Brighton Comedy Festival is keeping the laughs coming for its second week. Dominic Smith speaks to some of the big names heading south – for tickets call 01273 709709.

Last year Simon Amstell toured a show focused on the pointlessness of existence and the inevitability of death. Numb, by the sounds of it, reflected his state of mind.

Towards the end of the show, he recounted how he visited Peru to take ayahuasca. The hallucinogenic brew had become fashionable as an alternative therapy to cure depression. Sting, Paul Simon and Lindsay Lohan were among the celebrities to have spoken about its benefits. Sadly, in April, a British teenager died after taking it in Colombia.

Amstell, however, found the experience revolutionary. “It’s quite an odd thing to talk about because people don’t know what you are banging on about,” says Amstell who returns to Brighton with his fourth stand-up show.

“But there comes a point where you have had two years of therapy and you are slightly depressed and your friend tells you about this place in Peru where people gather and drink a medicine as part of ancient healing ceremonies. Indigenous people have done for thousands of years and it is difficult to explain it because it is so beyond anything rational or logical.”

The former Popworld and Never Mind The Buzzcocks presenter experienced “all kinds of visions of either horror or trauma from childhood”.

He got a new perspective on who and what he was and where he had come from. Afterwards he felt strong. He felt a deep connection to nature.

“I ended up hugging not even a tree but a wooden post because I was so connected to nature,” he jokes, before stressing he is not dishonouring the experience.

Now the clouds have lifted he’s spent the last few months putting the finishing touches to the follow up to Numb in shape. To Be Free is “about why are we not free... about coming to a place end of that ayahuasca experience”.

“This show has been written from the perspective of someone who is into being as embodied and alive and present and joyful as possible,” he continues, “and all the various things which seemingly stop that happening - my own insecurities or the culture’s fears which have us following various conventions.”

The idea of sharp-tongued Amstell being present and joyful sounds, well, absurd. Ask former Ordinary Boy Sam Preston or former GMTV presenter Penny Smith, who Amstell gave a thorough grilling on Buzzcocks. At one point, he suggested her ex Paul McKenna might have had to hypnotise her to get her in bed.

“I saw Penny Smith a while ago. I felt bad because I felt I had been a bit over the top with her. I said sorry. She said it was nothing. We hugged. That happened. It’s a long time ago. We’ve all moved on.”

Perhaps he really has changed. He no longer lives alone (a new boyfriend is on the scene) and he is beginning to make waves in America.

“Telling the truth is setting me free. There are jokes or stories I have not wanted to tell, which have been stuck in me for years because they are too embarrassing or shameful, then eventually they have been are forced out at work in progress shows.

“It’s very freeing and you realise, ‘oh, that shameful thing is not so shameful, it’s the way we all feel or some of us feel’.”

Simon Amstell Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Church Street, Friday, October 17