Big Life Stuff: Felicity Ward on her new standup tour

It's been six years since Felicity Ward brought a show to Scotland. Yet she's more than making up for lost time. "Doing a two-hour show with some narrative is very different from doing a one-hour joke show," she says. "If nothing else, just talking for two hours every night when you have undiagnosed ADHD (talking at the speed of fast forward) takes it out of you. Am I exercising to help myself out? No. But am I doing vocal warm-ups to give myself the best chance to succeed? Also no. You'll be happy to know I'm raw-dogging life – unmedicated and unprepared."

Ward has been performing stand-up hours since 2008, bringing her debut Ugly As a Child Variety Show to Edinburgh the following year. Onstage she's candid and confessional, her life turned into its own comedy. And a self-effacing comedy in which an audience can empathise and feel better about stigmatised mental health conditions or those bodily (dys)functions we may find embarrassing. What If There Is No Toilet? made an entire show of toilet humour, eliciting laughs from the unlikely source of irritable bowel syndrome; 50% More Likely To Die explored the increased risks to life expectancy for those with depression.

Meanwhile, her last show Busting a Nut, for which she was nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2018, was the stuff of pure joy, delivered in Ward's relentless style. What can audiences expect from I'm Exhausting!?: "I've been writing the show for four years. Bit by bit. So it's about all the big life stuff that's happened. Birth and motherhood and life and relationships and sexuality and changing bodies and buying sunglasses that make you look like a pervert and eating terrible food like Quorn. You know, the big stuff. There are always danglings of mental illness in my work – how can there not be?"

Born in New South Wales, Ward is an established act in both Australia and the UK. Asked where she feels most at home, her answer is surprising. "In the water is where I feel most at home. And weirdly down in Hastings in the UK – I always feel happy when I go there. More than most other places. I still feel very Australian, even after more than a decade of living here."

And since she started stand-up, her love for the art-form has only grown. "It was a terrible accident that has got wildly out of hand," she says about first performing. "I love it more now than I did when I started. I can write jokes now. When I started I would stumble across them, but didn't know how to do it as a craft. That sounds so fucking pretentious. Apologies. I mean I have a skillset now, whereas it used to be very much down to inspiration and chance.

"I wasn't into stand-up until I was in my mid-20s really. Growing up I was really obsessed with Steve Martin and Martin Short; and Bette Midler films. Then as I became a teenager I was most excited by sketch: League of Gentlemen, Big Train, The Late Show (Australian) and Strangers with Candy (the TV show not the film). I was obsessed with grotesques. And I think that shows."

It's in an all-new but familar sitcom that Ward now finds herself leading, landing the role of inept and bumbling boss Hannah Howard in the Australian version of The Office. Fortunately, in real life, she hasn't had to endure a David Brent, Michael Scott, or Hannah Howard: "I haven't had bosses for years. God bless the arts. And I was always in hospitality so never had those bumbling incompetent ones. I had the 'steal your tips and spend it on gambling and cocaine' type managers. God bless hospo."

And she's relishing bringing a fresh perspective to a show. "While we were filming you just forget it's The Office. It just felt like I was filming a sitcom. So I was just being the best biggest dickhead I could for ten hours a day. The character of Hannah was so well written it was easy to riff as well. A dream role to be honest."

And if you've missed the announcement of the new show, Ward confesses that the phrase "You can stream all eight episodes of The Office on Prime Video," has become her go-to line and something of a mantra to her. "I've said it so much now that it goes on the end of every conversation I have. Bus drivers get it from me. Corner-shop counter assistants. 'Gyno - thanks for the smear, by the way you can stream all eight episodes of The Office on Prime Video.'"

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Felicity Ward: I'm Exhausting!, Òran Mór, Glasgow, 22 Nov; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 23 Nov