WHEN, I ask Jimeoin did he first feel comfortable getting on a stage? The comedian lifts a glass of red wine to his lips, takes a sip and says, “I didn’t feel comfortable tonight.”

In the bar of the Pleasance at the EICC, Jimeoin, once of Northern Ireland (you can still hear the accent), now and for the last three decades located in Australia, is decompressing after his first Monday night at this year’s Fringe.

He will soon relax and begin to enjoy the conversation and the bottle of wine courtesy of the Pleasance management. But to start with he’s worrying away at tonight’s show.

Every evening before he goes on stage, he tells me, he writes out his act in the book, reducing it to a handful of words. “If I write it out before I go on it will click in my head. It’s a mental map I write.”

Tonight, though, he left his book in his hotel room. And so he spent the night navigating from one joke to the next not quite remembering the route that takes him from here to there.

“It makes for a stressful night. ‘What’s the next bit?’ I could do without that pressure.”

Whether any of that was obvious to the audience who laughed solidly for an hour is doubtful. As far as they were concerned they have just been given a typical hour of Jimeoin-esque entertainment. Jokes about facial expressions and farting and sex and silliness. He even revives has a short routine about that comedic cliche white dog droppings, and manages to do something new with it.

“I’ve always been a bit nonsensy and a little bit daft. But that seems to travel well.”

Indeed. This year Jimeoin celebrates a quarter of a century of the Fringe. Then there’s the endless touring and appearances on Live at the Apollo. All of which seems enough for him.

“I’ve turned down a lot of things that people would have thought of as being a good thing. I’m really into the stand-up. There are certain TV things that wouldn’t appeal to me.

“TV has become really cheap in a lot of ways. It used to be that thing that you would strive to get on. Now you go: ‘Is it really a good thing to be on?’”

The first time Jimeoin got up on a stage was in Sydney. He’d never actually seen any stand-up before. “I’d done it before I’d even seen it,” he says. “I got up in a bar and told jokes and then watched the other guy and he had a whole routine. It blew my mind.”

He’s played all over his adopted homeland, in cities and cattle ranches. “I’ve seen a lot of Australia. Weird places. I did this gig in a place called Hells Gate. For that very reason. It was on the Gulf of Carpentaria. A drinking Aboriginal community. There was a black bar and a white bar. There still is right to this very day. I had the night where everybody is in.”

People even chartered a plane from a nearby island to come and see him. “They went: ‘F*** me, when we saw you were playing here we thought we have got to go. He is going to die on his hole. And believe me, you delivered tonight boss.”

“They were laughing at how bad it was. It was total chaos. It started with a fight.

“It turned out to be a great night, but it took a while to get going. But at the end of that tour I felt indestructible. Nothing would phase me then.”

He takes another sip of wine and thinks again about what he still wants from comedy.

“If I can come up with a new joke, that’s the best feeling. A couple of new gags a night, that’s the best night. Nothing more than that.”

Then he remembers he’s just done a show with Nicholas Parsons. “He’s 94. He was very sharp. Oh my God, I couldn’t believe how sharp he was. You’d aspire to that level of mental health. I think that would be as important as a career. It would be good to be that sharp for all your days. To have that level of care and love for it.

“It would be horrible to be doing it and just be a lonely f*****, you know? Filling big barns but crying yourself to sleep.”

Jimeoin: Result! Continues at the Pleasance at EICC, Morrison Street at 8.40pm until August 26 (except August 13 & 20). Jimeoin: Roast Chicken Result! Is on tonight at 10pm and every weekend of the Fringe.