James Rampton on comedy

Jimeoin (below), an Irish comedian based in Australia, got his big break on a Down Under daytime TV programme called The Midday Show. "It's just like Pebble Mill," he reveals. "I really enjoy daytime TV. Nightime TV can be a bit too hip for its own good. Daytime TV is like doing comedy in a supermarket, nobody really notices you're there. When you get to the punchline, the audience just knit quicker." He soon graduated to hosting Tonight Live - "a direct rip-off of Late Night with Letterman" - and has since become the biggest thing in Australia this side of Merv Hughes's moustache.

His likeable, rambling style on stage, however, works well in any country. "The things I talk about are not geared to a certain nation," he reflects. "I wouldn't have a script. It goes against you because you don't leave yourself open to change it. Eighty per cent of the material I've said before, but not in the same manner. I do it differently for my own sake. I often think, how do actors cope? I've just been doing 10 shows a week. People who have written these one-man plays are well and truly sick of them by the time they're successful. Look at Sheryl Crow. She's toured that album for a year and a half with Michael Jackson, and she must have worked on it for a couple of years before that. Can you imagine how scunnered she must have been at the end of all that?"

There's no danger of audiences being scunnered by Jimeoin.

Jimeoin is at the Cochrane Theatre, London WC1 (0171-242 7040) from tonight until 3 Aug, and at the George Sq Theatre, Edinburgh (0131-226 5138) from 11 to 26 Aug