Bridget Christie won this year’s Foster’s Comedy Award but many comedians’ big tip was the oversized wonderkid Bo Burnham.

The 22-year-old 6ft 5 American has barely stopped for breath since he uploaded the darkly comic ballad My Whole Family Thinks I’m Gay to YouTube back in 2006.

The narrative should probably read that the Massachusetts-born polymath felt stifled by school and turned his hand to expressing himself on his own terms.

But, like his comedy, nothing is ever as it seems with the man who was granted a Comedy Central special aged only 18.

“All I did was schoolwork, all the time,” says Burnham, speaking from the US where he is currently on tour, coming across as frighteningly normal in interview.

“I was a very attentive student and I loved learning. So it wasn’t a creative person trapped in the restrictions of school.”

He’s always been more left-brain, more analytical, than emotive or artistic, and admits he doesn’t have a great musical ear.

“That’s always informed my comedy. Even though being academic about comedy or analysing comedy is thought of as an old thing – like dissecting a frog: nobody laughs and the frog dies – I enjoy it.”

Even so, he releases his musical comedy regularly and his first EP, Bo Fo Sho, came in 2008, followed by two full-length albums, Bo Burnham, in March 2009, and Words Words Words, in October 2010 The same year as Words Words Words topped the Billboard Comedy chart, the Edinburgh Comedy Award panel awarded Burnham its panel prize and the Malcolm Hardee Act Most Likely To Make A Million Quid Award after his debut festival run.

Three years on and What – another lightning fast, visual and physical show, with touchstones being Tim Key as much as Tim Minchin, Ricky Gervais and Hans Teeuwen – took Edinburgh by storm.

Quest for celebrity

“It’s not that I need to capitalise on performing in England but that I vaguely have some momentum from Edinburgh so, ooh, let’s go and perform in Brighton while I still have the opportunity.”

Earlier this year he starred, wrote, directed and produced the 12-episode comedy series Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous for MTV.

His protagonist hires a camera crew to film his daily life as part of his quest become an instant celebrity, despite possessing no real talent.

Burnham was essentially playing himself as a high-school leaver who picks fame over education.

“In my first year, I wanted to die.

I’d be on the road, in South Dakota, looking on Facebook at all my friends at parties,” Burnham told The Guardian on his first UK tour.

Not everything has gone to plan, though. He’s still miffed that a script he wrote for an “anti-High School Musical” commissioned by Judd Apatow three years ago has not been produced.

Indeed, he admits he even has the choice to disappear from “all of this, which could be bad, too much attention and self-reflection” if he wants.

It’s part of the reason he is trying to develop himself as a writer.

“I don’t think it’s smart of me to bank on the fact I can have a career based on my name. It’d be nice to try to establish myself as someone who can still be of use when their face or name isn’t a draw.”

So he’s put his subversive and surreal comic ideas in print.

Egghead, or You Can’t Survive On Ideas Alone, is a collection of off-kilter poems and thoughts illustrated by his old friend, Chance Bone, released this month.

“It’s this idea of pettiness and being verbose or intellectual but it all coming down to the realisation you are a bit of an idiot for it,” he says of its title, originally the subject header of an email from Bone.

Funny, if often not for the faint- hearted, nuggets include Toast, which runs, “I’d like to propose a toast; sourdough pumpkin bread. Thoughts?”, and reflect his style.

“For me, there is something mischievous about poetry, how it can appear then get out of there, leaving you with something, that can end so abruptly in a way that can elevate a point so directly.

“A lot of that goes into misdirection and subverting people’s expectations.”

  • Bo Burnham is at The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, on Wednesday, November 6, starts 8pm, £16. Call 01273 201800