In his 61 years Neil Innes has been many things - artist, author, satirist, songwriter for three of Britain's finest comedy groups, even a wizard in a children's TV show - but one thing you'll never find him doing is revelling in celebrity.

While the music, film and television world in which he's worked for the past four-and-a-bit decades has become happier and happier to milk 'stars' for all they're worth, Innes has found himself more of an outsider than ever - or as he proudly declares: "I'm not showbusiness. I love going round small places, you get a feeling of cameraderie with the audience. I'm never going to play to a million people in Rio or do Live 8."

Back in the Sixties, he'd been content to be making silly noises in a madcap group called the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band rather than trying to ape the success of friends and contemporaries such as the Beatles, the Who and Eric Clapton. Though the band had a surprise hit in 1968 with their single I'm the Urban Spaceman, they remained as wayward as ever; it was all about having a laugh and blow the commercial consequences.

While Eric Clapton could only fantasise about "going on stage with a parrot on his shoulder", Neil Innes went on telly with a plastic duck on his head. Little wonder, he says, the Bonzos' more famous friends such as Paul McCartney and Keith Moon "envied our freedom".

When the band finally split in 1972, Innes was invited by his pal Eric Idle, with whom he'd once worked on the TV series Do Not Adjust Your Set, to do a warm-up for his latest show, Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Leaping at the chance to team up again with the likes of Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam (who he also knew from Do Not Adjust Your Set), Innes became the seventh Python. Not that it was officially a role - "basically I was a musician they could drop wooden rabbits on" - but he did write several songs for them, played the Hollywood Bowl and appeared in the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Jabberwocky.

It was, Innes says, a thrilling experience. "It can't happen twice in a lifetime - working with a bunch of inspired idiots like the Bonzos and working with an inspired bunch of intellectuals like the Pythons - but it did!"

With Idle too, Innes worked on the spoof TV series Rutland Weekend Television about " a cheap television station with no money, " But one sketch from the show was to run and run. "A parody of the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night seemed to fit the idea - black and white, speeded-up Benny Hill-style stuff. Eric said, 'That's great, I've got this idea for a skit about a documentary-maker who's so dull the camera runs away from him' and we put them together. He suggested we call it The Rutles; I wanted to call it The Bootles, but he had this thing about Rutland and it stuck."

Hence the 'Prefab Four' - Ron Nasty (Neil Innes), Dirk McQuickly (Eric Idle), Stig O'Hara (Rikki Fataar) and Barry Wom (John Halsey) - were born. When Idle subsequently appeared on Saturday Night Live in the USA joking that he could get The Beatles to reform for $200 and showed The Rutles clip instead "the mailbag response from viewers was fantastic". With help from George Harrison, the quartet went on to make All You Need is Cash, a fulllength 'rockumentary' that brilliantly sent up the whole Beatles story.

A spin-off album, with songs such as Hold My Hand, Ouch! and Cheese and Onions, however, proved too much for The Beatles' publishers, ATV, who claimed half the royalties. George Harrison's efforts to return the money to Neil Innes failed. To this day, it remains a bone of contention. Innes wryly reflects: "You've got to take a mature view of the music industry.

Once I decided it was organised crime, I thought, 'What can I do?' It's basically big boys taking sweets off little boys At the end of the day I resisted it and didn't get myself in a state about it. But I have got myself some lawyers who are slowly unpicking it."

Licking his wounds, he went away and made three gently humorous series of the Innes Book of Records, followed by a string of children's programmes. "I had a very happy ten years working on children's television, " he recalls. "I played the wizard in Puddle Lane, did the voices for Raggy Dolls and wrote some songs for The Little Wrigglers. I'm now working on music for a new series of the Mr Men with people in New York."

More recently Innes has rediscovered his urge to go back on stage with a guitar. His new album, Work in Progress, is his first in ten years. It's only available at lives dates or through his website "because of my problems in publishing; I've kept them in limbo until they admit they've been whatever they've been", but has now nearly sold out of its initial 3,000 pressing.

After briefly reviving the Bonzos last month for a tribute show to their late singer Vivian Stanshall (comedians Stephen Fry, Phill Jupitus, Paul Merton and Ade Edmondson shared vocal duties, in memory of "an English eccentric and a national treasure who deserves recognition"), Innes is also touring with his music and comedy show Ego Warrior, which pokes fun at modern media.

The show visits Hebden Bridge Trades Club next month and may well include a few old favourites.

"Even Urban Spaceman is on-message for Ego Warriors, " he says. "I wrote it in Manchester in the Sixties.

The place looked like Oliver Cromwell had knocked it about a bit. They didn't call it brownfield sites then, they were known as urban spaces.

That's where I got the idea for the urban spaceman from. Then I started thinking, 'What's he like?' I thought of this smiley, happy-faced perfect being like on the adverts. Then an ambulance went by and I got the tune - 'nee-nah, nee-nah'."

The one thing life has taught above all else is that fame is not worth chasing. "Being close to it, I've realised that it's a lot more fun being a Rutle than a Beatle. Nobody should aspire to that level of craziness. We all need to appreciate the plumbers and electricians as well as the rocket scientists. It's all about pulling together."

Neil Innes and Friends play at Hebden Bridge Trades Club on April 15. Contact (01422) 845265 for tickets. The album Works in Progress is available from www. enygmag. com/neil