Dom Joly remains an enigma because he refuses to be pigeon-holed. But is this the secret to his success? Katherine MacAlister finds out.

Always in your face, entirely unrepentant, easily bored, ridiculously impatient, Dom Joly is also incredibly likeable, if slightly daunting. “No, I don’t suffer fools gladly,” he agrees.

But where to start with the man who invented Trigger Happy TV, is about to hunt monsters in The Congo and ate from Gillian McKeith’s pants in the jungle?

With his show perhaps, coming to Oxford’s Glee Club on Sunday.

It’s part of a 70-date tour, and in typical Joly fashion, having never done any live stage work before, he’s plunged in at the deep end.

“I’m five shows in,” says Joly, 43, when we talk, “and I think I’ll be in a mental hospital at this rate. It was never meant to be this big. I thought I’d do about 10.”

So why live and why now? “Well I went to a few literary festivals with my travel book The Dark Tourist and had to do a few readings. I thought ‘I could do a bit more of this’,” he says, nonchalantly.

This is typical Joly, and how he’s always worked. Take Trigger Happy TV. Instead of inching his way up the comedy ladder, he walked straight in with a hidden camera comedy concept, which became a global phenomenon and sold to 70 countries.

“Yes, I think there’s a proper route. You do small gigs, then Edinburgh and then try to get some TV work, but I just marched up,” he grins.

Joly then decided to be a travel writer, which he accomplished very successfully.

But when he realised his idea of a holiday wasn’t necessarily other people’s, he began writing travel books instead, complete with tales of skiing in Iran, a trip to North Korea and a brief stint in Chenobyl, which culminated in The Dark Tourist.

“It wasn’t really Sunday Times territory,” he sniggers.

Which brings us neatly round to his own live show Welcome To Wherever I Am, which isn’t stand-up by the way, a point he’s determined to get across.

“I’ve never told a joke in my life,” he says vehemently.

But isn’t that what people expect? “I don’t know what they expect because I don’t tell jokes. I’ve never done jokes. But it’s certainly funny and it’s me on stage, so you get to know who I am and I think people will come away thinking slightly better of me.”

Not that he cares what people think. Yet he still signed up for I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!, purely on the basis he liked watching the show.

“I called it The Death Of Hope because it was like the last chance saloon,” he laughs. “And I didn’t need IACGMOOH, but I thought I’d quite like to do it because I’m contrary like that, even though my agent and wife told me not to.”

Joly loved every minute in the Australian jungle – he finished fourth – and made friends. His only worries were for his family.

“I didn’t want to embarrass my wife because she’s much nicer than me. And I was really worried about my kids and the knock-on effect it could have on them at school, so I got quite nervous.”

Joly then went on to develop his latest show and next TV series.

“Soon I’m off to The Congo to make a series on scary monsters and super creeps like the Yeti and Nessy. I’ve always wanted to go to weird places and meet weird people,” says the man who made a career out of doing just that.

So does he find it hard to settle back to life in the Cotswolds with his wife Stacey and two kids?

“I know people who have other halves in the business and sometimes I get quite jealous because they have someone to talk about it with,” he says, “but in our house it’s all hands on deck and nappies, and my wife doesn’t take any stick.”

He roars with laughter, before adding more soberly: “I think I like to believe I need to do all these weird things when actually I just crave stability, because I’m an odd combination of being bipolar and very lazy or maybe have ADD or whatever it’s called.

“I have a lot of energy and then get very agitated and have to go and do something. I think that’s something to do with growing up in Beirut. The Lebanon was a weird place to be as a child.”

Joly was sent to school at The Dragon in Oxford, “so I love the quietness of the Cotswolds”, he adds.

So what’s next? “I don’t plan things. I’ve never had a career plan,” he says, before adding, enigmatically: “I’m very happy with my niche, whatever it is.”

* Welcome To Wherever I Am, An Evening with Dom Joly, is at the Glee Club on Sunday. 0871 4720400. Go to www.glee.co.uk for more information.