CANADIAN comedian, actor and writer Stewart Francis feels very much at home in England.

So much so that the tall one from BBC2’s Mock The Week and Channel 4’s 8 Out Of 10 Cats moved here more than two years ago, returning him to his family roots.

“Both my parents are British, though they met in Toronto, and my relatives are British,” says Stewart, whose latest leg of his extended Tour De Francis opens in York on Friday at the Grand Opera House.

“My humour is British; very dry. Some of the work has to be done by you [the audience], and people will make that effort, whereas in America they need it to be more overt. Their culture is loud and in your face.”

Stewart grew up watching British television shows in Canada, a further influence on his comedy, and his connections run deep. “I have a British passport; my wife is from Scotland, and I’ve been living in the UK for almost three years now,” he says.

“This is where I do all my gigs. I just go back to Toronto for nostalgic reasons; memory lane, playing the old Toronto clubs.”

As with Tim Vine and Milton Jones, Stewart’s stand-up routines rely on quick-fire quips in a show that combines “silliness and the cerebral with the occasional bird call”. “There’s no design to my act. I just do the jokes I come up with, and I’ll censor myself as I go along, if I do rude, rude, rude; I like to keep up the element of surprise, which is the only constant that I put into my jokes,” he says.

“It’s comedy with no dead weight. It’s just gags, gags, gags, but I’ve been doing it so long that it’s second nature now…and the only criticism I get is that it’s too much to take in all at once, but I’m on a winner there, so they come back!”

What’s more, if Stewart’s jokes really do come too thick and fast, the November 22 release of his debut DVD on 2Entertain will allow you to appreciate his Tour De Francis show at your own pace at home. “It’s nice to have something tangible,” he says. “We recorded at it at the Bloomsbury Theatre a month ago, two shows in one night. The second one was pretty good and we’ll take good jokes from the first show that I forgot to do in the second!”

Such is the sugar rush of a Stewart Francis show that he is the antithesis of the modern combative, victim-seeking, bar-room comedian. “I don’t pick on anyone in the audience; I just pick on every facet of life,” he says. “I have no vendettas, no mandates, they’re just gags, and if it’s a dark subject…I don’t dwell on it, I move on to something silly, and we’re quickly two or three jokes along.”

For all the endorphin kick of a night’s live comedy, he does not consider its purpose in hard times to be restorative. “I see it as an offshoot,” he says. “I’m always grateful for the number of people who have that happiness for however long; it’s a lovely feeling, but I don’t see one of comedy’s main roles as to set out to make things better.

“I just like the structure of a joke. That’s the challenge. I’ve been cursed and blessed with this curious mind, so I pick up a topic and come up with a punchline. That is my math, my calculus, creating a joke from anything – and sometimes the punchline comes to me first.”

Don’t expect him to interact too much with his York audience on Friday. “That’s self-indulgent time-wasting!” he reasons. “Talking to the guy at the front, some want that, but I think they mostly think, ‘I’ve paid my money, you tell the jokes’.”

Stewart Francis in Tour De Francis, Grand Opera House, York, Friday, 7.30pm. Tickets update: still available on 0844 847 2322 or grandoperahouseyork.org.uk; restricted to 16 plus.