Some comics are born entertainers, unable to resist rolling out an anecdote or making a quip at the smallest opportunity. After 20 minutes in conversation with Mike Wozniak, it becomes apparent he isn’t one of them.

With his ponderous tone and methodical sentences, it’s far easier to picture him as the doctor he used to be than the if.comedy award-nominated comedian he is now.

After ten years in sketch comedy, Wozniak turned to stand-up in 2007 and finally “broke through” at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe when he wowed critics sufficiently to become a surprise nominee for the prestigious Best Newcomer award.

“Last year was phenomenal,” he intones, sounding like Eeyore delivering the eulogy at Christopher Robin’s funeral. “There are so many shows for people to choose from and the fact people went to see it in the first place and that it appealed to them... well, there’s a lot of luck involved.”

Much of the show hinged on his upbringing in Portsmouth with his Polish family, in particular his “amateur scientist” father who makes another appearance in the follow-up, Clown Shoes.

“The science-y stuff is more playful in this show,” he says. “It’s more current. But then it’s much more of a chaotic show than the last one. It’s sillier and stranger.”

How does his family feel about their on-stage representation?

“They like the shows. They don’t mind anything like that. There are bits of our life I’ll talk about and bits I’ll leave alone.”

He liked being a doctor (at St George’s Hospital in London, where, curiously, Harry Hill and Paul Sinha also sprang from) but says he would have become a comic earlier had he realised it was a genuine career option.

“After practising medicine for a few years and practising comedy, I reached a point where I was gradually able to go full-time with comedy,” he says. “Moving from sketch to stand-up is definitely more terrifying and nerve-wracking, but if it’s going well it can be more exhilarating – the highs are higher but the lows are lower.”

There have been lows, of course.

“I think if any stand-up says they haven’t had a terrible gig, they’re lying.”

A woman in the audience at one recent show, presumably not a Stewart Lee fan either, took exception to his monotonous voice. “I take that sort of thing better than I used to,” he says solemnly. “I think if a person is happy to shout, ‘What’s wrong with your voice?’ at you, that’s probably not the sort of person that I want to be watching me.”

Some comics, after winning an if.comedy nomination, might be anxious about maintaining momentum. Not Wozniak.

“I think it would be easy to lose your mind if you went up to Edinburgh thinking about how a show would be received,”

he says. “I think everyone has these thoughts creeping in at times but you just have to get on with it and try to produce the best show you can.

“I don’t have a message. I don’t have anything particularly interesting to say about anything. No one would come away from In Clown Shoes thinking they have had a life-changing moment. I just want them to have an hour of fun.”

In one last, desperate prod for signs of life, I ask him about his decision to rid himself of that impressive, Magnum PI-style moustache, which looked like becoming something of a trademark.

“It’s come and gone over the last eight years and it will be back, no doubt,” he says.

“There was no great thinking behind the decision – I don’t think I operate on that level.”

  • Starts 8pm, tickets cost £6.

Call 0845 2938480