When comedian Simon Munnery last passed in October 2010 as warm-up to Stewart Lee at the Regal in Cowley Road, writes Nick Utechin.

On Saturday, he has his own space at North Wall in the intriguing Hats Off To The 101ers.

Intriguing only to those who have never heard of the R-101 airship, constructed in the huge Bedfordshire hangars near where Munnery lives. But in habitual surrealist way, Munnery has a strange take on the subject: “It’s the title, but it’s only 6½ minutes of a one-man punk-rock musical about the R-101. No one else is doing short punk rock musicals about the R-101 airship!”

Munnery is right about that. But he’s chaotic in other ways. It takes him some time to remember who was in his year of Footlights at Cambridge: Tom Hollander, Mel Giedroyc (of Mel & Sue) and Jon Naismith (long-time producer of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue ). He read Natural Sciences (“I didn’t read it very hard…”) but his heart was in performance and in 1992 he went to the Fringe.

“Ah, the notorious Dum Show. Steve Coogan and Patrick Marber, writing and performing, and so were Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. I was stuck in the middle and did an early version of The League Against Tedium — a loser who reinvents himself to be a Nietzschean superhero.

“No one got on; there was a lot of argument. You’d think if you put together that much disparate talent we’d come up with something, but it didn’t go well!”

Munnery then goes off at a nervy tangent about making omelettes by breaking eggs and comes to a juddering halt when I ask his thoughts on Stewart Lee (with whom he has worked often). “I can’t describe Stewart without notice; I’d have to think about that for quite a while”.) Simon Munnery has done much radio and TV — inventing another character for himself, Alan Parker: Urban Warrior.

We get on the same wavelength about audiences and the boom in stand-up: “You wouldn’t think it would have happened. Why spend 20 quid going to see a man talk when for 7 or 8 you could see a Hollywood film? Or stay at home and watch stuff for nothing?

“But an audience wants to be in an audience: there’s a feeling about being in a crowd. The bigger the better, but about a hundred people is lovely.”

Which should make him happy in Summertown on Saturday.

Simon Munnery is at North Wall on February 11.