According to his show title, Paul Savage is tired and emotional. He explains why he doesn't want to meet his ex-girlfriend at the festival.

1. Tell us about your career so far. Are you happy with where you're at?

I've been doing comedy for 8 years now. I started in 2007, and kept going. I'm not entirely happy with where I'm at, but so far I am fulfilling my primary goal "not having to get a proper job". I did proper jobs for years, and got fired from 40 of them in 3 years, so I know I can't do it. If comedy disappears I'll be dead within 3 months.

2. Describe your show in exactly 23 words.

It's about insomnia, the bit between waking and sleeping, the unsettling feeling that not everything makes sense. Plus jokes about Elvis and mice.

3. Why are you putting yourself through this famously stressful experience?

I need it. Part of my show is about wasted potential. I was once tested as having a genius level IQ, and I've done almost nothing with it, because a) IQ really only measures how good you are at logic puzzles, rather than anything actually useful and b) I am fundamentally lazy. If I don't have something to work towards I won't work. In the last two weeks, I've done more writing for this show than I have in the last year, and done more drawing and editing for the comic book collection I sell after my gigs since January. If I didn't force myself, I'd sit with my tolerable club 20 and never do anything else.

4. Any cunning plans to get more punters in?

No, I'm pretty good at flyering. It's going to sound hella autistic, but I use it as conversation practice. If I do get naked at Spank to promote my show, it's probably just because I want to get naked in public without breaching terms of my parole.

5. How much money do you think you'll lose/make this year?

I'm hoping, with selling the comic books (Contrived Set Ups To Niche Pop Culture References and the sequel Contrived Set Ups To Niche Pop Culture References II: 2 Contrived 2 Niche) that is should make a profit. I'm on the free fringe, which I'm doing for the 5th time, and have never not made a profit, if we discount all of the drinking that I do. But I've tried being off the beer at the fringe and it's too painful.

6. What's your weirdest past Fringe experience?

On the way back from a show late at night, I met some Swiss lads beatboxing in the street. I jokingly started dancing with it, they invited me drinking, and we ended up in a nightclub underground. At some point I decided to go home, they said it was too early to go home, so I ran out of a fire escape, got locked out, found myself underground and had to climb a fire escape back to street level. Where there was a pigeon net at the top, so I found myself drunk, holding on with my elbows as I pried it apart, and had "a moment of clarity" at the top whilst halfway through the pigeon net that I could easily die like this, and that the worst thing for a comedian is to die a funny death.

7. What other shows are you hoping to see?

Paul Sinha. I did his flyering for 2 years and he's just the best at hour long shows. You can't fit a cigarette paper between the jokes, and he does them all: satirical, clever, stupid, he writes better puns than most one liner comics. And he always throws in one super obscure reference for us quiz nerds to feel clever about. I also want to see Gein's Family Giftshop, John Robins, Funz and Gamez, Fern Brady, Peter Brush and like another 40 people my shows clash with.

8. If you took over programming a venue, what would you perfect line-up of comedians be?

Frank Skinner Mcing. I read his book when I was 23 and it was the difference between "I want to do this one day" and "I need to do this now". Booked my first gigs soon after. Apparently he was never better than in the backroom pub gigs in Birmingham that he regularly MCed inn the early 90's, so I want him.

Opener: you want a safe pair of hands, and there's no one safer than Nick Doody. Intelligent comedy where he seems to have looked at a subject and wrung every possible joke from it, and done the best worded possible version of each joke. See his bit on not having children for multilayered callbacks, or his "niggling" joke for as succinct and brilliant a one liner as possible.

Middles: Bit of contrast here. I'm going for Bec Hill, who is an energetic delight, full of ideas and puns and things made out of cardboard. What used to be described as whimsical before comedy ruined the word whimsy. Then to follow, Rob Halden, who is the best kept secret in comedy. An utterly broken man, shouting terrifying things at audiences and leading them down the patterns where they expect jokes, and then not delivering jokes. Then we end that section with a dance off between Bec and Rob, because it's my show and I'll do what the hell I want.

To close, Brendon Burns. Doing the Arnold Schwarznegger bit. I ran a gig in my kitchen this year, crammed 33 people in, he did an hour and 45 and we all had a ball. Literally the best gig I've ever run.

9. Name the one person you'd rather not bump into during the festival.

Steve Bennett (main critic of Chortle) because it will end with me shouting at him for not reviewing my book, despite him promising to. Or, as I wrote a show about a break up, I'd prefer if the girl who I broke up with not to come to see the show and then told everyone on the way out it was her the show was about, as happened with my show Cheerful Shambles in 2013.

10. Why should audiences pick your show over the 1,700+ other comedy offerings at this year's festival?

It's the only one with the punchline "trained oncologists". Oh, and I've solved racism, so you might want to be there to see the dawning of our glorious post racial future.

'Paul Savage: Tired and Emotional' is at 5:30pm at Dragonfly on 8-17, 19-29 August. Listing