Get ready for a room full of jokes!

Having taken Australia by storm, it’s taken a bit longer for the former Portstewart native to make a big impression back home.

But thanks to the internet and Michael McIntyre’s roadshow, his comic genius is now appreciated by bigger audiences. In fact tickets for his latest appearance at the Millennium Forum sold so quickly that a second show has been added.

Jimeoin - he uses the name coined by his mother as a play on his forename and surname (McKeown) - moved to Australia at the age of 22, gaining work as a gardener, after four years spent working on building sites in London.

What initially drew him ‘down under’ was the idea of working in warm weather. Thankfully, for him, he was able to give up the gardening work. These days, he barely tends to the lawns.

“My fingers are not that green,” he admits. “I push a lawn mower sometimes.”

Slowly, but surely, Jimeoin began to make a name for himself in Australia, to the point that his full-time job was “acting daft”, and he went on to become one of the biggest stars on the continent.

The distance between his new home and the UK was too great to allow him to make an impression back here until the advent of new media, especially Youtube.

The world became a smaller place, and soon audiences here were laughing themselves silly at the antics of the funny Irishman who had become a comedy icon in Australia.

This led to TV offers and his stock here rose considerably.

“It’s as a result of doing things like (Michael) McIntyre and the Apollo - the TV thing changed things. Standards are better and people are also now more willing to go out to shows than they were 15 years ago, when most people would never have been to a stand-up comedy night but now theatres put them on.”

Recent TV appearances include the BBC’s iconic Live At The Apollo, Best of Edinburgh Live! (for three consecutive years), Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, Best Of Just For Laughs and the Channel 4 Gala in Aid of Great Ormond St filmed at London’s O2 Arena.

He admits the schedule is tiring, with six trips a year between Australia and the UK, and adds that it takes him away from the family, but says: “I’m like a miner, three weeks on and three weeks off.

“I pity my wife with four kids on her own. But you have to work, don’t you?”

That work has led to worldwide acclaim as a great entertainer and even “a genius”.

One might think that someone in his position, who has gotten used to being described in superlatives, would find it difficult keep his feet on the ground, but Jimeoin is a very modest man.

At one point our conversation is cut off just as he hears his flight being called. But he contacts me again, saying: “I was cut off. I didn’t want you to think I was being rude.”

Jimeoin sees the crowd as an essential part of the performance, and of course the characteristics of crowds can change.

“You certainly have to be on your toes,” he explains. “You can be surprised. You could have a couple of real good laughers which can bring a crowd along, but you can get some miserable ones which could bring you down. But I always appreciate them coming.”

These days, he notices that more and more people are following his footsteps half-way around the world in a bid to find work. With the recession, numerous people from all around Ireland are travelling abroad to earn a living. I tell Jimeoin of a story I was told a few weeks back, when around 290 people from an area of Donegal hired vehicles to take busloads of them to Dublin airport, en route to Australia and hopefully jobs. And that one of the Sentinel’s reporters discovered that four people a day are leaving Londonderry.

“That’s a car load,” quips Jimeoin.

Embarrassingly, the joke flies over my head like a Quantas jet, and he has to explain it to me.

“You said bus loads; so four people are a car load.”

“You hear our whine in a lot of places in Australia now, and not just the usual places like Sydney or Melbourne. You hear it on the streets, or if you cut across the beach or through a bar. My cousin’s kids are coming over. One was doing architecture and he can’t get a placement at home, so he had to come to Australia just to get a place. Sometimes we get people just landing - that’s the Irish way, just coming and lying on the sofa. My wife just looks at me sometimes.

“That’s just the north, there’s a lot from the south too. But I don’t think it’s just to do with the economy, even if there wasn’t an economic crisis in Ireland, I still think people would do it. A crowd attracts a crowd and Irish people have to go travelling, and why not?”

He’s been keeping busy playing big gigs in the UK and has featured in the Royal Variety Show.

But coming home is always that extra bit special.

“Derry is very good now. I used to have half a room, and now I’m doing two shows in one night at the Millennium Forum. I always find these gigs intimidating. I used to rely on connections with my family to even get half a room in there. I always appreciate people coming; it’s a big plus people turning up.”

Having chatted to Jimeoin before, and believing him to be one of the more modest stars, I ask how he feels when he reads the many superlatives written about his performances.

“They’re all true,” he laughs. “No, seriously, I never look at posters anymore. I’m more confident in the joke than me. I have a wee bit of structure but I don’t do what some do, and do the act word for word every night. That would bore me. Sometimes I haven’t quite figured out just what the joke is and I leave out a word, and you don’t get a laugh. It evolves all the time. You know the way people tell you a joke and then it reminds you of another joke? For me that’s the best night - it’s like a room full of jokes.”

n Jimeoin appears at the Millennium Forum on December 7. Due to demand, a second show has been added.