Tim Key is meeting his drinking buddy John Kearns later, his fellow Edinburgh Comedy Award-winner immortalised in his writing as “The Colonel”. Climbing Arthur's Seat, Key will survey a city that's been integral to his singular career, encompassing comedy, poetry, radio, television and film, and “take stock”. Lest you imagine him a pretentious versifier though, a full Scottish breakfast and “poem about sausages” is all he's managed so far today. The 48-year-old appears relaxed in his customary baseball cap. That's despite a whirlwind four months since the US release of The Ballad of Wallis Island, a film in which he plays an eccentric millionaire who hires his favourite, disbanded folk duo for a private gig. Co-written with long-time collaborator Tom Basden, starring the pair and Carey Mulligan, it's attracted considerable acclaim and is still showing in UK cinemas. READ MORE: The Scotsman’s 2025 Edinburgh Festival coverage: everything you need to know The Paper arrives a little over a month from now. Spun-off from the US version of The Office, the mockumentary is set in a struggling Midwestern newspaper and features the Cambridge-born comedian as part of a transatlantic ensemble. Some 14 years after the sitcom's showrunner, Greg Daniels, sought a recommendation for comedy in London and was directed to him by Friday Night Dinner creator Robert Popper, Key was given just 48 hours to decide whether to take the potentially life-changing role. He retains his own voice but sports an outlandish haircut, and his grapples with an American accent are tongue-in-cheek referenced in L.A. Baby!, his newly published fourth volume of poetry with (and featuring the semi-fictionalised thoughts of) his illustrator and ”emotional crutch” Emily Juniper, chronicling his Hollywood culture shock and mental instability. Somehow, he's also found time recently to appear in Bong Joon Ho's sci-fi comedy Mickey 17, with the Oscar-winning Korean director another avowed admirer. And to shoot his “most intense scene” yet with Steve Coogan, reprising his role as floundering “Sidekick” Simon Denton on the BBC's upcoming spoof documentary, Alan Partridge: How Are You? The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today Right now though, Key is fine-tuning, “adjusting the levers” of poetry, comedy and crowd-engagement of his latest Fringe show, Loganberry. Typically, his playing cards, those ones he affects to read his gnomic poems off, remain close to his chest in terms of what it's about. “It reflects where I am in life at the moment,” he says when pushed of a show that’s been in development for 18 months. “There's stuff that's happened since, which, if I was starting a show now, would be very different.” One theme though is “confronting” his breakthrough success and what it means for his artistic integrity. He wonders if he should even mention his and Basden's indie darling, hailed “one of the great British films of all time” by Richard Curtis. “It's interesting,” he admits. “I usually keep stage stuff separate. But there are bits I've been developing which maybe give a slightly skewed nod towards it. I need to work out exactly how I deal with it, if I deal with it at all. Because there's something appealing in not acknowledging what's going on. In my shows, there's always an element of not knowing exactly what's happening, a contradiction inside it all.” His poet persona is shambling but in command, alternately playful and passive-aggressive, “sort of an underdog but also sort of arrogant. A guy who has everything and also nothing, vulnerable but sometimes in his interactions with the audience, almost taunting. I'm way above the audience and way below them.” He attracts people to work with him. His brass neck in sneaking into the Cambridge Footlights when he wasn't at the university has been well documented, facilitating his debut Fringe appearance in the group's 2001 show Far Too Happy, featuring another regular collaborator, stand-up Mark Watson. The university was also where he met Taskmaster creator Alex Horne, sowing the seed for him becoming Task Consultant on the hit show. And it was where he formed the sketch group Cowards, featuring Basden, with whom he's making a seventh series of Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Programme for Radio 4 next year. What's less remarked upon is how he created his ineffable act, leaving even the shrewd Coogan struggling to work out “why what he was doing was funny”. After ten gigs in 2002 as a conventional, “mediocre” stand-up in “jeans and jumper”, he turned up in a suit to perform in a friend's living room of all places and “everything just clicked, every single building block was there and it had a really strong, distinctive flavour.” “I’d bought a can of beer on the way, then opened it and it went everywhere, so I tucked it under my jacket, started reading my poems from scraps of paper - which five years later would become the playing cards – and quizzed the audience about them.” All to Soviet lounge music, a legacy of him studying Russian at his real alma mater, the University of Sheffield. Previously, stand-up had been “horrific”. Now, “it was bearable, there were possibilities. I was finding it funny and so were others. I thank my lucky stars that the other stuff was bad enough to stop. If it had been better, I wouldn't have tried something so different.” His 2009 Comedy Award-winning show featured film footage. Subsequent Fringe hours have seen him sink fully clothed into a bath and a hidden dancer belatedly emerge from his bed. His last show, 2022's Mulberry, poignantly captured the Covid lockdown experience. “I wanted to write a show about that time that was knockabout and funny” he explains. “Quite a difficult assignment I think. But it was relatable because we'd all been through it. I have a lot of affection for that show. I want this one to find the same place in my heart so I fall in love with it.” The Ballad of Wallis Island will undoubtedly bring more high-profile acting roles. Key modestly confesses to being someone who “doesn't have enormous range”, yet for nearly 20 years he's had a Zelig-like capacity to pop up in some of British television's most iconic comedy, including successive Alan Partridge vehicles, Peep Show, Detectorists, Inside No. 9, Stath Lets Flats and Taskmaster's debut series, stealing scenes every time. Regardless, “I'll always do live stuff whatever else is going on” he confirms. “It's quite nice, a pleasure, not to be on stage for three months. But then I start thinking of things I want to say and start to miss it.” Tim Key: Loganberry, Pleasance Courtyard, various times, 30 July to 17 August. Tim Key’s poetry book L.A. Baby! is published by www.utterandpress.co.uk.