I have one of those minds that is always bubbling over with the things left over from yesterday or things to do today, so I wake at 6 a.m.

I mull over e-mails I need to send, calls I need to make to my agent or to arrange things for upcoming shows. For my current show I didn't get a production manager, so I am really doing all of the publicity and promotion. I wish I had just paid someone the money to look after all that.

I'm not sure how good I am at the publicity thing either. It's a typical mum thing, but when my mum saw the picture I was using for my current show - Sealboy: Freak - she said: "Ooh no, you should have used the picture where you're smiling." My mum's an actress as well and I was really pleased when we got to act the part of mother and son in the Channel 4 series Metrosexuality. Anyway, after a hour's mulling I always get up at 7 a.m. no matter where I am or how late a night I have had. I want to get started with the day, but it means I can be quite tired and I might have a little-old-man siesta later on.

I live in Peckham, London, when I'm not touring. My partner, Patou, and I have two cats, Gaspar and Sekhmet, who was the Egyptian cat god. As I'm up first I'll see to them. I also need a really strong jolt of caffeine to set me up for the day.

I am mostly involved with touring the show at the moment - I was in London and Colchester for a couple of nights and then I drove over here. Last week I also did a TV advert for Virgin Mobile and today I have to go to a studio and do some sound for it.

My friend Tom is in charge of the technical aspects of the show. He is in the venue for 12 noon. Odelia, who helps with all the props and staging, goes to the venue with me at midday and we set up the stage and dressing room.

At about 4 p.m., when Tom is sorted with the lights, we do a tech run. If everything goes to plan we can have a couple of hours off before the show. Somewhere along the way I have to fit in a half-hour practising an American accent - it sounds really annoying to anyone listening to me going over phrases. I need it for the part of the show which deals with "Sealo", the actual phocomelic or seal-like man called Stanley Berent who performed in a touring "freak show" until 1972.

When the show is over, and I have organised a bit backstage, I always talk to people in the foyer for a while. People need the opportunity to feedback to you if they want, because this piece of theatre raises a lot of issues. Reactions can range from people with disabilities shouting at me "you're wrong, you're completely wrong!" to people saying "thank God someone has expressed how I feel about that".

I didn't actually "come out" as disabled until about 1992. Up until then I had been denying to myself that I was different from other people. I do recognise that there is something different about disabled people, maybe more so because of how others perceive them or because of the way the world is ordered so as to be accessible to non-disabled people.

Soon I'll take my second-degree black belt in "Dynamic Self Defence", a type of karate. I have also been commissioned to do a documentary-style programme on the history of the "freak show" - from its roots in Europe, before PT Barnum coined the phrase in Victorian England, up to the still-existing show at Coney Island in New York.

I love the old musicals and I would love some day to write a comedy musical about my experience. Either that or I would like someone to offer me the lead role in a karate film.

Mat Fraser has a workshop today at the City Arts Centre, Dublin, from 2 to 5 p.m. Sealboy: Freak is in the Belfast Circus School tomorrow evening. Website: www.matfraser.com