David O’Doherty, one of Irish comedy’s most original talents, is shortly to take his one-man-show Small Things to Edinburgh, where he’s previously won Channel 4’s So You Think You’re Funny competition and been nominated for a Perrier newcomer award and. Though hotly tipped to take the award proper this year, he’s remarkably nonchalant about the prospect. And, indeed, the fact that he’s just been the victim of grand larceny.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he apologises, “but someone stole the saddle off my bike.” A particularly avid fan, I venture, with perhaps a saddle-sniffing fetish? “I hadn’t considered that,” he says, looking suddenly troubled, “I’m not enjoying considering it now…”

Although still in his twenties, David O’Doherty is one of the brightest talents on the Irish comedy circuit. Since concentrating on stand-up in the late 1990s, he’s established a reputation as a genial gentleman among audiences and fellow-comedians alike. Eshewing the girlfriend-and-knob-gag approach of many of his peers, O’Doherty instead ponders the inanities and absurdities of everyday existence with a childlike, if frequently cerebral, wit. A non-drinking, non-swearing philosophy graduate who also pens children’s books, he at one time planned a career as a jazz pianist. Hardly surprising, considering his dad is the well-known musician Jim Doherty. So, David, where did it all go wrong?

“My father as well as introducing me to comedy – he’s got one of the biggest collections of Goon Show tapes in the world – was also a big fan of jazz, and initially that was what I wanted to do. The thing about jazz is that while it looks to be all about feeling and attitude it’s actually incredibly difficult to play. It involves studying a lot of theory. If you look at the fingering of someone like Oscar Peterson, for example, that’s classical fingering. The parallel today would be with a band like The Avalanches who if you see their press photo they look as if they sit around all day smoking joints, whereas in fact they have to be total nerds. Think of the amount of pitch bending you have to do to make Madonna’s ‘Holiday’ fit over Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, you have to have to be an electronic music expert, a pro-tools professor. In short, a nerd.”

So was the young David was simply not nerdy enough for a career as a keyboard cat?

“I was plenty nerdy I assure you,” he remembers, “but I used to run jazz gigs in college and that was what damned me.We brought Brad Mehldau in for a gig, who at that time was a journeyman musician learning his thing travelling in Europe and of course now he’s probably the biggest pianist in jazz. And I watched him play at The Buttery in Trinity and later at The Edmund Burke theatre and I realised that in comparison to him I was only just pressing the buttons. He was the real thing. So with that ambition shattered I thought I’d better figure out something else to do.”

After graduation David worked at a variety of jobs including a stint as Brendan Boyer’s lighting technician. Then following a period with a Public Relations company – “It was one of those odious companies who send people to ring Liveline while pretending to be ordinary members of the public just to publicise some stroke” – he decided to try his hand at comedy.

“It wasn’t quite as sudden as that,” he insists. “I had been running jazz gigs where I’d get up and say a few words before the acts and introduce the shows. In fact it happened by accident really since I’d have to read safety notices, ask people to watch out for their belongings and notify people of when their bus was leaving… Eventually I just started to make up ludicrous notices for my own amusement. I remember one night my brother (the comedian and Couched co-writer Mark Doherty) offered me a quid if I could fit the word ‘spaghetti’ into my schpiel. It says a bit about the amount of money I was making as a promoter that I did it, though I cheated. I just said, ‘My brother’s going to give me a pound ‘cos I’ve said spaghetti’. I suppose that was my first ever paid joke. But I do remember the people laughed and cheered and I felt my first comedy rush...”

David began to introduce a comic element to One Song, Many Styles, a radio show he co-presented on Jazz FM in 1998, and again was flattered by the feedback he received. His first open-mic slot followed shortly after.

“The first gig I ever did was at the now-defunct Norseman Comedy Club in Dublin,” he recalls. “John Henderson was the MC, Jason Byrne was also on the bill and Tommy Tiernan closed the show. And in London, for example, you might wait years before a guy starting out might play with comedians of that calibre. The second gig I did at the Comedy Cellar Ardal O’Hanlon headlined, and I learned a lot through playing with those guys. What happened then was that they all went to Edinburgh for the festival in August, and as one of the few comedians left in the country I ended up doing a load of gigs where I was playing in Jason Byrne’s slot for example.

“I learned a lot. I died a couple of deaths too, though. I played Milano’s restaurant to a room full of septugenarian, Aran jumper-wearing American tourists. They didn’t get my Learn Irish Through Porn material at all. The Playstation routine went over their heads too. I actually finished by playing ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’. I could hear grave-digging noises as I walked off.”

As well as gigging regularly with such luminaries as Barry Murphy, David also began to play at events and in venues which didn’t have a history of comic performance. He regularly took to the stage in support of Irish rock outfits such as National Prayer Breakfast and also played cafes and lunchtime pub dates. Such experiences helped hone his previous Edinburgh show The Boy Who Saved Comedy, and this year’s Small Things.

“I’m not really interested in doing the standard comedy circuit thing where it’s just gag, followed by gag, followed by gag,” he insists. “I find a lot of comedy clubs treat the acts as a kind of background music, and consequently the acts are battling with the crowd. I think it can be more interesting and more intimate than that. I remember once seeing Randy Newman perform in the US and I was amazed at the way he’d go from doing a funny light song like ‘Short People’ to something quite sad like ‘Marie’, and chatting inbetween the numbers. Or the way Tom Waits on Big Time tells the story of an American Civil War soldier who is shot through the testicle and the bullet imbeds itself in the womb of a passing farmgirl who gets pregnant. He ends it by saying, ‘The baby was born guilt free… But the soldier was pissed off’, and then he launches into ‘Ruby’s Arms’ an incredibly moving and sad song. It’s beautiful. It’s not impossible to jump from one strong emotion to another. I’d like to think I’m doing something like that.”

As a previous runner-up in the BBC New Comedy competition and a winner of the Channel 4 award, how does he rate his chances at this year’s festival?

“I’ve got to be honest,” he says, sounding faintly exasperated, “I don’t really get those competitions. I’ll enter them because it’s the only way I could have got to play but it’s very odd. It’s an arts festival for god’s sake, not a media game. A lot of new comedy I find quite establishment. Brendan Dempsey said that comedy shouldn’t be the new rock ‘n’ roll, it should aspire to be the new jazz!”

Small Things is rumoured to feature a full-sized piano; is this an attempt to fulfil his jazz dream following years of working with his famous portable Yamaha mini-organ?

“Not really,” he smiles. “The show starts with an Angela’s Ashes soundtrack of rain and I emerge in oilskins and play a song. It’s about a relationship gone wrong and the only way to get over it is by telling jokes. I like the idea that with most stand-up sets you enter into the world of the audience but with Small Things I’m inviting them into my world. I think it’ll work.”