Fatherhood, nerdiness and encounters of the celebrity kind are all on Ed Byrne's crowd-pleasing menu. Sam Wonfor talks to him ahead of his on-camera date with Tyneside.

THIS show probably isn’t quite as funny as the last one, says Ed Byrne Probably not the best promotion for a stand-up gig I’ve ever heard, but you can’t fault Irish laugh-making everybloke Ed Byrne for his honesty – or that lovely accent.

Plus, a little leeway should be offered since he’s currently feeling “really annoyed with meself” for packing the wrong power cable for his beloved XBox, turning it into “a big lump of nothing to carry around”.

But back to the slightly less amusing show in hand.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s still funny,” he quickly adds with a whiff of back-pedal, “but I just don’t think there’s as much to laugh at when you’re talking about having a baby as when you’re talking about getting married.

“Lots of the last show (the much-acclaimed and five-star stamped Different Class) was about deciding to get married, which was something both my wife and I saw as a giant pain in the a***. I mean we loved each other and wanted a party and that, but it was essentially a total pain.

“Now, if you talk about your baby as being a pain in the a***, that could get a bit sinister. So as a milestone in your life, fatherhood is not as ripe for comedy as marriage.

“That said, the stuff I’m doing in this show about being a nerd, is just as funny as the stuff I was doing about being in between classes. Honest.”

So the many fans among us of Ed’s gently-ranting style of observational comedy, which has kept him riding high on both the domestic and international comedy circuit since his Perrier nominated Edinburgh show in 1998, can rest easy and snap up some of the last tickets available for his gig at Newcastle City Hall on Friday.

And don’t forget to put on your best bib and tucker because you could end up on the DVD which he is recording while he’s here.

“The Newcastle gig was a really good one on the last tour and I really fancied recording it there. It’s a nice theatre too, so it will look good on camera.”