LEE Hurst is back and he’s seriously hacked off. Which is just as well, given that his new tour is entitled Things That Make You Go Aaarggh!!!

With the aim of discussing the stuff that gets right on his and the audience’s goat, among the many things up for discussion include the various ailments he’s suffered in recent years and the way technology appears to have dominated an entire generation’s way of being.

He brings his show to the Colchester Arts Centre on Sunday. He says: “I don’t have a mobile any more, but I have a laptop at home. I use it as a news feed. I feel like I’m in a zombie film, where I’m the last person alive who doesn’t have a mobile.

“When I got rid of my mobile, my friends went mental: ‘How can we contact you?’ ‘Well, I have a landline’. ‘But what if you’re not in?’ ‘Then you can leave me a message’.

“And they went into more and more ridiculous scenarios to place me in as a way of trying to convince me that I should have a mobile.”

Having spent much of the 21st century occupied with matters other than touring (he runs the Bethnal Green-based Backyard Comedy Club, which reopened last year after a substantial redevelopment), Lee is now on his third show after Man V Woman in 2011 and Too Scared To Leave The House the following year.

He has settled on a format which sees Lee doing scripted stand-up in the first half, before opening up his theme to the floor in the second, where literally anything can happen.

He adds: “What I learned from the last couple of tours was that by having the second half based around improv, I sustain myself much better throughout the whole run.

“This is a guess, but I think I’m slightly unique in that I worry less about the unknown, than I do about the known. The second half is out of my hands, so why worry about it?

Lee Hurst: Things That Make You Go Aaarggh!!!
Colchester Arts Centre,
Church Street, Colchester.
Sunday, March 23. Doors open 7.30pm, show starts at 8pm.
£16, £14 concessions.
01206 500900 colchesterartscentre.com

“I wouldn’t even try to call myself an eternal optimist, but I just trust it will all be ok.”