Punslinger Tim Vine is bringing his big bag of silliness to Solstice this September

Comedian and punslinger extraordinaire Tim Vine is coming to Navan tonight and don't be surprised if he opens with one of his chimney jokes – he's got a stack of them. Vine, famous for his rapid-fire joke telling and super-silly humour, (see the pics for heaven's sake) has finally got around to doing a tour of Ireland.

Having never performed his one-liner extravaganzas outside Dublin or Belfast before, he's taking himself off-piste for a whirlwind tour of the country which includes the Solstice Arts Centre on Friday 7th September.

"What nornmally happens is a promoter asks if I want to tour Ireland and I say I do, but it normally invloves a three day tour taking in Portsmouth, Dublin and Aberdeen or something bizarre like that and so to avoid all that I thought I'd rather go over and do a few shows and get around the place. Strangely enough, we're not doing Dublin or Belfast this time but it'll be great to see all these new places including Navan."

The Sunset Milk Idiot tour, says Vine, should appeal to anyone with a serious sense of silliness. "Yes, it's all very silly, this show in particular is very silly indeed, says the 51-year-old. It's just a lot of stupidity from a grown man, I think the older I get the more silly it looks".

"I'm really enjoying this tour, we've been having great fun doing it. I can promise lots of silly sing, singalongs, lots of jokes. Preparing that silliness is serious business. The weeks and months leading up to a tour will see lots of material end up on the stage floor. He'll use his local comedy club to road test gags and songs with many lines not making the final cut. "I love the feeling of just going out there and taking the risk and seeing what happens."

It's very rewarding when something lands and you think 'oh great, that's going in'" When he's preparing for a show, his ear will fine tune to phrases and conversations and he mines them for material but, he says, he doesn't think in puns such as.. “I did a gig in a fertility clinic. I got a standing ovulation.” He does love however trying to bring some of his gags to life with props. "I had this joke about spinning plates and I had this guy build me spinning platypusses on them that was great fun."

Vine grew up in Sutton just outside London and is a younger brother of BBC broadcaster and journalist Jeremy Vine. He sold out the entire run of Sunset Milk Idiot at the Edinburgh Festival in 2017, where he had previously won the award for Dave’s Funniest Joke Of The Fringe in 2010 and 2014, as well as runner-up spots in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

"I never have a conscious moment where I thought growing up that I was going to be a comedian. When I started writing jokes they tended to be quite short and when I went for the longer ones they just didn't seem to work as well. Then I found I would tell the jokes quite quickly, probably just wanting to get to the next laugh as quickly as possible, and it sort of grew like that. it wasn't a conscious thing, just lots of short sentences and silliness.

He knows his rapid fire one liner assault isn't to everyone's taste but he's not about to change his routine now. "The most popular comedy now is observational comedy where the likes of (Michael) McIntyre and (John) Bishop are selling out stadiums and arenas and I think they are all brilliant and I do wonder sometimes what life would have been like if I had been that sort of comedian but I just don't think it was my style."

Vine says there is no great mystery to rhyming off hundreds of one-liners one after another and like any material he gets it down, learns it and memorises it. "I think people might think I'm doing it all from instinct or something because there are no links to any of the jokes. Except there are, but they're all in my head, there's just no narrative. Most people will say the same, you have to practice and I'm no different. I just have to walk around talking to myself."

Here are 10 top Tim Vine lines.

'I’d like to start with the chimney jokes – I’ve got a stack of them. The first one is on the house.'

'I did a gig in a fertility clinic. I got a standing ovulation.'

'I had a dream last night that I was cutting carrots with the Grim Reaper – dicing with death.'

'I saw this bloke chatting-up a cheetah and I thought: ‘He’s trying to pull a fast one.'

'The advantages of easy origami are two-fold.'

'I said to the gym instructor: ‘Can you teach me to do the splits?’ He said: ‘How flexible are you?’ I said: ‘I can’t make Tuesdays.'

'I met this bloke with a didgeridoo and he was playing Dancing Queen on it. I thought, ‘that’s Abba-riginal.'

'I’ve decided to sell my Hoover – it was just collecting dust.'

'I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me ‘Can you give me a lift?’ I said ‘Sure, you look great, the world’s your oyster, go for it.'

'I was at sea the other day and loads of meat floated past. It was a bit choppy.'

Tickets for Time Vine's Sunset Milk Idiot show at Solstice on 7th September are on sale now