David O'Doherty is big in Ireland. The Dublin-born comedian has written plays and children's books, has a successful sitcom and is currently starring in his first film, a black comedy in which he plays a man with a serious brain injury and really bad hair. "At the moment it's called A Film With Me In It - my brother has written it and Dylan Moran's in it," he says.

But his first trip to Brighton finds him a relative unknown in a field of household names. Has he got a plan to get noticed?

"I will probably be wearing all white - so fans of tennis in the Forties will enjoy it from that point of view. If we can get some of that demographic, which is a large, latent demographic I believe, we'll do well. Anyone else, I shouldn't bother, go see Brendon Burns."

A typically laconic Irishman with an untypical surreal streak, O'Doherty is, for the first time, trying his hand at answering the big questions with his new show.

"It's all about facts and life lessons that I have picked up so far in this, my 31st year," he says. "It builds up to the point where I solve all the fundamental problems in human existence, also accompanied by a tiny keyboard."

The mini ivories of which he speaks have been a major part of his act since he first stepped on stage at Dublin's Comedy Cellar in 1998 and his self-referential songs of silliness have popped up everywhere from YouTube to a popular album entitled Giggle Me Timbers.

"My father's a jazz piano player, he obviously plays a larger piano than me and I wanted to follow in his footsteps," say O'Doherty. "We always had lots of crappy keyboards around the house so I was allowed to play them because they had a volume control and dad would be practising downstairs.

"I fancied myself as a piano player for a while but dad told me you can't polish a turd so that was pretty much the end of that career.

"But the main reason I play them is that you can fit three of them in a sports bag so you don't have to pay extra baggage on Ryanair."

Describing his show as "Very Low Energy Musical Whimsy or VLEMW", if this 2006 If.comedy nominee doesn't get your attention with his musical mirth, he has another plan in mind.

"I'm writing a book with my girlfriend," he says. "We're writing 100 Facts About Pandas. A couple of examples: Panda fur is actually bullet proof and has been used by the Shanghai police for the past 40 years... In the days leading up to an earthquake, a panda's fur goes bright white - if the authorities at San Francisco zoo had known this in the early part of the last century they could have saved the city rather than moving the pandas to the polar bear enclosure.

"When we thought of that idea we thought we'd hammer it out in six weeks. That was about a year ago but they are still slowly trickling in, the made-up panda facts."

  • 7.30pm, £12/£11, 01273 709709