“It’s more of the same really,” says magician Pete Firman. “Tricks, jokes and a couple of disgusting things. Is this the best way to sell a show?”

He has come a long way since his first trick, entitled Infinitum, which consisted of an “empty” box that could produce a seemingly endless supply of cigarettes. “It was quite a weird one for an eight-year-old,” he admits.

Firman was soon putting on shows for his schoolfriends, with a performing style which owed a great deal to another of Middlesborough’s famous sons, Paul Daniels.

He was performing table magic in a local restaurant at 17 and fine-tuned his banter while working at his dad’s second-hand car business after completing a theatre degree.

Now in his late-20s, Firman cites Penn & Teller as his biggest influence and is at the forefront of the new school of British magicians who are striving to “move away from the image of the guy with a dickie bow and a sequinned jacket”.

He made his Edinburgh debut last year with Hokum, which received near-unanimous praise from the broadsheet press, with The Scotsman describing him as “the MySpace generation’s Tommy Cooper”.

“I didn’t know what to expect. The response was fantastic, very flattering,” he says. “But going back for my second year, I feel I’ve set the bar pretty high, so I’m just hoping I can pull it off again.”

His Edinburgh success led to an invitation to perform at Montreal’s prestigious Just For Laughs comedy festival, from which he returned at the weekend. Firman’s four shows there culminated in the gala finale, which will be televised around the world, and an interview for The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.

“You’ve got the best stand-ups in the world doing their best 12 minutes,” he says. “Everyone’s at such a high standard, you think, ‘I hope me and my little tricks are going to be OK.’ But it was really good.”

Firman is best known in this country for a successful – and occasionally gruesome – run of television series, including Monkey Magic and Dirty Tricks. He famously earned his small-screen break with an audition tape of himself performing half-naked in the snow.

“It’s terribly embarrassing looking back. I saw an advert for a programme asking for a showreel, which I didn’t have,” he explains. “I got together with a mate with a camera one afternoon. It happened to be snowing and I just happened to get naked. Fortuitously, it’s worked out quite well.”

Pete Firman’s show will be preceded by a performance at 7.30pm by Glenn Wool (£5). The Vancouver-born comedian has built a strong reputation for himself in his adopted home of London, with material that touches on everything from The Pope to Franz Ferdinand.

warren.pegg@theargus.co.uk

  • 9pm, £5, 01273 647100, visit www.petefirman.co.uk