Back in the days when Kevin McAleer travelled the country on sell-out tours, his Co Tyrone background informed much of the surreal stand-up material that made him a comedy star. "I was born in 1956 in Co Tyrone", he would tell his audience, "for something I didn't do".

Having likened his origins to a miscarriage of justice, it seems ironic that almost three years ago he moved back from his base in London to the house where he was born in the small townland of Drumnakilly just outside Omagh. Today he is deeply involved in local voluntary groups, and a pillar of the community he once parodied.

"I was here on this small farm until I was 18 and I hated it - people didn't talk much to each other," he says sitting drinking coffee in his kitchen.

Moving to Dublin at that age to study journalism in Rathmines was a revelation. "It was a major development for me when I started to have conversations with people. I remember being in pubs and not wanting to go to the toilet in case I missed something," he says.

After graduating, he spent time working on a trade magazine, and it wasn't until the early 1980s that he began to perform. In the days before Dublin had its own thriving comedy circuit, a move to London was inevitable.

"It was easier than it is now to break the London circuit," he says. "You could ring up a venue and say you had an act and they would say okay." He was living in a squat in King's Cross ("I was watching Trainspotting and it reminded me of the place I used to live") and earning a modest crust when he got his big break through an Irish TV show.

McAleer never imagined how quickly the character he invented for Nighthawks would take off. His contributions were short but memorable, a Co Tyrone man reminiscing laconically about family life in the 1950s.

A typical three-minute section would see McAleer talking about how the family would sit around being entertained for hours by the TV, with the highlight of the evening coming when granny would switch the set on. "I knew it was a good idea but I didn't realise the impact it would have," he said.

When he performed at the Galway Arts Festival following the first series, his gig was sold out. "I thought maybe it was time to do a tour, and after that the shows were sold out all over the place," he says. While McAleer enjoyed phenomenal success, touring regularly and receiving widespread critical acclaim, "there came a time around five years ago when I was just not enjoying it any more".

"I got bored doing it. I wasn't able to write new material, and it got to the stage where I didn't remember if I had said something already. I started to day-dream during shows," he says. He began to write new material in his own voice as opposed to the "aul lad" character that had brought him his initial success. "I just didn't write enough to make another show - the whole thing scaled down, the audiences scaled down," he says.

Married with three children, McAleer was renting a flat in London when the family decided to move to Co Tyrone. "My Dad had died, and this house was empty, and it dawned on us that we could live here. I wouldn't have moved back if it wasn't for the improving political situation; I couldn't have justified bringing up my children in the North," he says.

On the day the Omagh bomb went off, the family had gone to visit friends in Navan. McAleer's English wife Valerie says it did make her question the move, but in the end they decided to stay.

`It was an act of mad men," says McAleer. "You don't say I'm not living in Dunblane because of that massacre. There have been other times I have questioned the move more seriously like around Drumcree or when the Assembly fell.

McAleer still does the occasional gig and writes a column for the Irish Post in London. He regularly receives invitations to make after-dinner speeches and has written the script for an animation series on cultural stereotypes in Northern Ireland.

His work in the local community includes the production of two newsletters, and this type of interaction is a new experience for McAleer. "I was used to keeping myself to myself in London; I wasn't used to sharing," he says. But after he went along to a meeting of the local community association he began to get involved, and now he and Valerie lend their services to the Mid Ulster Association of Community Transport, driving a bus for local groups including the elderly.

His work with the Rural Millennium Drama Group has brought him out of himself, he says. He directed a play, Dream Tour, which has been shown locally and will be resurrected for the Omagh Theatre Festival in the autumn. "I don't like conventional plays; I don't like drama, so I wanted to do something different," he says.

The children have settled into the area well, but there was some adapting to be done. "They were so used to parks in London that when they came they would ask to be taken out to the park when there are 30 acres of land out there," he smiles.

There is no way he would ever have envisaged returning to Co Tyrone when he left as an 18-year-old. "I couldn't wait to get out," he says. "I wasn't one of those emigrants who got homesick and dreamed of returning".

"We just picked a really good time to come back - it felt right from the first day and (he touches the wooden table) hopefully it will stay like this," he says. "I feel like a bit of a tourist here; it seems all new to me. There are things like the scenery that I never appreciated when I was growing up."