Last year, Richard Herring ran a marathon, tried to kill the Loch Ness Monster, dated 50 women in 50 consecutive days and did a parachute jump.

He also cleaned out an elephant enclosure, ran through the streets of Pamplona in a pair of back-to-front women's underpants, walked on fire, attempted to steal the bra of renowned feminist Germaine Greer, had a go at beating his nephew at tennis and completed the tedious game CNPS.

This was all in aid of The Twelve Tasks Of Hercules Terrace, the Edinburgh show in which he tried to do things that he thought he couldn't do.

But, by the end of 2004, there was one fear Herring still hadn't faced - stand-up.

A comedian who, more than any other, has turned boyish inanity into an art form, Herring made his name in the cult Nineties double act Lee & Herring and has latterly been pleasing critics with one-man stage shows such as the statistically-based and genitally-themed Talking Cock.

Having written for everyone from Chris Morris to Little Britain, he is also highly prolific and ceaselessly inventive.

And yet, for 13 years, Herring has avoided his roots in solo stand-up.

"There was an early incident at a student gig where this bloke was heckling me and I did that stupid thing where you say, 'Well you come up if you reckon you could do better,' " he recalls.

"He did come up and I can't remember why but I ended up having to take my trousers down. I thought, 'I don't really need this in my life.'"

Having vowed never to do stand-up again, Herring is now returning to the pure form and making his Paramount Comedy Festival debut with Someone Likes Yoghurt, a show about "challenging closed systems of thought and taking ideas to their logical conclusions, no matter how long this takes or how irritating the journey is."

"My sort of stuff seems to fit in a lot better now," he muses. "I always thought comedy was about so much more than jokes and now people are much more willing to listen to interesting and unusual ideas."

In Someone Likes Yoghurt, these ideas vary from sharp logic (if it is a sin to waste seed, he asks, then why don't men produce only one sperm a month, roughly the size of a trout?) to the spiralling paranoia induced by the Tesco check-out girl who had the audacity to comment on his purchase of nine pots of yoghurt.

It is, he reckons, all about balance, treating big things and tiny things with equal seriousness and respect. But Herring's long-dormant talent for stand-up is probably best summed up by Stewart Lee, his comedic partner of 15 years, who performs his own show on October 21.

"Rich?" says Lee. "He's irritating, relentless, pathetic, petty, pedantic, arrogant, embarrassing, pointless and endlessly funny."

Starts at 9.15pm. Tickets cost £12 or £11, call 01273 709709.