What is your new Edinburgh show all about?
It’s a spoof chat show where I play the warm up man and all the guests…I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been a show with this format at the Fringe before and I was really keen to do something original…also it gives me a chance to show off a bit, show a bit of range and have lots of fun. I did solo spots as these and other characters to try and work out who the best ones were and a few characters fell by the wayside…one of them was a guy from the US called ‘Chad Fox and his Box of Props’, with the idea being that he’d lost his box of props and subsequently didn’t have an act, but went onstage anyway. It was basically a long drawn out death that was a lot of fun to play but I had to let go of it, because ultimately it was just the one joke!

Your Fringe debut was in 2009?
I was pretty unprepared. I thought I’d be ok just expanding on my Philberto character’s club set that had been doing pretty well. I didn’t have a clue and that was made worse by a really nice four star review in the first week of the festival, which definitely set me up for a fall! I lost about a stone in weight over the month and was frenziedly checking reviews every day. The numbers were pretty good and I had some nice write-ups, especially one from an important paper calling me a ‘mad comedy genius’ but I got my fair share of ass kickings too. A couple of reviewers were unaware that I was a character at all and described me as a bit of a bell-end…but when you consider that the character is a reality TV show winner and he’s supposed to be, it’s kind of a backwards compliment

Do you have a favourite character that you perform?
At the moment, I think it has to be Anthony Sixsmith, my Bongo Therapist character. He’s the newest and the campest one I’ve got…a few years ago I was doing a masters in psychotherapy and there’s certain elements of a few of my classmates involved with him, for sure…psychotherapy and comedy are two professions that attract a lot of very eccentric people so I try and bring those together with him…I slot quite naturally into Anthony (!) and feel very at ease becoming that character.

When performing stand up as Philberto are audiences always aware that you are in character? Does it matter?
This is an interesting question and one that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently… At the 2009 show and at club gigs I don’t put my name anywhere, it’s just ‘Philberto’. I end some shows with a perfect Glaswegian accent (as confirmed by Janey Godley, TYVM) which in essence is supposed to give away the fact it’s a character, but it doesn’t always work like that. Some people still think I’m a Portuguese guy who’s good at accents. At one show I had a Portuguese guy refuse to believe I wasn’t Portuguese and I’ve also been heckled into submission by angry Brazilians who realized five minutes in that I wasn’t going to do any jokes in their language. I’ve also had to politely decline interviews with local Portuguese papers and stuff…sometimes after gigs when I can’t be bothered to explain that it’s a character I’ll stick with it for a while at the bar. It even happened recently with a guy I went to school with who didn’t recognize me and was happily talking to me about his holiday in Lisbon before I said  ‘ Keith you dick, it’s me…we were at Tiffin’s together’…does it matter? I’ve heard the argument from comedians that what I’m doing is disingenuous because I’m effectively lying to the crowd and I do understand that argument, but I’ve always been attracted to the idea of doing a character that kept the audience guessing…one that they wouldn’t be able to tell was real or not. My favourite films are structured such that you don’t have a clue what is going to happen next and I try to keep my act the same way.

Are there any things you particularly like or dislike about Edinburgh?
I like the amazing energy that crackles in the air all the time, most of which is coming off 18 year old drama students who are finding innovative ways to flyer the Royal Mile, seeing so many mates all together in the same place, all the drama, all the gossip, the rush of a good review, seeing genuinely excellent shows that people have worked their asses off to get right and all the silly eccentric people who seem to get even sillier and more eccentric in August
I dislike 18 year old drama students on the Royal Mile when they’re in a bad mood, bitchiness and backstabbing amongst performers, the crushing hammer blow of seeing two or less stars next to a picture of yourself smiling, getting stuck in dreadful shows that you can’t walk out of due to a poor choice of seating and the dreaded ‘Edinburgh eye’ that we’re all guilty of.