Russell Kane is more than just a stand-up act.
He’s like a comedy David Attenborough who instead of the animal kingdom, focuses his attention on the way blokes from the south-east behave.
Raised in Essex, he was a bookish wallflower in a world of geezers.
“I was a weedy boy at school and my dad was a rugby player,” he says.
Now the star of TV shows such as Stupid Man, Smart Phone and Live At The Electric is bringing his tour to Aberdeen and will be dissecting blokeish behaviour on-stage at the Music Hall on Saturday night.
“I find it easy to pick apart a certain kind of masculinity. The way they talk, the way they behave in public, the ways they compete with each other and the ways they try to interact with women,” he says.
Despite being a bit of an oddity growing up, there is a part of Kane’s psyche that is classic Essex.
“Books are my thing,” he says, “but the second I saw Ibiza Rocks are having a comedian in residence this summer, I was like, ‘I’d love to get out there and have it in Ibiza’.
“And my wife’s like ‘what’s wrong with you?’”
It’s all part of the Russell Kane contradiction.
“I love curries, I love pints with the lads, I like BMWs – I’m a weird mess.”
That feeds into his fascination with class – not in a ranty political way, but on a more anthropological level.
He’s a brilliant chronicler of how British people from different backgrounds look at each other.
And he’s amazed by how little class is talked about as a subject, particularly by comedians.
“People just don’t want to analyse the prejudice that’s out there,” he says.
Class explains the way some snootier people react to Kane – if he talked like Stephen Fry or Miles Jupp, he’d probably be taken a lot more seriously.
However, the juxtaposition of big ideas and polysyllabic language with an estuary accent means he can sometimes get wrongly labelled as a show-off or a faker.
“If a comedian with my type of accent dares to use a long word, it’s seen as display rather than intrinsic knowledge coming to the surface.”
Essex is as much a part of Kane’s comedy as Glasgow is for Kevin Bridges or Wales is for Rhod Gilbert.
So it’s funny to hear that he is now a fish out of water, living in Cheshire.
But rather than isolating him from his old stamping ground, it’s made him think about it all the more.
“It’s really brought into focus how weird, fast-paced, angry and culturally unique the south-east of England is,” he explains.
“Now that I’m up in Cheshire, I realise how fast-paced and chaotic and anonymous we can be down south. I’ve been performing a bit about the difference between ordering a coffee in London or Essex, or ordering a coffee up north.
“In the north there’s someone asking about ‘Barbara’ and, ‘How are the grandkids?’ and down south you’re saying ‘Just throw an espresso in my face, now when’s my train? Move! Move! Move!’”
That’s part of the story behind Kane’s new show – though he’s keen to point out that the main focus of the evening will not be expounding some grand philosophical theory.
“I know I can do shows with a clever theme and all that,” he says, “but I just want to do a beltingly funny night in the theatre.
“So at 10.30pm, you can’t move for the pain of laughing. That’s my only objective.”
Russell Kane’s show The Fast And The Curious is arriving in Aberdeen on Saturday at the Music Hall. For tickets, see aberdeenperformingarts.com