Sometimes Seymour Mace just wants to stand up on the bus and shout: "What's it all about then?"

For the manically morose Mace it would be the most natural thing in the world. Not for him the fake politeness of social convention.

"It's weird isn't it?" says the Geordie funnyman. "We all sit on the bus together, so close we can touch each other, and yet we pretend we can't see each other, we don't make eye contact and we pretend we're the only one on the bus.

"It's a weird social convention that's built up to allow us to live cheek by jowl alongside masses of other people.

"If the bus crashed, we'd all help each other out.

"We'd all be best mates then, wouldn't we?

"But why does it take a bus crash for us to talk to each other?"

The comic, who is best known for his dual roles as oddball twins Craig and Steve on Johnny Vegas's sitcom Ideal, applies the same logic to his life as a stand-up comedian.

He says: "People always go on about how being a stand-up is the hardest job in the world.

"It's not. To me it's the most natural thing in the world, talking.

"It's the other stuff, pretending to be someone we're not, that's unnatural."

There's a touch of the wild-eyed and endearingly unstable about Mace, who'll be headlining at Buzz Comedy's monthly review at Hodgsons pub in Beverley next week.

His last Edinburgh show, Happypotomus, dealt with his experiences of depression, mining a dark area of his psyche for comedy gold.

But he's an intriguing, inspiring character beyond the jokes.

As well as performing street theatre in his 20s, he's also spent time working as a clown in a Tokyo theme park, before returning to his native Newcastle and discovering he had a knack for stand-up.

"It wasn't much of a leap from what I was doing," he says.

"Less make-up, of course."