I've been sending out the Beyond The Joke newsletter for the last few months. One of the ideas behind it is that if subscribers like it they forward it to friends, other people read it, like it, come to my website, my website gets more popular and my children get to eat. I'm not quite sure if Daniel Kitson feels the same way about his newsletter. I recently noticed that they have a little copyright symbol at the bottom and an "all rights reserved" pay-off. Not the funniest punchline in the world, but I guess it fits in with the Kitson – "JD Salinger of stand-up"* – low-key ethos.

But he is caught in a bind of his own making in this information crazy age when everybody wants to tell everybody else about everything immediately. He wants his "fans" to know about his upcoming plans, but he doesn't want the information spread around too widely unless it makes him too popular (his old gag was about whittling his fanbase down to about 12 - you can call them disciples if you like...) . Maybe his kids don't have to eat. Oh, he doesn't have kids.

As far as I know Kitson doesn't have a manager either and hasn't for nearly a decade now. He doesn't smother himself over the press doing interviews when he has something to promote. He doesn't dish out press tickets willy nilly. In fact I'm not sure if he ever gave the press any tickets once he started self-managing. For a while he was more accommodating for his theatrical shows, and even did some interviews to promote them, but now that he is being feted by the stage literati as the Alan Bennett de nos jours he appears to have gone into Salinger mode with them too.

But this reticence doesn't seem to be doing him any harm. Back in July I saw him play the Grand Hall at the Battersea Arts Centre – he did 10 nights in front of about 800 people, tickets at about £12. Obviously there are overheads, but as he is the first to admit, he is making a decent living out of this comedy lark. And the brilliant, enviable thing is that he is doing it without, as far as I can see, compromising in any way at all. Obviously it helps if you are as brilliant, funny and clever as Daniel Kitson. Not everyone can pull this off. Other people may be doing gigs without using a team of ball-busting publicists too. But probably to three people because they are frankly rubbish.

I was thinking about Kitson earlier this week when I wrote my piece about comedians who decide to quit. A few years ago Kitson seemed to be disillusioned with stand-up. Something made him unhappy about how things were panning out and he took a break. Luckily for us he returned stronger than ever. He hasn't done much straight stand-up in recent years though. His Battersea show was rumoured to be a return to stand-up, but it was almost as theatrical as his recent stage shows. 

And his next show, Tree, which he will be performing with Tim Key at The Royal Exchange in Manchester from September 11, also sounds pretty theatrical. Key is certainly excited – he showed me a text from Kitson about it when I bumped into him in Edinburgh but I can't remember exactly what it said, I was too distracted by an earlier text, which, I think, said something about "blacking up". Not sure if this was Kitson or Key saying that, and I'm sure it was a joke, but it was intriguing nonetheless and because Kitson doesn't give a lot away any nugget of information is immediately interesting and pounced upon.

Which brings me back to his newsletter. It isn't a press release. I don't receive it because I am a journalist, I receive it because I signed up to his mailing list. I think I may have actually got my girlfriend to sign up on my behalf in case he personally vets his mailing list. So I guess I'm not really allowed to reprint bits of it, though I have seen other websites do this. Maybe I'm not even allowed to report what it says. But as this is Kitson I'll take a risk. His latest newsletter says that he is compering a big stand-up gig at the Hackney Empire on October 23rd in aid of the Hackney Winter Night Shelter with David Baddiel, Bridget Christie, Paul Sinha and other wonderful comedy luminaries. Tickets, if still available, here.

He also wanted to point out, however, that contrary to popular belief, unlike his el cheapo previews, his full price tickets do not sell out in a nanosecond and that there are still tickets available for Tree, so don't buy them at inflated prices from touts. They are available from here.

I can't see why he does not want his newsletter published. They are little works of art in their own right. Beautifully written and if you read them with Kitson's mellifluous northern twang in your head they are like your own private Kitson mini-monologues. They are less potty-mouthed than his stand-up so that they can get past puritanical firewalls and that makes him more creative than ever with language. Somehow even the grammatical errors don't matter and add to the charm. But I won't reprint them. If you want to read them, which I heartily recommend, sign up for them here.

While you are at it you could also sign up for my newsletter on the right here. Not as poetic, but it does help to feed my kids. And you wouldn't want them to starve, would you? Well, would you? 

*copyright – The Guardian.