One thing that standup comedy has taught me is that the world is most definitely round. It seems the further away you are from home, the closer you seem to become.

Last night I performed at a "gig" – that's what we call 'em, you know – in London's Fitzrovia district. The comedy club is called Pear Shaped and is located downstairs at The Fitzroy Tavern - a sardine-packed drinking den in the shadow of the BT Tower. So why would an Irish pub in London make me feel so at home? The answer lies in the Dylan Thomas virtual wallpaper. Photos of him are plastered everywhere. It's impossible to escape or even resist the poet's mesmerising stare. His eyes seem to follow you as you fist and claw your way around the claustrophobic pub, as though the poet is demanding that you return from the bar with enough barrels of beverage to keep him oiled for at least another half hour.

Now whenever friends visit Wales I perform the self-appointed duty of conducting the Swansea grand-tour – the panoramic views of Swansea Bay, Clyne in bloom, the Maritime Quarter and the golden bays of Gower. I don't charge for this service – my reward is the warm glow of smugness I get when these people's grotty little preconceptions of Wales are lanced for the festering boil of clichés that they were. Inevitably on these tours, Dylan's name is enunciated with predictable regularity, as we behold yet another drinking establishment famous for his inebriated patronage. However, few Swansea pubs have pictures on the wall of their notorious former client – despite the fact that he probably put enough money in their tills to build an extension on the extension.

The Fitzroy Tavern in London, however, needs no encouragement in wacking those Dylan pictures up.

I suspect they may not all be of the poet himself. He appears strangely different. Dylan's, well .. good looking and happy. This is simply not the image we associate with Dylan Thomas in Swansea. Perhaps there were two Dylan's – the fat, ugly, miserable Welsh Dylan that we're accustomed to, and perhaps there was also a Dylan "mini-me" – an unexpectedly healthy, slender, and jolly Dylan, who despite being far from the "long and splendid curving shore" of home, has an expression as bright as Mumbles lighthouse that he evidently reserved for the influential Fitzrovia set.

As for the Pear Shaped Comedy Club, I wish our famous poet would divert his gaze. Dylan's leering from the walls is a bad omen for some comedians as they discover by the end of their performance that he'd been the only one smiling in the room.