NO QUESTION – Jimmy Carr is the hardest working man in comedy. He tours constantly, writing the next show while performing the current one, and has notched up more than 160 gigs before a total audience of 250,000 in the past 12 months. Add on the telly work and it’s amazing he can sit still long enough for an interview. But he does.

Why so many gigs every year? Aren’t you tempted to do fewer, bigger arenas?
No, there’s nothing else I want to do. Wherever I go, I meet people. The nicest thing is when you meet young guys and girls coming to comedy for the first time. They’re clearly expecting me to insult them. It’s a pleasant surprise to find I’m polite.

Isn’t being a comedian a really important job?
No. I don’t take the piss out of the government. I don’t do political stuff; I don’t feel I’m part of that tradition. People like coming out, watching a show and not being preached to. Comedy attendance is up and church attendance is down because I’m not telling people how to live.

If you tour for a year, do you ever lose focus?
No, you’re literally terrified all the time. And you’re also in a heightened state – you watch everyone all the time. It’s weird when you can tell when an audience is having a good time, especially when it’s the show you’ve done loads of times on the same tour.

Why do you love jokes so much?
A really boring guy might be obsessed by crosswords, right? How they work and how best to do them. I’m exactly the same except I’m obsessed by a slightly different bit of word play. My father always used to say: ‘What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Before the accident.’

So what got you started? Comic heroes?
Eddie Izzard was big when I was at college. What he was doing was essentially the same thing: a man on a stage telling jokes. He’s dressing them up as whimsy, but they’re just one-liners with a surreal element.

So you started at college?
No. After college I went to work for Shell. I didn’t like it and a few people said, ‘you’re funny, maybe you should be a performer’, and I suddenly thought oh yes, maybe I should.

In your book you say in a room of 300 people, the comedian is the one facing the wrong way.
Comedians all have a hole in their personalities. I have a desire to get up on stage and perform. I suppose it’s a desire to be loved. I don’t see that as a psychological failing – I like to think there’s very little gap between my show and the kind of jokes I tell with my friends, and that’s a good thing.

So what are your favourite jokes?
I like the ones where the laughs roll around the theatre, followed by ‘oohs’ as people realise what they’re laughing at is a little bit wrong. Rude jokes are titillating in the same way as pornography and that makes it curiously intimate. There’s one joke in the new show that you couldn’t do at the start. I have to break down people’s moral sensibilities before they’re ready for it. There are certain rules for a comedian – don’t be racist, don’t hate anyone, don’t say anything with malice. But in terms of protecting minorities and social rights, I’m literally just saying the funniest things I can in the shortest possible time. I love jokes. I love material you want to use the next day because there’s no higher compliment to a comic than people telling their mates your jokes.

Jimmy Carr is at the Wycombe Swan on Wednesday, December 17, and Tuesday, February 10, at 8pm. Tickets: 01494 512000