On recent form – which is for the avoidance of doubt, geezerish, prankishly good-humoured and lads-mag-ubiquitous – Jimmy Bullard is a contender for the title of most popular English footballer currently playing. Close up there is something peculiarly old-fashioned about his appeal. He looks a bit like a pop star, but a pop star from a more innocent, winkle-pickered age: rakishly unstyled, appealingly homemade and apparently still immune to the de-humourising pressures of life in Premier League.

This is probably a good thing at the moment. Last weekend Bullard returned from three months out with a knee injury to play in Hull City's 5-1 thrashing at Everton, a result that left them second bottom. This evening he will find himself up against a dizzyingly mobile Arsenal midfield at the KC Stadium as Hull enter an intensive 10-game relegation run-in. After playing an inspirational role in Fulham's last-day escape in 2008 this is the second time in two years that Bullard has risen from the treatment table charged with galvanising a dressing room gripped with relegation tension. Fourteen months, two major injuries and a mere seven first-team appearances into his career as Hull City's record signing, a less relentlessly optimistic man might be feeling the strain a bit.

"It's a massive buzz to be honest," Bullard says. "I don't feel the pressure, I really don't, not one bit. I'd play the same game if we were fifth in the table. There will be players who feel it but I play better when I'm not uptight. I just want to get my pads and boots on and get out there."

But then Bullard is probably capable of making anything – falling down a manhole, having a bunion removed – sound like something you might do for a bit of a laugh. Even the trauma of last-day escapology. "I'd rather get out of it before," he says of Hull's current plight. "But it is a great way to do it on the final day. It is a brilliant feeling. That last game for Fulham when we beat Portsmouth to stay up, we celebrated like we'd won a cup final."

Bullard signed for Hull from Fulham for £5m in January 2009, his value as a midfield playmaker perhaps inflated by the kind of irresistible good humour that seems ideally suited to lifting a querulous dressing room. On being told that Hull have not beaten Arsenal at home since 1915 his response is: "There you are, you see. We can beat them!" And he really does seem to relish the prospect. "You want to play against the very best, players like [Cesc] Fábregas and [Samir] Nasri. You want to measure your own ability against them. I don't really see any weaknesses in their team at all. But we've got our own strengths and we will be ready."

In spite of which there is, if not exactly pressure, then expectation on Bullard's shoulders. He left Fulham because the club were unwilling to offer him a long enough contract. Phil Brown was prepared to gamble, signing him on a four-year deal despite his age and injury record.

"It's true, I've had a nightmare start here. I feel that," he says, coming as close as he is ever likely to get to looking sombre, or penitent, or at least as though he is not about to start telling a joke. "Of course there's a massive desire to show the fans I can play, that they haven't signed a wrong 'un. I just want to feel fit again and show what I can do."

Would he be willing to show it in the Championship if Hull did end up there next season? "Yes, definitely. I'm staying here. I signed for four years with Hull. If we went down I'd stay and try and get promoted back."

This is something Bullard would probably be good at. His arrival from Peterborough in 2003 coincided with Wigan's rise from the third tier to the Premier League in three years. And it was during that first season in the Premier League that the Bullard personality first began to make a wider impression. Famously he pretended to run the length of the pitch to score a goal while the floodlights had failed during a Carling Cup tie against Arsenal, an incident that went on to become part of any Jimmy Bullard YouTube top 10: a compilation of high jinks that includes leapfrogging a pile of Everton players during a goalmouth scramble and confusing an enraged Duncan Ferguson by grinning cheekily and trying to make friends. This season there was the on-field reprise of Brown's half-time team talk after Bullard had scored against Manchester City.

"I wouldn't have done that if we were 4-0 down," he says. "You could see the Man City fans having a laugh about it and for me that's what it's all about. Phil Brown was fine with it. He's been great with me. It just put that whole situation to bed."

Even the late-breaking news that Bullard was, earlier in the week, involved in an altercation with Nick Barmby that just happened to be witnessed by 100 members of the Women's Institute on an annual rally sounds typically Bullard: another incorrigible autobiography anecdote in the making.

It may be standard practice to attribute Bullard's cheerfulness to his late start in professional football. Released by Harry Redknapp at West Ham without playing in the first team, he played for non-league clubs before being picked up by Barry Fry at Peterborough, aged 22."I was a painter and decorator with my dad for three years," he says. "I had some great times but football outweighs it so much it's a joke. Now I just want to enjoy every minute I'm playing. I go to matches to watch players who entertain. I still watch old footage of Paul Gascoigne."

It is tempting to describe Bullard as a cut-price Gazza. But this would be unfair. He is more a PG-rated Gazza: Gazza with a brain and perhaps a bit less tortured divinity in his feet. Like Gascoigne, Bullard has suffered with injury, most notably to his cruciate ligament in September 2006, an injury that according to the surgeon Richard Steadman left his knee "looking like a bomb had gone off in it". Sixteen months of rehab followed, enough time for Bullard to develop his skills as a fisherman [he fished competitively and was signed by Dorking, "the Manchester United of fishing"], and also for some dark moments. "It was horrible to be honest," he says. "There were times I just couldn't face it, I walked to the gym door and I just had to turn round. I had some days where I couldn't do anything ..." He falls into silence but he cannot keep it up for long. "But then you just find a bit of inspiration, someone else might be injured and you have a joke with them, some little thing will spur you on."

Spurring on is, of course, a big part of the Bullard shtick. This is what Brown, not to mention Hull's fans, will expect. Does he feel the pressure of being so available, so chirpy, so good in the dressing room? "No. I don't feel that kind of pressure. Anyway, I have had some ding-dongs with team-mates. That's just football. You shake hands, you get on with it. You might feel unhappy for a bit but it passes."

Is it never difficult just being Jimmy Bullard? "No mate. It's easy."