DYLAN Moran is bringing his new show, What It Is, to Plymouth Pavilions this month, as he returns to stand-up with his customary dazzling display of virtuoso routines coupled with a scintillating use of language.

Not for nothing has Dylan been dubbed "the Oscar Wilde of comedy".

Unpredictable, bizarre, elegiac, sometimes cruel and misanthropic, but above all painfully funny, he dissects the highs and lows of human experience with the sensitivity and intense perspicacity of a man who occasionally appears to be teetering on the brink of a precipice.

He's a marvellously splenetic grumpy young man.

In the run-up to the tour, Dylan is sitting outside a bar in central London sipping a cool drink. The comedian, who won both Channel 4's So You Think You're Funny Award and the Perrier, starts by expressing his excitement about returning to the stand-up arena for the first time since his sell-out 2006 tour, Like, Totally.

"I'm really looking forward to this," beams the 36-year-old comedian, who hails from Navan in County Meath and is married with children.

"I've been sitting alone in a room for many months now, and I can't wait to get out there and try out all this new material.

"It's such a great feeling when you discover that other people are thinking about the things you're discussing. Nothing beats it when the material really flies.

"At the end of his shows, Max Wall used to say to his audience, 'thank you, you've been 50 per cent'. That's absolutely true," continues Dylan, who picked up a Bafta and a Bronze Rose of Montreux for his acclaimed Channel 4 sitcom, Black Books.

"Otherwise, it would just be a man or a woman talking to the wind. When you catch a wave with an audience, you get such a buzz. It's not like sounding off through a megaphone.

"Despite appearances, it's a genuine conversation. If you're the lead singer, then the audience is the rhythm section. There's nothing like it."

One of the predominant subjects in What It Is is the stress of our daily existence.

"The relentlessness of modern life is a strong theme in this show," reflects Dylan, who has appeared in such memorable movies as Shaun of the Dead, Run Fat Boy Run and Notting Hill.

"We have a desperate need to distract ourselves with activity all the time. But why are we all so harrowed and worried all the time?"

With a wry grin, Dylan says: "It is, of course, terrific for comedians like me that we are so stressed.

"If we were all sorted, I'd be out of a job! But I think that if suffering is shared, it's OK."

Dylan laughs that the only thing concerning him about the tour is the prospect of going stir-crazy in faceless hotels during the course of the mammoth five-month jaunt around the UK.

"After a couple of months, I'll be dribbling, senile and very, very violent!"

Dylan Moran appears at the Plymouth Pavilions on Thursday, November 20. Tickets are £19 from 0845 146 1460 or visit www.plymouthpavilions.com