if.comedy award winner Brendon Burns features as part of this year's Galway Comedy Festival next weekend. Lisa Regan gives the Australian comic the third degree on pointless ***** and top sentences

You will be playing as part of the third Galway Comedy Festival. Is this your first time in Galway?

Nope, been going there for years now.

What can Galway audiences expect from your show?

A man with a microphone telling some jokes. Some people getting gobby probably. Someone might even get kicked out. Some sick may come forth to be healed. Don't like their chances though. Probably get sicker if anything. They shouldn't be out really. Then after all that kerfuffle probably some more jokes. Then I might go hang out with the other comics before bed.

How would you describe your live shows?

Like a cross between a public ******* and church.

When did you know that you wanted to become a comedian? Can you pinpoint the exact moment when you thought, 'Hey I'm pretty funny!'?

Just then!

Stand up comedy is one of the toughest gigs. What has been your worst and best experiences to date? Gig wise, Glastonbury 2005 was probably the worst, as it was a long, slow painful death that I'd been planning for months. To make matters worse, I and the majority of the crowd were on mushrooms. Then 2007 Glastonbury I got to go back sober, well in the head and had a blinding gig. Glastonbury and Edinburgh festivals have always been very emotional and memorable for me.

People always think being friends with a comedian must be some laugh. Is it fun to hang out with you or are you a quite shy lad off stage?

I have my quiet, reflective moments by all means. I certainly don't have to be the centre of attention all the time anymore. I'm pretty happy to let someone else have a go. But if I need to be heard, I'll assert myself. And yes, after 17 years I'm running out of ways to answer that question the same way you had to come up with a new way of wording the 'tears of a clown' question.

What really makes you laugh out loud?

Pointless shite and top sentences. I can go nuts for a sentence that I like the sound of in an instant and make it work for 15 minutes. Sometimes just a single word. Recently I've taken to yelling the word 'science' like a wacky professor over and over and amusing myself and possibly three others.

Where do you get your material for your shows? Do your ideas just hit you or is method humour?

I'm a freak in that I'm pretty much an idiot from day to day and yet I can conjure up a very clear picture in my head of a bit anything from 20 to 30 minutes long in a split second. The same goes for narrative arc. My directors always giggle at me trying to explain an hour's worth of idea in the language of my inner monologue. There are literally complex concepts and unlimited segues flying about all over the shop and they know to just sit back and wait for the months of tinkering before what I'm trying to say is remotely intelligible. It may be some special high functioning autism.