Sara Pascoe is among the brightest and funniest comedians on the circuit. Now she is back with new show - themed around Animals. Tim Hughes can't wait to find out what it's all about...

If you've seen Sara Pascoe on the telly – and there can't be many who haven't – you'll know she likes to mix things up.

Take her new show Animals, which she brings to Oxford's Glee club tomorrow. Yes, there are jokes about wildlife, though it is of the inner London variety, rather than anything David Attenborough would deign to wax lyrical about. And even that is mixed in with witty observations on everything from evolution to Jason Donovan; Tony Blair to Henry the Hoover.

Wide ranging doesn't begin to cover it.

"It's about trying to find light and shade in things," she says. "The unspoken theme of the show is how we empathise with other people. So it's dealing with that, but with really silly stories in between.

"I'm trying to talk about things that really matter to me, but in a way that isn't like a boring TED talk."

From her roots as a struggling actor, 10 years ago, Sara has become one of the best-known, and laughed-at, comedians on the circuit. A regular on Mock the Week, QI, and Have I Got News For You, she has also won fans through inspired roles in The Thick of It, W1A, and Twenty Twelve.

But it is as a standup that her strangely offbeat, yet keenly-observed humour takes shape and flowers.

And despite her TV work, the Essex funny girl with broad Estuary accent, has stuck to her primary objective as a touring standup comedian, with Animal being her biggest tour to date.

It's starting point is evolution. All animals evolved, she says, but only humans have evolved to the point of knowing they evolved. The show touches on empathy - and it's limitations.

The tour coincides with the publication, this month, of her first book - Animal: An Autobiography of the Female Body.

"The book came first and deals with evolution and humans beings as animals – particular female humans as animals," she says. "But after writing it, I realised there were lots of other areas that I hadn't been able to touch in the book that I have now mined for the show."

Sara has a special take on the whole 'animal' thing, being a vegan, after a challenge by fellow comedian Josie Long.

"I still have struggles with it," she says. "I talk about being a 'rubbish vegan', because I think trying to be better is good, and sometimes that makes you feel like a failure.

"People shouldn't feel bad if they slip up. Everyone has had struggles or accidentally ate chocolate or ate a whole lump of cheese when they were drunk. Those things happen and I think it's all right to talk about it. But there are a very small number of vegans who would have us killed. They would have us killed and wear our skin."

Does she find it difficult to talk about on stage? "As a comedian, if you sound like you're about to be superior – and that's what people think about veganism; that you feel that you're morally better – you have to undercut yourself, and then it's fine."

And, she says, she stops short of using her position – with a rapt crowd eating out of her hand – to pass on her message and beliefs.

"It's tempting, because you want to feel like you're a really good person," she says. "But you have to be careful how you do it.

"I have to remind myself that I am a comic, I'm not a politician. I didn't say, 'Oh, hey guys, I'm going to sort everything out for you and it'll be perfect.'

"At the end of the day, sometimes it's just trying to be funny."

So does that mean she is happy for people to disagree with her?

"I'm really happy for people to disagree about certain things, and they should," she says.

"Sometimes, when you’re talking about a challenging subject, you want to stimulate debate, and your opinion is neither here nor there."

That desire to get on stage and show off goes back to her childhood. Indeed, if her dream had gone to plan, she would have been a serious actor.

"I remember being around 11 or 12 and making my sister do really long plays with me, just in the bedroom," she says.

"Then at 14 my mum made me join a drama group as a punishment for having a party when she was out the house, and I fell so deeply in love with it that I knew I was going to dedicate my life to putting on hats and voices."

He first paid acting job was at the Millennium Dome, at the age of 18.

"I originally got a job in the ticketing department, but then I managed to get an audition to do street theatre in the zones," she recalls. "It was the best job in the world. I just had to be a different character for an hour and run around and talk to people. It was amazing!

"I went to the O2 Arena last year to do the Great Ormond Street gala. It was the first time I'd been back and it was so weird, 15 years later, walking into the building that now looks really different. I felt so nostalgic. It was like going back to my school or something.’

So why switch to stand-up?

"It wasn’t a decision," she says. "I thought stand-up was really stupid. I thought all comedy was stupid.

"I had done open mic nights with my guitar, and I'd done spoken word nights with poetry; I was trying everything in order not to shrivel up.

"I went to watch a friend do stand-up and I thought absolutely everyone was terrible. I hadn't realised that you could take words up on a piece of paper, I thought all stand-up was improvised. So when I saw all these skinny boys with pads in their hands being rubbish I thought: Oh, I can do that. So I started it very arrogantly.

"But I did a stand-up gig and it was like: Oh, now I know what my whole life has been leading to, every job I'd done, it all made sense.

"It's a form of self-improvement, if you choose to use it that way. You use it to work yourself out and to forgive yourself. It's a form of self-acceptance. So that's why it's made me very, very happy."

And is there anything else you’d like to try?

"Professional gymnast! No, but I do think about things. I've been thinking about Strictly Come Dancing recently.

"I watched the last series and I loved it so much, but I thought: I'm not having my teeth whitened and being fake tanned, and I'm not wearing dresses! One of the great things about comedy is it bleeds out to everything else; people think you're qualified for things that you're not. But I think it's more of the same for me rather than diversifying.

"Unless it's Strictly Come Dancing."

* Animal: An Autobiography of the Female Body is published by Faber.

* Sara Pascoe brings Animal to Glee, Oxford tomorrow. Call 0871 472 0400 or go to glee.co.uk