, although they are still there. For years, Godliman worried that talking about her children in her shows would come across as twee and that domestic life didn’t really have a place in comedy.

“Unfortunately, I can’t remember what it was I used to talk about before I had my son and daughter,” she says wryly. And besides, she thinks it was having her children that made her a better comedian.

“It became easier for me to relax on stage after having them. I think I was just so tired that I disconnected a bit and that helped, I wasn’t so needy. I just had to get through it.”

While her acting work often feeds into her stand-up and vice versa, she didn’t feel her background gave her an advantage as a comedian.

“Live comedy is a meritocracy and if you’re not good enough you don’t get on. It’s as simple as that.”

But appearing in TV shows did mean she could skip the TV panel shows that other comedians often do to raise their profiles beyond the live circuit. Although Godliman welcomes the BBC’s recent announcement that it will no longer air panel shows with no female panelists, she still has little interest in appearing on them.

“It’s got nothing to do with how male they are, I just find them very combative.

It’s hard to get a word in and even if you do, it often gets edited down before it’s broadcast. The thing I love about stand-up is the control you have and you give all that away when you do panel shows.”

Besides, she’s got quite enough on her plate as it is.

“Like most women I have a to-do list that never ends – fitness, admin, domestic chores. I sometimes put ‘blinking’ on the list, just so I can tick something off.”

Kerry Godliman’s Face Time comes to Komedia, Gardner Street, Brighton on Tuesday, April 1. For more information or to book, visit www.komedia.co.uk