'If you're not pissing someone off you're not even trying', says comedian Tom Gleeson

His Lighten Up tour has been unusually segmented by the arrival of the pandemic.

"This is a tour I started at the beginning of 2020 which I had planned to tour nationally," Gleeson said.

"Weirdly enough one of the central themes is taking the tough times and putting them behind you; then it was just about the summer bushfires but the pandemic just added to the misery.

"COVID doesn't dominate the show but it's now the lens through which you can see the material."

Lighten Up won Best Comedy at the 2020 Adelaide Fringe and has received glowing reviews.

He said live shows were rich comedy fodder and were missed sorely by many in the industry.

"The arts were absolutely destroyed, I was one of the lucky ones who could wait it out but I think the June quarter I made no money at all for the first time ever," he said.

"The sector was down around 95 per cent, it was ludicrous. That's another reason I want to do shows; I started in October because I felt like I'm one person and I can turn up at a theatre and suddenly employ the ushers and front of house staff, backstage."

For more than 20 years Gleeson has built a comedy character that is blunt and unforgiving.

"It comes naturally and it's quite simple, every comedian is self-deprecating and if everyone is being self-effacing there's something funny about being self-aggrandising and taking the high road.

"There's something funny about saying I'm better than you.

"I'll go to Warrnambool and say things like 'you're lucky to have me here in this shit hole'. People enjoy the brashness of it.

"In saying it all it doesn't really matter, I'm not taking myself seriously. If you're not pissing someone off you're not even trying."

Lighten Up comes to the Lighthouse Theatre on February 13 before moving to Hobart, Wollongong and Melbourne.