HE could have been a rock star. In fact, Steve Hughes has an album's worth of material ready to go, so the lanky Australian could quite easily ditch his comedy career any minute and go on the road.

Well, maybe not. The idea of forming his own trash/metal band is both heaven ... and hell.

"I'd love to tour with a band," he says.

"I could easily take a year off and just do music – that wouldn't faze me for an instant.

"But putting a band together is hard work. That's the reason I went into comedy – it was something I could do and not have to rely on other people.

"With comedy, there's no compromise. You don't have to convince anyone else to be as motivated as you are, you just turn up. There's no drum kit to set up, no van full of amps or moody musicians to worry about.

"The idea of putting a band together is a joy ... but highly improbable. Having a relationship with one other person is hard ... but having a relationship with a band, with three other blokes who all have ideas, who all need motivating ... that's difficult."

He pauses for a moment then adds: "But if someone else wanted a drummer, that'd be different. Yes! That would be brilliant. If Tom Gabriel Fischer called or wanted to reform Celtic Frost – I'd drop everything and drum for him, gladly!"

Sadly, the cult Swiss metal hero has yet to call, leaving Hughes with no option but to continue with his stand-up tour – certainly for the foreseeable future.

Entitled Big Issues, the 40-plus date jaunt finds him tackling some sizeable topics.

"What I talk about is big issues. Obviously things like global warming, economic collapse and terrorism, but also rules and regulations, and words and their meaning."

As an example of his fascination with rules, regulations, words and meaning, he cites two examples from his former home.

"In Australia, January 26 was Australia Day – or as the Aboriginals call it, Invasion Day. But now it's called Citizen Day. What does it mean? Citizen Day? It sounds so George Orwellian! And you know, when the Australian government wanted to make jaywalking an offence they called it Operation Obedience!"

Observing the rise of surveillance culture, he also recalls a Manchester sign that requested people report anything suspicious happening in the vicinity of a CCTV camera.

"Surely if you have CCTV, can't you see anything suspicious that's happening around the CCTV?" he laughs before chuckling at how ineffectual some CCTV appears to be.

"You see these blurry pixilated images on TV and in newspapers ... yet I can go on the internet and see pictures of my house from space. They're as clear as day, and your camera is only up a pole and it's all blurry! Why is that?"

Raised by an opera-loving Mancunian father and English stepmum, the Australian-born Hughes as always felt an outsider. Repulsed by "that whole sporty blokey thing," he found solace in the emerging trash metal scene – joining several seminal acts – and then comedy. But with no established scene to seriously support either passion, he moved to the UK ten years ago where he's concentrated on stand-up.

Developing his own style – "I'm not paranoid, I'm suspicious," he smiles – he's found British audiences welcoming.

"I don't feel like an outsider in the UK – I feel more of an outsider in Australia.

"Australia's a very mainstream, conservative place and you don't really understand that until you leave. All my life I've wondered what to do, I always wanted to get out of Australia, it's so isolated. It's three times the size of Europe or something ... but there's nothing there."

Steve Hughes is at The Glee Club on Thursday February 9. Doors at 6.45pm. Tickets are £9-£12 from the venue, call 0871 472 0400 or visit www.glee.co.uk