By Brian Donaldson

COMEDY fans in Wiltshire beware - Irish comic Ed Byrne is coming to town, and he'll be making notes on your performance.

Ed Byrne has been an acclaimed stand-up (with audiences and critics alike) for 20 years now.

As he prepares to launch himself upon the nation with another touring show, Spoiler Alert, which comes to the Civic Centre, Trowbridge on January 25 and The Wyvern in Swindon on March 4, he admits it continues a theme that he’s tackled in previous shows, that of his gradual shift from being a working-class Dubliner to a fully paid-up rural-residing member of the middle classes.

Where once he would do routines slating 4x4 owners, he is now the proud(ish) owner of such a vehicle. And in the poster for his tour, he brandishes other signifiers of social mobility: a bowtie and chainsaw.

“It’s one of two I own: that one is the smaller of the two,” Ed remarks of his chainsaw, rather than his neckwear. “I use it for firewood, both for my wood burning stove and also for the barbecue. The first time I used one I was fine, though I think it worried my parents that I had bought a chainsaw.”

Having premiered Spoiler Alert at the Edinburgh Fringe and used August to hone the show, it is fully ready to go. “Being on stage is enjoyable and this part of the writing process is enjoyable. The empty page though is a scary thing," he said. And he warned: "I keep a tour diary now of places where the curries are disappointing and where they are good and where audiences have been good before.”

Parenting and of course Brexit also feature in the show. , His way of tackling Brexit is to draw an analogy with the time his son was determined to touch an electric fence while he tried to warn him of the dangers.

“It struck me that it was Brexit in microcosm. It works as an analogy whichever side you’re on. The government told you not to do this and that it would be a terrible idea, but you said ‘no, we want to do it anyway’. So now we’re doing it and it’s proving a terrible idea. I do think it’s a fair analogy, but no doubt for some it will come across as me being a typical liberal elite Remoaner.”

Tickets for both gigs are available now from the venues: www.trowbridgecivic.co.uk and www.swindontheatres.co.uk