For a man who is sometimes labelled a moody misanthrope, Dylan Moran is not afraid to concede he quite likes performing in front of a live audience.
In fact, during COVID-19 lockdowns, the Irish comedian and actor came to crave the stage in a way that took him by surprise.
"Not performing live was horrible. You don't realise how much a part of your being it is until you're not doing it," he told ABC Radio Adelaide's Stacey Lee and Nikolai Beilharz this week.
"It didn't agree with me, lockdown — I didn't like that whole thing of not seeing anybody or not being with any other human beings."
Moran is currently preparing for his first tour to Australia since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the show, We Got This, is partly a reflection of various frustrations that have built up over the past three years.
He is not one of those comics whose jokes regularly court controversy, nor one who routinely attracts the attention of tabloid newspapers after apologising — or refusing to apologise — for something he's said.
But his brand of humour can be dark, cynical, scathing and uncompromising, and one thing he is not prepared to do is soften the edge to broaden the appeal.
"I'll talk to anybody but the thing is, the idea of appealing to everybody is not appealing at all," he said.
"Why would you want to do that?
"How do you not be yourself? I don't know. Because I'm not interested in doing that."
Indeed, while Moran wants people to attend his upcoming tour, there's a caveat — the invitation isn't an open one.
"There are some people I actively don't want to come to the show. I've sent them letters," he joked.
"It's like when you don't know what's expected of you and you're meeting people maybe for the first time, or you're in some new environment, you tend to feel pretty awkward and anxious and think pretty critically of yourself because you don't know what to do.
"If you want to please everybody all the time, you're going to feel like that all the time — so no thanks."
Stuck, but not in lockdown
For many people who found themselves stuck at home, the experience of enduring repeated COVID lockdowns may have temporarily turned them into mini-versions of Bernard Black, the bibulous, bedraggled, irascible and morose bookshop owner played by Moran in the sitcom Black Books.
But Moran wasn't one of them. While he admits he went a bit "batshit", he also used his time productively, writing a new five-part comedy series, entitled Stuck, for the BBC.
"That definitely mopped up some energy," he said.
"It was great fun to do, the production was great fun, it's got great talent in it, the cast are fantastic.
"I probably spent too long on it. It was like a guy in a garage with a motorbike."
The episodes are about a quarter of an hour long, and Moran believes that the trend towards more bite-sized "content" (a term he despises) will only become stronger.
"Everybody's on their phone, as you know, all the time," he said.
"You look at people — they're in the dentist chair, they're having babies, they're on their phone.
"You're going to get programs that are seven-minutes long, five-minutes long, three-minutes long, they're going to be made and they're going to be watched."
But as much as audiences might be changing their habits and curtailing their attention spans, Moran firmly believes the live stage show must, and will, go on.
"It's very nice when a bunch of us are together," he said.
"Laughter is different in a room together with lots of people."
