He started a cult which specialises in random acts of kindness, said “yes” to everything for a year, journeyed to the centre of the universe (aka a manhole cover in Idaho) and started his own country.

For writer, broadcaster and presenter Danny Wallace, life tends to be one odd situation after another.

Recently, however, these situations have begun to get awkward. In writing a weekly column for Shortlist magazine – which would later earn him the PPA Columnist Of The Year award 2011 – Wallace began to notice that, try as he might, he simply couldn’t avoid getting into potentially uncomfortable positions.

From cheating on your regular hairdresser and getting found out to accidentally following a woman down a dark street – life, it seemed, was full of cringe-worthy faux-pas.

“Slowly I stopped writing about subjects and started writing about whatever was happening to me that week instead. The reaction from readers was, ‘That’s happened to me!’ and I realised these suburban traumas haunt everyone.

"Either we ignore them or face them head on and write about them,” he laughs.

“One just happened about 90 seconds ago to my friend Ed. We were talking to someone on the street. We said goodbye and I pulled off the ‘walk away’ very well.

"I looked to my left and Ed was nowhere to be seen. He’d walked right into a lamppost. It was a proper awkward situation. The book is an attempt to address those problems and perhaps offer the odd solution.”

The book Awkward Situations For Men has just spawned a sequel, More Awkward Situations For Men, which Wallace is currently touring.

“It’s weird with these book readings because usually I’ve only got one story to tell,” he smirks.

“With this I’ve got loads of stories so I’ve developed the most high-tech book reading you’re ever going to attend. There’s a randomiser element to it all – it’ll either be great or it’ll crash and burn.”

Starting as a games reviewer and comedy writer before working for the likes of The Scotsman and The List, Wallace was soon rubbing shoulders with comedians at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Here he met stand-up comic Dave Gorman and what came to be known as the “Stupid Boy Project” was born with the cult book Are You Dave Gorman?, which the pair co-wrote.

Wallace’s first solo book – 2001’s Join Me – continued this “project” mentality. Placing an advert in a classified magazine that simply read, “Join Me”, with a request for people’s pictures, Wallace inadvertently created the Karma Army: a dedicated collective of “joinees” who undertake random acts of kindness each week – from offering small change to those in need to secretly donating items into a stranger’s online wedding gift list – their numbers now reach into the thousands.

“Every week I still get passport photos in the post from all around the world,” Wallace laughs.

“Later this week I’m going to speak at a school where they’ve essentially been doing Join Me – they’ve made it school policy to do a random act of kindness every week. So I’ll be in a town hall talking to young people about random acts.”

While Join Me proved a success, making Wallace a minor celebrity in Belgium along the way, it was his second book Yes Man that launched his career internationally.

Noting that he was too quick to say “no” to life’s little opportunities, Wallace vowed to say “yes” to everything, turning his life around in the most unexpected of ways.

As ideas go, it turned out to be a winner.

The film rights were bought by Warner Bros and in 2008 the movie, starring Jim Carrey, was released, making $100m in the US alone.

“The book led to so many of the most important things in my life. Although I don’t say yes to everything any more, I certainly say yes more, and that’s the message of the book really,” says Wallace.

“Hollywood was the easiest ‘yes’ in the world to say. It was crazy – they kept me really involved by sending me scripts, flying me over there to hang out on the set and asking me what I thought.”

Wallace’s relationship with the Los Angeles lifestyle is set to continue in some format following Awkward Situations For Men being picked up by US network ABC for a TV series last year.

Although a pilot has been shot – directed by Seinfeld’s Andy Ackerman and starring Arrested Development’s Tony Hale and That ’70s Show’s Laura Prepon alongside Wallace himself – executives are rethinking what format the show will eventually take.

“It looked like it was going to get commissioned but they thought it needed to be broadened out and have a live audience. They retooled it and started to put that together. In that time, a lot of the people working on it had either retired, been sacked or moved aside, so it was a bit like starting again,” explains Wallace.

“The project is still alive and there’s a new director we’re working with. Maybe next year – they’re still very keen.”

If one theme unites Wallace’s books, it’s the background cast of friends, family and loved ones.

Luckily, this regular cast are happy to either act as the voice of reason or agitators to whatever hare-brained project he finds himself on.

“They enjoy getting involved. When I’m writing I go to the pub and talk to them and tell them what I’ve been up to. It kind of hones the anecdotes and its part of the writing process,” he says.

“I always want my ex-girlfriend Hanne to read the book before it’s published but she always refuses. She claims not be able to read things on A4, which is very strange.

"She says she prefers to read it when it has a spine and all that stuff. I just say, ‘Well, it’s a risk’, but she’s never complained yet, which is good.”

Besides writing, Wallace is no stranger to the screen. In 2005 he attempted to create his own country, based on the territory of his flat in Bow, east London.

Screened on BBC Two, Wallace investigated the practicalities of building a “micronation” from scratch, taking infrastructure necessities such as economics and law into consideration, designing his own flag and composing a new national anthem.

The final principality – named “Lovely” by its online ambassadors – still exists, although Wallace has since moved from the flat.

“The new tenants finally worked out they were living in a kingdom. They didn’t know. I left little clues here and there – an article on a high shelf or something like that,” laughs Wallace.

The author has also been seen presenting BBC Two’s Horizon (which explored if chimps could be considered people too), co-hosting the live Test The Nation quiz and acting as an anchor for the Beeb’s social experiment Castaway, where he lived on a deserted island for three months.

“That was a strange time. It was when the BBC took a real shine to me and I ended up doing loads of stuff for them for about six months.

"Test The Nation was great fun – if you link three hours of live TV on a Saturday night and something goes wrong, you’ve got to make it all right. I love that. I much prefer that to the pre-recorded,” he says.

“But I’m a writer. That’s what I’m most comfortable doing, what I’m best at and what I enjoy the most. That will always form the backbone of whatever I do. If something is fun do it, but try to do it well so you’re asked to have more fun.”

* Starts 6.30pm, tickets £8, call City Books on 01273 725306