Danny Bhoy spent just one week in his flat in Edinburgh last year, and even then he started climbing the walls. Because if he’s not on stage making people laugh he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Luckily his touring lifestyle means he rarely has time to unpack a suitcase, and his sell-out global gigs keep him continually on the road: “It doesn’t really matter where I live because I’m only around for about a week a year.

“Last year it was July 19 to 26, so as long as I’m near an airport I’m good. But too much time at home and I get a bit stir crazy and start to think too much, so I just roll with the punches,” he grins.

Danny Bhoy is not his real name of course, and he won’t tell me what is. “Danny Bhoy is what I was called at school so I’ve stuck with it. I never use my real name anymore unless filling in documents so it’s quite hard to remember it sometimes,” he added.

If you were Australian, Canadian or even a Kiwi, you’d be scrambling for tickets to see him at the New Theatre on Tuesday. And yet the UK is the one place the Scotsman hasn’t cracked yet, not that he’s tried, until now.

“I got a break in Australia in 2003,” the 34 year-old explains, “My first gig was 18 people in a pub in Australia and I’ve been living off the buzz ever since. So it’s purely by default rather than design that my career has been so international,” he shrugs, “until now I’ve just relied on word-of-mouth. But as this is my first proper tour of the UK, I’ll be able to go home between gigs and see my mates”.

The downside is that all this travelling plays havoc with his private life: “I would like to calm down a bit,” he said simply. “You know... get some ducks and a farm, a wife and some kids.”

But surely the life of a famous touring comedian is quite rock-and-roll? After all he’s a good-looking, single man with a sense of humour. He must have legions of female fans desperate for a bit of Danny Bhoy himself? “Oh, you’d be surprised,” he insisted. “My life is so chaotic that it’s not anything like that, I wish it was, but after a gig I nip out the backdoor and go back to my hotel room, so I don’t go out that much.”

“But I was doing a gig in Sydney where The Rolling Stones had just been touring and asked about their back stage antics. Apparently they all have their own doctors, drink herbal tea in the interval and play chess, which made me feel much better,” he laughs. “And Keith Richards says he hates it when a tour ends because he feels like a nobody as soon as he gets home.”

It’s remarkable that Danny hadn’t considered a career in comedy until he walked past a pub in Edinburgh on his way home from work and saw an open mic night advertised. “I should have known really because every job I did after university I got fired from for mucking about and making people laugh. But I had no idea you could make money out of comedy. My last plan Z was to go into teaching when I’d exhausted everything else,” he remembers, “so I do believe in fate.”

Danny’s rise to fame wasn’t immediate though. He’s had to work his way up the comedy ladder. “I started touring comedy clubs, doing five minutes open spots wherever possible and then one night the headliner was ill and I was asked to do the whole 25-minute slot. I remember saying ‘I can’t do 25 minutes’ and panicking. I only had five minutes of material and that was hard enough,” he laughs.

But the promoter offered him £50 and Danny managed to draw it out. “I was terrified, but it was an epiphany. There were only about 30 people in the audience and I just bantered with them. But I do remember having to make eye contact with the audience, which I’d never done before,” he laughs. “And now I can’t shut up because I really enjoy the journey.

“But my favourite bit of the show is always the first five to 10 minutes, that’s where the power is. It’s like two boxers in a ring circling each other and waiting for the first punch to land.”