Whether dedicating Coldplay’s Yellow to jaundice sufferers or holding up emergency service calls with his phone-in competitions, Ivan Brackenbury is a well-meaning scourge of hospital radio.

Ivan Brackenbury’s Hospital Radio Show earned its creator an if.comedy nomination in 2007, and was followed up by Ivan’s Christmas show, taking place, appropriately enough, in August.

This Komedia performance allows newcomers to get up to speed by combining the best of both Edinburgh Festival shows.

And it is a homecoming of sorts for the former University Of Brighton student Tom Binns, who plays the hapless disc jockey.

“The next tour is about revealing some of Ivan’s character,” says Tom, who is preparing for the show by finishing each hour-long performance with a 15-minute question and answer session in character.

“Even with the most complex characters, you don’t find out what they are like if they are presenting a music show like Ivan does.

“I’m sure Mark Goodier is quite interesting, but he turns rather dull when he does the top 40.

“If there was any criticism of Ivan it was that he was two-dimensional. With these sessions I get to find out what the audience members want to know about him and their perception of him, as well as Ivan’s perception of himself.

“Some of the questions are jokes in themselves. In Swindon somebody asked: ‘Can you tell us if you have ever had a girlfriend and, as a supplementary question, why not?’.”

Binns is a radio veteran himself, having worked for the BBC, XFM and even the Palace Pier’s radio station for three weeks before becoming a professional stand-up.

“I got fired from Palace Pier radio,” he reveals. “I had already presented shows for the BBC on Radio Five, but because I’d already worked in the arcade section at the back of the pier, apparently I wasn’t allowed to transfer to the radio station, even though I had national radio experience and sounded pretty good.

“I’d been there a few weeks when an old supervisor walked past, saw me and threw me out.”

Binns describes Ivan as an amalgam of everything he can’t stand about radio.

“Rather than get angry and shout at the radio, which is what I used to do, I write it all down,” he says.

One section of humanity which gets a real kicking are “bonkers” people.

“I’m actually developing that for the next show,” says Binns. “I’ve got another actress involved who is going to be asking Ivan what he has done that makes him so ‘mad’ and ‘bonkers’.

“That sort of personality used to get me really angry. This character is a way of keeping myself sane.”

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