Even before Rob Broderick gets on stage as Abandoman his act is a bit of a laugh.

He’s an Irish hip hop artist from Dublin. He grew up listening to Snoop Dogg and his first tape was Doggy Style.

“I adore rap. Since I was a kid it was the first thing I got into when hip-hop wasn’t big on the radio in Ireland.

“And about a year or two later I got into comedy. I remember sneaking in underage to see comedians such as Des Bishop and Dara O Briain who were gigging in the Comedy Cellar in Dublin.

“I wanted to do both but I thought the comedy might be easier. I didn’t really think an Irish rapper could exist. That would be ridiculous.

“So I wanted to do the comedy thing but the hip-hop was always in the background.”

He came over to the UK in 2004 just as the Irish hip-hop scene was taking off, led by the Scary Éire, the Irish pioneers, who have toured with U2, House Of Pain and Public Enemy.

He was two years out of university and wanted to do stand-up.

“Dublin can be very small. I really wanted to learn how to do it somewhere where if I died on my a*** no one would notice.

“When I first did a minute and half in London, I remember walking home thinking, this is brilliant, nobody knows who I am.”

It wasn’t until Broderick came down to Brighton to the Comedy Festival in 2008 that the idea of putting some hip-hop – albeit freestyle, off-the-cuff and gag-filled, with prompts given entirely by the audience – with the comedy, that Abandoman appeared.

“My friend, Padraig, went down to Brighton to take a look at the Comedy Festival and I went down with him for the ride. I’d never been there before and at the time I was an office temp so it wasn’t hard to find the time.

“The Heist had just opened in West Street and we went down and found this beautiful room downstairs and asked the owner if we could come by and spend a month doing shows, for free, pretty much every night.

“The idea was that it was going to be a scripted show, but all the stuff I had scripted I wasn’t happy with.

“So on night one I just improvised for an hour about three different stories all through rap and that became the start of the Abandoman show.”

That show soon got people coming back, through word of mouth, but it took a while before Abandoman got traction after the month-long Heist residency and he returned home.

“People said, ‘What? An Irish freestyler, rapping – that doesn’t sound good.

“But I left Brighton feeling this could go somewhere.”

While he started to work on the show, he did some stand-up as a compere sneaking in a bit of rap.

He then decided to do rap full-time and toured the UK in a rap musical, Markus The Sadist. It was put together by John Zi D, with Bashy, who went on to tour with Gorillaz, and Soweto Kinch, who has won MOBOs and was up against Dizzie Rascal in the Mercury Music Prize.

Freestyle

In the musical the rappers were given stories and improvised over the top. Before the show they’d freestyle and Broderick enjoyed that the most – and it neatly dovetailed into the Abandoman show.

Since then he has joined Ed Sheeran as the main support act on his sell-out UK tour which culminated in two nights at London’s Brixton Academy.

And in February, Broderick was nominated for two comedy awards at the Adelaide Fringe Festival (Best Comedy and Best Comedy Newcomer) for his quickfire raps and musical sketches.

Although it’s a freestyle show there is preparation to do.

“The words are always improvised but this year’s show, Party In The Key Of C Major, is a one-hour narrative, so it’s got to have a beginning, middle and end.

“I’ve got to check what ideas work. If I ask the crowd for what annoys them at work, can I get a mass variety of answers?

“If I freestyle over a beat, is it hard or easy? If I do a Will.i.am dance style track I might find it goes too quickly.”

The new show brings in drums and keys and synths in place of guitars, with Rob Grundel triggering loops.

There’s a ravy trance sound that’s found its way into rap.

“It’s more bouncy. An improvised ‘This Is Your Life experience’. A lot of the crowd become acquainted with people from my past. I gradually realise these are relatives or ex-girlfriends.

“The idea developed in Edinburgh, it’s very silly and very fun.

“We try to keep every ball in the air until the finish.”

  • Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, New Road, Saturday, October 6. Starts 7.15pm, tickets £12/£10. For more information, call 01273 709709