DOM Joly has travelled to over 100 countries, from North Korea to Chernobyl. He’s done a road trip to Syria, been on a monster hunt in Congo and visited the ‘killing fields’ of Cambodia.

He’s fascinated by globe-trotting of the unconventional kind. He loves a danger zone. And he will fearlessly take himself off to places and situations that would have seasoned war correspondents running for the hills. It’s safe to say you wouldn’t find Dom lying on a beach on the Costa....

This month the writer, broadcaster and comedian is in leafy Ilkley (if there’s a dark place in Ilkley, Dom wants to hear about it), with his show Holiday Snaps, sharing stories and images from his trips to some of the world’s most dangerous places.

“I have two sets of fans - those who know my comedy and those who read my travel books. They don’t often mingle,” says Dom. “This show came from a fit of pique. I have loads of travel images from my books, TV shows and my own photos, and when my wife said, ‘”Who the hell wants to see your snaps?’ I thought, ‘Right...I’ll take them on tour’.”

He spent his childhood in war-torn Beirut (he went to the same school as Osama Bin Laden). Is that where his love of ‘dark tourism’ stems from? “I blame it on Tintin, but yes, growing up there gave me a fascination for unusual places, and it’s where a lot of my comedy comes from. I’ve seen it in places like Sarajevo, Congo and Northern Ireland - black humour, a coping mechanism. "Beach holidays have never been my thing. My mother used to say, ‘We’re not tourists, we’re travellers’. As a family we drove around the Middle East. And I’m a politics and history nut, so I love learning about the darker side of different countries. I like to feel it in the stone. Basically, I try to find anywhere that doesn’t have a Starbucks. Which isn’t easy.”

Dom’s latest book, The Hezbollah Hiking Club, follows a hike he and two friends did across Lebanon, from the Israeli border in the south to the Syrian border in the north. Dom describes it as a “love letter to Lebanon”. “Syria is my favourite country, it’s beautiful. We hear about Lebanon in news reports, but when you’re there, you can be an hour from a ski slope or a beach. Normal life is going on, as it does everywhere,” he says. “But people don’t go there, and the economy is crumbling.”

Does he really want people to go there? He admits there’s a dilemma with highlighting the beauty of much-maligned countries and his disdain of mainstream tourist trails. “That’s the nightmare of a travel writer,” he smiles. “It’s like loving a band that no-one else has heard of, then they have a hit and everyone else likes them too.”

While he admits that his “entire comedy career has been about blagging foreign trips”, as a travel writer, Dom, who emerged as creator and star of Trigger Happy TV, has gravitas. His knowledge, sense of adventure and fearlessness set him apart from ‘celebrity’ globe-trotters. He thinks nothing off setting off in an old car with a chap he meets in a bar in Cambodia, only to find himself sitting in a family living-room with the man who photographed prisoners tortured and murdered under Pol Pot’s regime.

He spent a weekend in Chernobyl, visiting a town called Pripyat, a mile from the reactor, from where 50,000 people were evacuated. He describes it as “a time capsule from mid-80s Soviet Union”.

“There was rotting food on tables, books on school desks, posters, ironically showing kids what to do in a nuclear attack from the West. Meanwhile, the real threat was coming from down the road..”

Many places that have become tourist attractions and even beauty spots today have a dark history. We visit castles and battlefields, calling at the gift shop and cafe on the way out, and coachloads of tourists regularly turn up at former prisons and concentration camps.

"I think they say 100 years must have passed before it becomes okay to visit in this way," says Dom. "Even so, it still seems odd to see Jack the Ripper tours in London. A bunch of tourists heading off down a street where a serial killer murdered prostitutes."

His next adventure, he says, will be “sailing the Black Sea.”

And what about family holidays? “My happy place is Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto. My wife is Canadian, we go there with the kids and live on a boat for weeks. It’s like the 1950s, the kids run around like they’re in Swallows and Amazons. And there are zero Brits.

"I hate Brits abroad. I just pretend to be Brazilian, because no-one hates Brazilians.”

* Dom Joly’s Holiday Snaps is at King’s Hall, Ilkley, Thursday, February 27. Call (01274) 432000.