TV comedian Ed Byrne shares trials of fatherhood in If I'm Honest live show touring to Derbyshire

He cannot wait to bring his live show to Buxton Opera House on November 16 and Chesterfield’s Winding Wheel on November 28.

Ed said: “I missed doing stand-up the most during lockdown. I’ll have to see what still works and what doesn’t. No-one told me ‘you’re not going to be touring for 18 months’ or I would have planned it better.”

A TV household name, Ed has been seen on Mock The Week, Top Gear, Have I Got News For You, The Graham Norton Show, Dara & Ed’s Big Adventure and QI among many others.

In his live show titled If I’m Honest, the comedian questions whether he has any qualities whatsoever worth passing on to his two sons.

Ed takes his natural tendency towards self-deprecation to unexpected extremes. He said: “I do genuinely annoy myself. But the thing of your children being a reflection of you, gives an opportunity to build something out of the best of yourself only for you to then see flashes of the worst of yourself in them. It’s a wake-up call about your own behaviour.”

If I’m Honest is a show with a steely core.

Gender politics, for example, is something Ed readily engages with – deploying his customary comedic zeal. ‘I’ll admit that there are things where men get a raw deal,” he said. “We have higher suicide rates, and we tend not to do well in divorces, but representation in action movies is not something we have an issue with. It was Mad Max: Fury Road that kicked it all off, even though nobody complained about Ripley in Alien or Sarah Connor in Terminator 2. Of course, social media means this stuff gets broadcast far and wide in an instant, which emboldens people.

‘The problem with men’s rights activists is that it’s not about speaking up for men’s rights, it’s about hating women. If you’re a men’s rights activist, you’re not going to care about the fact that there’s an all-female Ghostbusters remake. That’s nothing to do with men’s rights or female entitlement. That’s everything to do with being, well, a whiny baby."

Tickets for If I’m Honest cost £28, book at www.buxtonoperahouse.org.uk or www.chesterfieldtheatres.co.uk