Mike Wozniak

Wozniak's 2010 show, Egg and Spoon, chronicled his and his wife’s attempts to conceive. I resist asking the obvious question as to how this is going; even though I saw the show, it seems rather personal. “It’s a difficult subject. I think it’s a question you should ask very carefully or not at all, which is why in the show I specifically didn’t pry about who had done what where in the audience. I didn’t want to open up wounds.”

So what drew him to writing a show so potentially fraught with emotion? “It wasn’t my intention to write a show like that at all. The previous two shows were completely different, and I’d never written a show that was heart on sleeve and ‘this is what is happening in my life genuinely’, but that was the only thing floating round in my head.” So as he sat down to write his show, that’s what it ended up being about. “Luckily I have a very tolerant and patient wife, who didn’t mind at all that I would be going up and talking about this stuff.”

Though it’s not a fact he widely advertises, Wozniak is one of a slew of comedians who used to practice as a GP. In fact, he tells us, he went to the same medical school as Paul Sinha and Harry Hill. What is it about the medical profession that makes people turn to comedy?

“There’s an old fashioned Christmas revue tradition in a lot of medical schools. You arrive when you’re 18 years old, and there’s this comedy sketch show troupe that you can join, which you were never able to do before.  All of a sudden you’re writing sketches and performing, and then a handful of us get the bug and then you just can’t stop doing it, you can’t stop thinking about it, and then one thing leads to another.”

Wozniak is looking forward to Glasgow (“what’s not to look forward to?”) to “wandering around having a few drinks, soaking up everyone else’s show and having a bloody fine old time.” He’s appearing at The Stand on Monday, before An Audience with Imran Yusuf, and as far as double bills go, you’re not likely to have a bloody finer time all festival.