Does Finland really exist? Did President John F Kennedy commit suicide? And is the earth flat? Those are some of the topics that will be discussed in Dom Joly’s latest show The Conspiracy Tourist.

Yes, it’s the same Dom Joly who starred in the practical joke comedy series Trigger Happy TV in which he answered a huge mobile phone and shouted “HELLO” at the top of his voice.

For the past ten years Dom has been writing travel books. He has taken his latest one, The Conspiracy Tourist: Travels Through a Strange World, and turned it into a stage show in which he looks at the wacky world of conspiracies.

He explained the thinking behind the book and the show: “Conspiracies used to be fun – is Elvis still alive? Did we land on the moon?

“But recently they’ve become much more insidious and dangerous. So I thought I’d travel around the world and have a look at what on earth’s going on.

“Essentially I’m on stage and talking you through the weird world of conspiracies in what I hope is a very funny way but is also informative and illuminating.”

To ensure fairness, Dom has invited Dr Julian Northcote, a highly respected conspiracy theorist, to join him on stage and take an alternative view.

“I hate him! I don’t get on with him at all,” says Dom tongue in cheek. “We debate in the second half and it gets very aggressive and weird.”

In his book Dom articulates the view that people have conspiracy theories because they fear what they don’t understand.

“I think a lot of it has to do with the internet. There’s no place online for people having balanced views. You either have to have one view in the extreme or the other.”

So what are some of the strangest conspiracy theories he’s come across?

“Finland not existing is quite an extreme one. That’s a theory that in 1917 Russia and Japan conspired to invent a country called Finland so that they could share the fishing rights.

“I thought it was an easy way to start the book so I could just go off, land in Finland and prove the theory isn’t correct. But actually it’s a lot harder than that because once you put a conspiracy mindset on, it’s actually impossible to prove anything.”

As part of his research Dom went to Dallas to visit the site of President Kennedy’s assassination.

“There are obviously lots of theories as to who killed Kennedy from the Mafia, the Russians, the FBI, the CIA. But I met a guy who claimed it was suicide, which has to be the weirdest conspiracy theory I’ve ever come across.”

“I wanted to be a foreign correspondent or a spy. I wanted to do something exciting.”

Dominic John Romulus Joly was born on 15th November 1967 in Beirut. After attending high school in Lebanon he moved to England. He studied politics at university and became a diplomat, based in Prague.

He lives in Cheltenham with his wife Stacey, a Canadian. They have a daughter, Parker, who graduated from Oxford and is now working at the university looking into a cure for Alzheimer’s, and a son Jackson who is studying at Durham university.

Dom’s introduction to television came as a producer at ITN. He had to set up interviews with politicians at Westminster. To spice them up he got some of his friends to lark about in the background. But when ITN realised what he was doing, he was fired.

He says: “I wanted to be a foreign correspondent or a spy. I wanted to do something exciting.”

Instead he started to work on comedy shows, arranging a series of stunts which got him noticed.

“I suddenly thought I can’t believe people pay you to do this. So I came up with Trigger Happy TV. It was the biggest show in Britain (at the time). Very strange.”

Trigger Happy TV ran for three years from 2000 and was broadcast in more than 70 countries. The show returned as a series of short sketches in 2016 and may be resurrected next year. More on that later.

Dom points out he always wanted to be a travel writer but comedy got in the way. However, comedy opened doors for him and he started writing for the Sunday Times.

“They wouldn’t have kept me on if I couldn’t write and I just loved doing it. There’s nothing more exciting to me in the world than getting off a plane, a train or a boat in a new place.

“But I’m bored just travelling, so I always need some sort of a mission and that’s what my books do. In a way travelling is a bit like Trigger Happy TV – I don’t know what’s going to happen. I dive in head first and try to react off the situations I find myself in.”

His previous books include The Dark Tourist: Sightseeing in the World’s Most Unlikely Holiday Destinations in which he travelled to places that had witnessed tragedy and death; Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: In Search of the World’s Most Hideous Beasts; and The Hezbollah Hiking Club which tells how he walked across the Lebanon for 37 days.

Dom comes across as supremely intelligent, level-headed and focused. Obviously he has a wicked sense of humour. And while I was reading his latest book it struck me that he has almost a talent for finding people with outrageous views who are eager to tell him their stories.

One of the ways he does that, particularly in the United States, is to travel by Uber.

“I’m an absurdist. If I had to put down exactly what makes me laugh, it’s travelling vast distances to do something that’s essentially pointless.”

“Almost always Uber drivers are something else as well as a driver and they’re desperate to tell you. Yes, I do think I have a strange weirdo magnet. I do seem to run into some very strange people. I love it when you bump into someone and they start talking and you think ‘this is going to be brilliant for the book’. It’s fantastic.”

So what makes Dom Joly laugh? To illustrate, he tells an almost unbelievable story.

“I’m an absurdist. If I had to put down exactly what makes me laugh, it’s travelling vast distances to do something that’s essentially pointless.

“As an example, I found a Post-it note about 20 years ago lying on the ground and it said ‘frighten an Eskimo’. That’s all. I put it on my computer. It was there for a year staring at me. And one day I thought I’m going to do that.

“So I flew to Newfoundland and then I drove for four hours in search of an Eskimo or an Innuit. I finally came over this hill and there was a gentleman who looked Eskimo-esque fishing.

“I got out of the car, crept up behind him with a pair of cymbals and crashed them together. He jumped out of his skin and I ran back, jumped in the car, drove all the way back to the airport and flew home.

“It was totally pointless, totally unnecessary, totally odd and that man probably still talks about it to this day wondering what it was all about.”

Like many comedians, Dom has suffered from anxiety and panic attacks. He puts this down to growing up during a civil war. The panic attacks have subsided in recent years although he still regards himself as an anxious person.

“I think to be funny and reach weird parts of your brain, I always feel you have to pay on the other side – you have to have some real lows to get the highs. It’s a very odd balance. And in a sense you sometimes have to touch madness a little bit to do something really interesting and creative. Maybe I would have preferred to be very average and not have the extremes of either side.”

The Conspiracy Tourist will be on the road until November and Dom’s punishing work schedule shows no signs of easing off. He is writing a new book, Happy Hunting: In Desperate Pursuit of Happiness which will come out next year.

“As a middle-aged, grumpy, ex-Goth I thought why not have a look at the whole world of wellness, Gwyneth Paltrow, meditation and all that kind of stuff. I’m essentially quite happy but I just thought I’d go and have a look at that whole world because it’s very strange.

“I went to Denmark because it’s supposed to be the happiest country in the world. I’ve just come back from Rishikesh in India which is where yoga was invented and where the Beatles went to stay with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I dabbled in all sorts of eastern mysticism. So I’m spending the rest of this year in a very selfish pursuit of happiness.”

Dom says there are still lots of things he’d like to do: “I’ve long toyed with the idea of a Trigger Happy film and it’s the 25th anniversary of Trigger Happy next year. I’m interested to see whether there’s a final chapter and I’ve got an idea for something, so that might happen.”

Even though it’s a long time since Trigger Happy TV started, people still quote parts of the programme to him when he meets them.

“It’s weird. Obviously I get people screaming HELLO at me every day which is understandable. But Trigger Happy was all made up on the spot because you didn’t know who you were going to be speaking to, so you couldn’t have a script. Sometimes people come up and quote lines to me that I have absolutely no memory of whatsoever. There’s a whole generation of people who grew up on it and remember it very fondly.”

So what else does Dom want to do? “I want to visit every country in the world. I’ve got about 70 left. And I’m about to launch a radio show because I have the face for it. I’m about to show my serious side.”

“I never let the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing get in the way. Sometimes it pays off and you realise that everyone in life is essentially blagging.”

Over the years Dom has appeared in advertising campaigns, directed music videos and appeared as the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show as well as winning awards for his travel writing. But he doesn’t regard himself as being exceptionally talented.

“It’s more a case of jack of all trades, master of none. I find it impossible to say no to things which my wife gets very angry about. So I never let the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing get in the way. Sometimes it pays off and you realise that everyone in life is essentially blagging.

“But there are certain things I do think I’m good at. I like to think I’m a good writer. I’m really proud of my writing. And I think I have very good taste in music – I’m not a music snob. And I’ve got a real visual eye.

“My biggest fear used to be live performance. I’ve never done stand-up. So I forced myself to learn the craft. I did a talk called Holiday Snaps where I did about 120 shows. At the beginning I didn’t know what I was doing and I was very nervous on stage. I’ve conquered that. I really enjoy live stuff now and I hope people will enjoy coming to watch it.”

There should be no shortage of people wanting to see Dom Joly, a truly remarkable and unique funny man, when he comes to Derbyshire and Nottingham on his latest tour – and that’s no conspiracy theory.

• Dom Joly – The Conspiracy Tour will be at Derby Theatre on Sunday 6th October, Nottingham Playhouse on Saturday 19th October and Buxton Opera House on Monday 4th November

* This article originally appeared in Country Images magazine