Earlier this year, Neil Delamere sold out six nights in Vicar St. He is currently presenting Neil Delamere's Just For Laughs on RTE Two, is a regular on The Panel, and is on his way to Kilkenny's Smithwicks Cat Laughs Festival next week. In June, he's back at Vicar St. Neil Delamere is officially Very Funny. But you mightn't think it to meet him.

Perhaps this is his secret. Neil Delamere is an Everyman. Each comic has his thing: Colin Murphy (no relation) pulls funny faces;

Dara O'Briain is enormous;

Tommy Tiernan is dangerous;

Ardal O'Hanlon is innocent. Neil Delamere's biggest claim, perhaps, would be that he is a "messer".

And he makes a good living from "messin'."

It started in school . . . academically good enough to get away with it, and smart enough not to push it too far. "I always thought, why suffer for your art? I didn't think of it as a career option, just thought [it was] a way to pass the time if I'm slightly bored, just sitting there and being a smart arse, pushing it just to where I thought the line was.

"If I thought of something funny I'd always say it, and when I went slightly too far I'd roll back and keep quiet. I was just trying to make people laugh. The particular favourite was when you would do it and the teacher would try not to laugh, but you knew it was funny."

When he talks about making people laugh, his eyes sparkle, and his smile is infectious.

He did a degree in software engineering at DCU. Computers was something handy, a good qualification: "I knew probably it was a stop-gap measure" . . . though a stop-gap to what, he didn't yet know. He got a "very good degree", worked in it for a year, and tried his hand at stand-up. Within a few weeks, he was offered some money for a gig, and he's built it from there.

"Stand-up is the main priority.

The thing is, the longer you do it, the more things get in the way of it . . . take up time that you could be using for writing."

Does he shut himself off when he's writing?

"There's a balance between doing stuff and writing. You're probably better off just living and then writing about it afterwards."

How many gigs has he done at this stage . . . hundreds? "Ah no. Way more. Thousands. A thousand. I dunno.

"There's only really one way of learning, and that's to do it. People regularly go out and try stuff and don't know if it's going to work or not.

"Gig and write, gig and write, gig and write . . . that's the only way to get any better.

"Every time you do something that's new, there's a ratio of what will work to what doesn't work.

There's a certain amount that is hilarious in your head, but nowhere else.

"The more gigs you do, the more eclectic the bunch of people you do them with, the better you'll get.

Irish comics should always travel a bit, and do the festivals . . . you can see whatever you want then, you can see the myriad number of approaches to doing comedy."

He's done some pretty eclectic gigs himself. What were his favourites?

He grins. "This is where I decide to be pretentious. Cool Runnings in Johannesburg. The Comedy Kitchen in Helsinki. Even if these gigs weren't the best gigs in the world, I'm always going to say they were. But they were.

"They're run by comics . . . they're the International, but in those countries. (The International Bar on Wicklow St in Dublin is home to a thriving comedy scene. ) Underground, darkened rooms, that you get paid nothing forf but they're just brilliant craic to do."

So do the burghers of Johannesburg and Helsinki find Neil Delamere funny?

"People will get stuff about anything. Everybody's gone out with somebody, everybody's eaten, everybody's been to school. You know, there's a certain common ground.

"Simply some of the funniest shit you've ever done, you've done when you've been messing with other people at school . . . there's a child-like wonder."

But he does his homework as well.

"You read the history of the place. It's always bizarre [for the audience] when you do something local as well, as long as you don't do cheesy local."

What's "cheesy local"?

"Really hack stuff: you go to Johannesburg and you go, 'Where's the dodgy part of Johannesburg?' and you substitute any joke you have about a dodgy part of Ireland for a dodgy place there.

Or you go, 'Hey, does Johannesburg not get on with Cape Town?'

That's really hack.

"Whereas if you were to do a joke about the toi-toi dance, which is the dance that the South Africans do at protest marches, or about Jan Smuts (the former South African prime minister)f" Of course. Jan Smuts, it seems so obvious. What about Helsinki?

"I like doing jokes in Finland about the Kalevala, which is their national epic poem. It's like a Finnish comedian coming here and doing jokes about Cuchulainn . . . it'd just blow your mind."

So he's gone down a treat in South Africa and Finland. But has he ever bombed?

"Ah yehhh. Every comic has bombed! I remember worrying about it, always thinking about the ultimate death. And when it actually happenedf there was a feeling of infinite calm."

It was a 1am gig at the Late'n'Live show at the Edinburgh festival.

"I started messin' with them.

The messin' went awry.

"There was this guy, he was incandescent with rage.

"It wasn't bombing with silence . . . it was genuine hatred."

There were two options: retreat, or persevere. He persevered, and decided to lecture his antagonist on why Jesus loved him.

"I've seen hundreds of comedians die at that thing, and it's all about how you go. If you're going to go, go in flames."

He doesn't talk about personal stuff. He is the youngest of four children; his father worked for Bord na Mona; he is seeing a girl at the moment, but it's early days.

"We're just feeling our way through it." A sliver of innocuous personal information slips out, and he immediately says, "I'd prefer if you don't put that in." He makes a good living, is very busy, doesn't watch much telly, sees a good bit of theatre. "You go to as many things as possible . . . they might spark things off in your head."

When he gets ideas, he texts himself on his mobile phone. He watched the Liverpool-Milan match with a mate in Messrs Maguire in Dublin. "It's a bit of a tradition." An Everyman.

Back to the comedy: can he describe the "feeling" of doing a great gig, when he's on top form?

"If you've done a really good gig, and it's been just tight throughout . . . it's been a wave, if you know what I mean. It's not just one line;

it's a momentum that builds throughout the whole thing, until almost it's a frenzy.

"That happens very rarely, for anybody . . . truly uncontrolled momentum . . . that's the ultimate feeling. That's better than parachute jumpingf better than drugsf" He pauses a moment, then adds, "I would imagine."

He's had that experience "a few times".

"I haven't seen it that often, even. You're aiming for the perfect gig, but sure nobody ever gets the perfect gig."

Thinking about it, he's back to Finland . . . his first gig there, two years ago. (He's been back each year since, to a local festival in a small town outside Helsinki, modelled on the Smithwicks Cat Laughs. ) "Finns don't really talk to the audience, so if you talk to the audience you look amazing. There was this guy in the front room and I said, 'What do you do?' And he said, 'I work with computers'. I said, 'What do you do with them?'

He said, 'It would be too complicated to explain.' I just went, 'Well, is it Java, is it C++? Is itf'" (He lists off a bewildering litany of obscure computer languages. ) "I said, 'What do you think I did before I did this, you f**ker? I've been doing comedy for three years, and I've been waiting all that time for somebody to say what you've just said. I'm going to nail you.'

"And I did nail him, but I was messin'. It was just a freak, that I knew exactly what he did, because I had done it in college.

So the gig was really good up to that point, but that was the point where it just went haywire."

Where does it go from here?

"It just comes back to the work.

It'll always be more about standup.

"My ambition is just to be as good as I can be, and everything else will flow from that. Particularly in Ireland, because it's so small that, if you're good enough for long enough, you'll do all right."

Neil Delamere is doing all right, the messer. The photographer arrives as we finish the interview.

"Is this going on the cover? I would have worn better clothes."

Neil Delamere is at the Smithwicks Cat Laughs Festival, Kilkenny, 31 May4 June, and plays Vicar St, Dublin, on 23 June