Ed Byrne's different class

ED Byrne is on a high. His latest stand up show, Different Class, is already being hailed as his best work, and with mainstream success beckoning and and a new Mrs Byrne by his side, it's all going rather well - not that he's getting a big head about it.

"The audiences and the press, and other comics and people I admire have said it's a better show, but an exciting thing about stand up is that no matter how good you feel you're getting, you're never 100% sure," he says. "You only know these things because people tell you."

He's had two long stints warming up for his latest tour, with the usual month at the Edinburgh Festival in August followed by a five-week residency at the Riverside in London, and he comes to the Royal Court on Sunday, October 26.

"You go a bit stir crazy in the same place for that long, so I'm looking forward to going on tour," he says. "The audiences are different, and I'm not just saying that. London is its own animal, but I generally prefer touring up north. Generally, gigs in the Home Counties I don't find that enjoyable.

"It's weird though because it does depend. In Liverpool gigs at the Royal Court have always gone nicely, whereas at the Neptune they've not been that good. It's weird that in different theatres in the same town, the crowds can be different."

It's been a slow burn to mainstream success for Byrne, who has always enjoyed critical acclaim for his observational comedy, defined by his endless Irish charm and exasperation with the everyday (so charming, in fact, he called his live DVD Pedantic & Whimsical in response to the two adjectives most used to describe his act).

"I think it went quite fast initially, from my first arrival in 1994 I had a bit of a peak, then it kind of plateaued and fell away again," he argues modestly. "I was sort of flagging in the wilderness around 2003/ 2004 and I've come back again in the last couple of years. Perhaps I can put it down to good or bad decisions on my part, but this shows maybe the quality of my stand up maybe wilted a little bit in the middle.

"I have really gotten into writing again, and this show has been received better than any other show I've done before. It's quite gratifying to know at this stage in my career I'm still improving and I haven't reached a stage where I'm not going to get any funnier, and it isn't like 'hope you enjoy it - that's it!'"

The new show, Different Class, is named after the comic's ponderings on his childhood and family, and how he never felt working class but couldn't be said to be middle class either.

"But it's not all about that either. I do a bit about getting into an argument and thinking about what you should have said the next day. These things get longer and longer and that's my favourite way to write. Stuff gets longer, stuff that is less funny gets pushed out. It could be a one-liner about goths turns into a five minute piece on the youth of today."

He's said this before, about one of his best known routines that is a sublime observation on the intention to get up early and how your productive plans for the morning change when you find you just can't stop hitting the snooze button.

It's probably second only to one of his early and classic successes, a dissection of Alanis Morrissette's song Ironic ("It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife? That's only ironic if you find out later a spoon would have done.").

"It was just a one-liner to do with waking up and not knowing what time it is, looking to see it's 4am and going 'mmm'... Then realising you're a milkman and you've slept in," he says. "Just a one liner that spun into a ten minute routine. It almost feels like cheating when that happens."

Another part of the show features on his recent wedding, a subject he immediately saw as ripe for the picking. "I was writing about that because that was what was on my mind, and that's nice, because even if you're not married people can relate to the subject, so it's not alien for folk. The problem was essentially dealing with people who deal in the wedding industry.

"It's incredible, the things you end up spending money on," he ponders. "We weren't looking for some amazing fancy-pants thing, but it just felt like I was banging my head against the whole industry."

A nice sideline for Byrne is his regular appearances on radio and TV panel games, of which he is now something of an old hand. "They used to be a bit of a sell out. But now the rest of television has gotten so sh*t, it's now become a credible thing to do, rather than doing a celebrity reality show," he laughs.

His favourite to participate in is Have I Got News For You. "You actually feel like you've crawled into the television," he says. "I watched it before I was even a comic, so I really liked the show and to be on that was quite an honour. And it's easy to get in. Mock the Week is a bit more of a bunfight, that's seven comedians all vying for attention."

But BBC2 series Mock the Week gives him time to catch up with his best pal, fellow Irish comedian Dara O'Briain. "He's a very good friend of mine - I was best man at his wedding and he was mine - so it's quite fun to throw a banana at him when he's trying to do a link, or say he should change his last name to Rabumptiay."

What?

"So he can say his name is Dara Rabumptiay. It's quite gratifying when that mad, silly, playground stuff gets kept in."