Rob Rouse, Komedia, Brighton, May 25

“There’s a great source of free protein on the byways and highways of this fair land,” he says.

“I grew up in the countryside, so when I returned it didn’t take me long to go a bit feral. I got a bit carried away on the whole ‘living off the land’ thing.

‘Waste not, want not’, austerity measures and all that.”

A show about life, love, sex, death and roadkill, the title of Rouse’s UK tour comes from his recent move from London to a little village in the Peak District.

Having spent 12 years in the capital, Rouse decided it was time to uproot.

“I adored London but living somewhere which is the antithesis of that has been incredibly liberating.

Sometimes having a change in your life is incredibly creative because you look at things from different angles,” he says.

“Plus, there’s marginally a lot less gun crime up here so it made a lot of sense.”

His dalliances with the tarmac serving-plate is just one example of the misadventures, bad decisions and general scrapes in life that Rouse often finds himself in.

“The whole roadkill thing – it started off as a pheasant, which I saw someone else bag. Then I hit a rabbit and it kind of spiralled from there,” he says.

“It was one of those situations where before you know it, you’re in over your head. At the time you’re genuinely not thinking this is going to be a topic for comedy.”

Not that Rouse’s love of animals is based entirely on whether or not fries come with them. His previous comedy show – My Family… And The Dog That Scared Jesus – focused on Ronnie, the libidinous Don Juan of the canine world, and previous stand-up gigs featured guest appearances from Shaniqua, his street-smart house-duck.

Until, that was, an urban fox broke in.

“She was slaughtered… it was awful. I took a week off work,” he says.

“I was ringing people saying ‘I can’t come into work, my duck’s dead’ and they were like ‘Oh s***, take as long as you need… we loved that duck too!’”

Rouse found his way into the comedy world after a particularly disastrous attempt at teaching – the realisation that the education system was not for him coming during one teacher training session in which he enjoyed mucking around with the kids at the back while a colleague attempted to regain control.

“I hated telling kids off – invariably, when kids do something naughty it’s usually quite a creative piece of thought, so I’d be thinking ‘Oh, I wish I’d thought of that’, rather than ‘I’ll be writing a letter to your parents’,” he says.

“Most people rebel when they’re 14… I stuck it to the man at 24 and became a comedian.”

A “warm-up” between takes of BBC sitcom Coupling, Rouse won the 1998 So You Think You’re Funny? competition – propelling him on to the national stand-up circuit, despite only having 14 minutes of material.

This, in turn, ultimately led to roles in C4 sketch show Spoons, BBC Three sitcom Grownups and a presenter role on the original The Friday Night Project alongside Jimmy Carr.

“All those things I’ve enjoyed doing, but stand-up is the beginning, middle and end of it all. Winning the competition was great, but also difficult, as people were expecting me to do a full hour the next year in Edinburgh,” he says.

“It’s amazing the pressure we put on young acts – I’ve never quite understood the need to rush everything. As I get older I like comics who talk from their guts rather than trying to make points just about ‘stuff’. It’s nice to hear people have some introspection.”

The UK tour is set to keep Rouse busy until the summer, whereupon he’ll be embarking on a new TV project with comedy production company Baby Cow.

“It’s very exciting, I’ve never done anything like that before. It’s a single camera, narrative comedy called Nice Guys Finish Last, and hopefully I’ll tour again after that," he says.

"It’s crazy when you look in your diary and you see you’re already performing somewhere on September 13, 2012… how did that happen?”

* 9pm, £12.50. Call 0845 2938480