AFTER Irish comedian Jason Byrne reintroduced props to his 2015 show, his audiences demanded still more silly props. More giant ducks, more rubber hands, owls, big wooden pegs and magic stunts.

Here comes Jason Byrne Is Propped Up, wherein Byrne returns to the stage this month for 35 dates with the tantalising prospect of a glimpse of a mouse with a moustache.

“On my last tour, I brought back prop comedy and the audiences couldn’t stop laughing. So I thought, why not create an entire show full of props?” reasons Byrne. “It’s going to be very silly and absolutely trouser-wettingly funny.”

He is taking to the road, playing Harrogate Theatre on Thursday and Leeds City Varieties on October 28, after a busy few years where his BBC Radio 2 show was awarded the Sony Radio Gold Award; he has fronted the comedy chat show Jason Byrne’s Snaptastic Show for TV3 in Ireland and he has co-hosted Wild Things on Sky1.

He has a new book of childhood memoirs out too, Adventures Of A Wonky-Eyed Boy, published last month by the Irish imprint, Gill Books.

York Press:

Jason Byrne and his giant duck

Now his focus is on Propped Up. “My show has an awful lot of physical contact,” he says, pointing to a memorable encounter with a fireman in Glasgow. “He picked me up and spun me around in a circle like I was only a pound in weight, so the only thing I could do was to say to him, ‘You do that again’...and he did it again! Then, at the end, I said, ‘there’s only one way I can end this show’, so I got him to carry me off.”

Byrne is responding to his audiences’ wishes. “They want the improv, they want the stand-up, but they also really want the props,” he says. “It’s like being on the edge of a hurricane and then ending up in the eye of it each night.

“I’ll continually look for new props to add to the ones I already have, like the giant duck and an actual stuffed owl. People love it being improvised, so basically I write my stuff on stage. The way I do it is that I use the audience as a trigger and then get them up on stage to take part.”

Byrne, now 44, will not be burning out on his tour, although accidents can happen when the comedy is so frenetic. “The thing with comedians is that it’s very rare that you don’t do a show, though I have missed a gig through concussion, pneumonia and a dislocated arm in Australia, where I damaged it in the sea when I was surfing," he says. "The sea was so strong; the current was insane.”

Jason Byrne Is Propped Up pops up at the Harrogate Comedy Festival on Thursday at Harrogate Theatre and Leeds City Varieties Music Hall on October 28. Box office: 01423 502116 or at harrogatetheatre.co.uk; 0113 243 0808 or at cityvarieties.co.uk