Eddie Ifft

"I think I've done the Melbourne International Comedy Festival about six times and made about 17 trips to Australia,” begins American comic Eddie Ifft. “I remember my first trip very well. I stayed at a friend of a friend's house. It turns out the guy was part of a swingers club and his house was a swingers house. I didn't know that until I came home one night and there was a party and everyone was naked. It was my first time to Australia and I thought maybe that was just how all Australians partied.”

Now well-accustomed to Australia, by the time May rolls around, Ifft will have spent four months here playing the respective comedy festivals in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. Spending a quarter of the year so far from home does have its negatives. “I have a wife and two dogs, so the hardest part is leaving the dogs. When I come back the dogs hardly recognise me and neither does my wife's new boyfriend,” he jokes.

Ifft's latest show, titled Train Wreck, follows shows including Too Soon and Things I Shouldn't Have Said on similar topics. He admits his fast tongue has got him into trouble on more than one occasion. “I've had a few jokes get me in trouble. I was a little scared in places like the Middle East and India. They have laws against offensiveness. In the Middle East I thought I was going to get beheaded for a couple jokes I performed.

Ifft's stand-up routines have at times encountered their own trainwreck moments. “I've had so many. I practically started a riot at a university while I was on stage. I got tackled on stage by a midget. I got hit in the face by a snowball during a show. I wrestled a man in his underwear who said my comedy woke up his sleeping children. I got chased around a comedy club by an angry redneck. Had a gun pulled on me while I was on stage...”

So is titling a show Train Wreck simply ammunition for lazy journalists? “No, I usually don't care what reviewers think. As long as I either get a five star review or a one star review, those are my favourites. Four, three and two are no fun.”