RICH Hall, the grouchy, deadpan, indignant voice of Montana, loves touring Britain.

“By the time I’m a third of the way into the tour, it will be spring, and as I get older, I’m really starting to like that time of year,” says the 59-year-old American comedian, writer and musician.

“I may have become overly familiar with the motorway service stations of the UK, but I really like discovering new places. It’s important to visit out -of-the-way towns because it gives you a new perspective.”

You wouldn’t call Harrogate or York “out of the way”, unless you were having to travel on the day from North Carolina, but that is where Hall is headed over the coming week as he revels in the live arena once more. “What I love about stand-up is the immediacy of it. Having run the gamut of TV panel shows, after a while you know how to do them and they’re not so much fun any more,” says Rich, who has been a fixture on QI, Have I Got News For You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

“But now I know I’m going to be on stage somewhere like Melksham, and that prospect is really exciting. For those two hours, no one is looking at their phones. It’s a true non-media event. Those sorts of occasions are rapidly disappearing, and that’s why I value them so much.”

In the heat of the moment at his shows, Hall is noted for crafting on-the-spot songs out of the smallest scraps gleaned from the audience, “I do what Americans call ‘crowd work’. I really enjoy that because I can turn it into improvised songs, which is a big thrill for me. I always have a guitar beside me on stage in case something happens,” he says.

His lampooning wit and eye for the absurd enable him to build a show off the cuff without recourse to stock material. “It’s funny, the less information you get from people, the more you can improvise. Nothing is out of bounds. I want them to tell me, ‘I’m a clerk,’ rather than, ‘I work for the council finance department and am involved in the end of year expenditure’. As soon as I hear the word ‘clerk’, my head immediately starts formulating rhymes for it.”

This ability to improvise a comic golden thread leaves him angered by the rote nature of so many comedians. “What’s exasperating is that as comedians we live by the word. I see that very swiftly deteriorating, and I find it really scary. There doesn’t seem to be any appreciation any more of the written and spoken word. Everything is turning into shorthand,” he says.

“When a comedian like Dylan Moran gets on stage and speaks in his own very distinctive language, that really appeals to me. But nowadays a lot of performers are simply acting out the role of comedian and going through the motions. They use a very predictable cadence of comedy – ‘Here comes the punchline’. If you close your eyes, you can hear it coming.”

Rich Hall is driven by a simmering fury in his shows that soon spills over. “I get riled by the level of incompetence and amount of crap in the world,” he says. “I’m also incensed by the fact that we’re all turning into button-pushing squirrels.”

The irascible persona is only for comic effect on stage, however. “I’m not really angry at all,” he says. “There are very small outward changes in my emotions. I have a sort of deadpan Walter Matthau visage. People think, ‘This guy looks grumpy’, but that’s just how my face is put together. Your comic demeanour has to match your face. Most comedians fit their face.”

Rich was once a regular on Saturday Night Live and an Emmy-winning writer for The David Letterman Show in the United States, but his downbeat demeanour has struck a chord over here. “British audiences are always very appreciative of the spoken word. They find it refreshing that I’m very detached from America. I’m not waving a flag or pretending that I’m hipper than you because I happen to be from the US,” he says.

Rich is full of praise for British audiences giving him their complete attention. “That is almost impossible nowadays. You can’t go to a sports event without someone Tweeting about it every five seconds,” he says. “People don’t even listen to President Obama speaking without looking at their phones all the time. So maybe those two hours when I’m up there on stage provide a respite from all of us slowly turning into gadget-pedalling robots. If that’s the case, then it’s pretty cool!”

Rich Hall plays Harrogate Theatre tomorrow and Saturday, 8pm; York Theatre Royal, April 19, 7.30pm. Box office: Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

• Did you know?

Rich Hall was the inspiration for Moe Szyslak, the curmudgeonly barman in The Simpsons.