One of Jim Jefferies’s brothers used to work for Westfield, the Australian conglomerate that owns the area where Forster Square used to be.

“Ah, I’ll steer clear of that then,” the Aussie comedian said. At least that’s what I think he said. The line wasn’t the best. It was 10am in Bradford and 2am in Los Angeles.

A tremendous rainstorm, the first in weeks, was sweeping across Venice Beach, where he lives, from the Pacific.

“But I don’t think we’ll be getting a tsunami,” he added.

He was doing early-morning interviews a week before his third and biggest UK tour kicked off in Belfast – 35 shows in under seven weeks. A few hours before we spoke he had been to see Bob Dylan in concert at a packed LA Palladium.

“Thought I’d better see him before he died,” he said. “He’s like me: I get sick of telling the same jokes; he gets sick of singing Blowin’ In The Wind; he was doing stuff off his latest album.

“I work on stream of consciousness. Ninety per cent of my stories are about things that have happened to me. I am good at embellishing things. I can retell a pub story very well.

“I have about an hour-and-a-half of material in my head. I might do an hour of that. But there’s always at least 50 minutes of stuff you’ve never heard me do before.”

You may have seen him on Never Mind The Buzzcocks or Have I Got News For You? He has yet to make his debut on Mock The Week, though that’s can’t be far off.

‘Not a stand-up comic for even the not-so-easily offended’… ‘rude, crude and lewd’… ‘an ability to charm and offend’. I read out the accolades.

“I am classed as one of the rudest comedians in the world. I just tell stories. I do swear,” he said. “Most of the stories are about relationships, one-night stands.

“I’d like to think I was in the vein of George Carlin and parts of Richard Pryor. They are my two heroes. I don’t do too much observational. I do a lot of stuff that’s anti-religion; it’s easy to rile people up. They all have opinions about that.”

Jim Jefferies’s gig at The Alhambra Studio is on Thursday at 8pm. The box office number is (01274) 432000.