The last two years have seen Tony Law win both the Chortle Breakthrough Award and the Amused Moose Laughter Award, as well as receive a nomination for the Edinburgh Comedy Award at this year’s Fringe.

For the Canadian-born comic, who has lived the last two decades in London, it’s the result of a concentrated focus on his career.

“I hope it’s the beginning of something,” he confesses. “There were a few years in my career where I was a little bit lost and didn’t know how to get what I wanted to do across.

“It took a long time to learn how to get good. In the last couple of years I have worked out how to do structure in longer shows, without being obvious and literal.”

Law’s world is most definitely surreal, but he believes to truly explore the absurd it is important to have references his audience can relate to.

“It all stems from something real,” he says. “I’m trying to get something across that I’ve seen in a gallery, or a children’s TV show, or a film or book, rather than something completely random or surreal that people might be hard-pressed to figure out.

“There is a whole wave of alternative guys coming along with more mad stuff like there was in the 1990s with Harry Hill and Vic And Bob. We are back to more traditionally British absurdism.”

As a child growing up in Canada, Law was exposed to the best of both the British comedy world, including Monty Python, and the US scene, with Saturday Night Live and Steve Martin being big influences.

“Canadian humour is very British in its style and absurdism,” says Law. “For a lot of Canadians it’s no great leap to do the British clubs.”

This latest show sees him play with the conventions of comedy.

“It’s more like a homage,” he says. “I like to play around with different styles, and celebrate different types of comedy by seeing if I can do them in my show.

“I like to keep my shows layered and bouncing around so the audience doesn’t get too comfortable and expect certain things to happen.”

He writes his shows by jotting down his ideas in a notebook he deliberately leaves at home before going out to test whatever he can remember in the five minutes before curtain up. “At the end of the show I take whatever worked and add it to the new material,” he says.

“There’s no sitting down and labouring over one line. I hope it all comes out of my subconscious.

“It does mean at those gigs there are certain sections where people go ‘What is going on here?’.”

Law’s Old Market show will be a mix of new material and the best of his Edinburgh show, as he prepares for his first full tour in the spring.

“I’m doing a show every couple of weeks,” he says. “It keeps things fresh.

“The rest of the time I’m working on new material – I have a mini-run in Soho in early October so by the time I get to Brighton the show should be nice and humming along.”

  • The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, Saturday, October 20. Starts 7.30pm, tickets £12/£10. For more details, call 01273 709709