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Matt Kirshen, Season Five

Fill us in on what you've been up to since your season of LCS ended?

Pretty much the same as before: touring round, doing gigs, fighting crime. Except it's all at a much higher level: the tour vehicles are better, the gigs are bigger and some of the criminals have ninja henchmen.

How did LCS change your life?

Previously people in America would look at me for a while and then tell me I looked a bit like Mr. Bean. Now they look at me with a more confused expression and then ask if I'm from their home town. I say no. They hear my English accent, think for a bit and say, "Hey! You were on Last Comic Standing, right? My wife and I love that show! Has anyone told you you look a bit like Mr. Bean?"

What's it like being on the road? Is being a professional comic all it's cracked up to be? No pun intended.

I don't belive that pun was truly unintended. You had plenty of opportunities to change your wording, but you chose not to. Not that there's anything exceptionally wrong with that, but you now have me wondering whether you are merely slightly misleading for the purposes of wit, or actively malicious. It's thoughts like this that keep me distracted on the road. The next stage is to wonder whether there is any comedic materical I could gain from this train of thought. In this particullar case, the answer is "no."

Tell us a funny LCS story that fans never got to see happen on air?

The night before the semi finals, all the 30-odd comedians were in the hotel with strict instructions that we weren't to leave. I suppose they didn't want any of us getting lost/wasted/arrested the night before we had to be filmed. There were two night chaperones left on duty in the lobby by the front door with instructions to stop us from leaving. There were, however, several ways of getting out with ease - two other exits through the parking lot and the swimming pool area, for example. Which makes it all the more pointlessly magnificent that one comic, who I won't name but will always have a special place in my heart, chose to order pizza, and then tip the delivery guy $20 to borrow his uniform and walk out through the front door dressed as him. It's like he was in an open prison but still chose to shoot the guards. Wonderful. I don't know the rest of the story but I'd like to think he was caught by Peter Engel and the NBC execs trying to jump a barbed wire fence on a motor bike.

Any parting words of advice to would-be comedians?

Nothing about performance - you have to work that out for yourself, and it's quite easy really: If they laugh, you've got it right; if they don't laugh, change something. But here's the best bit of advice I've ever received, and it came from Canadian comic Mike Wilmot. Say you're on week two of a run of gigs and you've just washed your shirt in the hotel sink using their complementary shampoo and conditioner, because it's not all champagne and limos. It's now tangle-free with added shine and bounce, but it won't be dry in time for the gig, and you're not doing that wet t-shirt bit anymore. Take a dry hotel towel, lay it out, and put the shirt on top. Then roll it up with the shirt inside. Once you've got a tube, hold down one end and start twisting it until it's as tight as you can get it. If necessary, stand on one end and use both hands to twist the top. When you open it up, the towel will be wet, the shirt will be just a little damp and you can iron it dry. This works for non-comedians too, but without the moment of crushing self-realization when you catch yourself in the mirror mid-way through.