Here's the full, unedited version of our fascinating chat with right-wing comedian Geoff Norcott, as he prepares to go on tour with his new show, Traditionalism.

You had a successful run at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe with Right Leaning But Well Meaning, a mix of politics, social commentary and family life. What's in the Traditionalism tour?

There's a bit of Right Leaning in the new show, but it's grown and progressed since August. Obviously when you're doing a tour you've got a longer show than a 55-minute Fringe slot, so I've had to expand the concept a bit.

I was thinking, as much as it is Brexit vs Remain or Tory vs Labour, that comes from something deeper in people. A lot of it feels like it's becoming more like the US, where it's liberal vs conservative, traditionalism vs progressives - or people who see themselves as progressives. Whether it's about what acronym people want to be known by, how many letters are in it this week, what gender individuals want to be assigned - on one hand there's people fighting that fight and seeing themselves as progressive, but a lot of the people who voted for Brexit are the radicals who see something different in where the country's future is going.

So there is - to use a 'social justice warrior' kind of term - this weird non-binary divide in politics now, where you can be straddling lots of different axes at the same time. It got me thinking: with how politicised social media is, it's streets ahead of what normal people can keep up with. Normal people in the country, just living their lives. The majority aren't on Facebook, and the ones who are aren't using it as a political tool. It's impossible to keep up.

Once upon a time, our parents or grandparents would have used words that are now considered homophobic, and we say: "No dad, we call them 'gay'", "Gay? What's wrong with the word I use?", "Well they don't like it." A lot of these generations are still coming round to that. Then it becomes LGBT, and there's a small chance they can get their head around that. Then that moves on to LGBTQIA and beyond - there's an emerging schism, where once it was almost a choice to be politically correct, but now people haven't got the time to keep up.

I quite like speaking up for those people. The fact that they don't use the right words doesn't necessarily mean they're anti something, they're just not aware of the terms changing. They're not having the same debates. A lot of people aren't even in on the debate.

The sexual harassment scandals are a good example. For most normal people in the country they found it rightly shocking, a reminder about workplace protocols; but the way some then extrapolated it to "we need to change masculinity" and "we need to change the way we raise our sons"... Some of the left-wing editorials have been just adopting it for their own agenda. "We need to raise our boys differently." Who's 'we'? Who's 'our'? I bet you don't mean you. I bet you mean those great unwashed working class people who can't be trusted. You start to wonder what kind of picture they have of what I might be saying to my son.

The reaction to the Brexit vote by the metropolitan liberal set, I thought really highlighted their view of "you working classes are there to return us to power", and "you just do the right thing and we'll throw you a bone once in a while". Brexit I think poses a much bigger long-term problem for Labour than the Conservatives. Their problem is just how they deliver and handle it: Labour's problem is that it exposes a massive schism in the movement. They'd point to statistics suggesting two thirds of Labour voters voted to remain, but that North West corridor of Parliamentary constituencies, many of them voted leave and many of Labour's MPs are bound up in that.

If the Tories make an absolute arse of it, it could spell disaster for them. But personally - and it's a big shout at the moment - I can't see any other ending than for the Labour party to split, long-term.

Do you think the centre-left have forgotten their problems with the Labour leadership?

They're still obsessed with getting rid of Corbyn, but they've realised that Brexit is the most useful lever to oust him. It is hilarious that Labour's four most senior politicians are so hard left, there are almost no concessions to the centre whatsoever.

So back to the original question: the show does have party-political elements as usual, but I'm really interested at the moment in the culture clash and the wider issues that cross the traditional left-right divide.

The amount of my working class friends who are marrying and getting double-barrelled surnames ... I think it's a one generation trick you can try to pull. It doesn't have to be the man's name, but do pick just the one name! In a very short space of time that gets out of hand, think about their kids marrying and doing it. I often get the sense - as antiquated as it sounds - that the bloke is often not fully on board!

On the Brexit front, I think what is funny is that for the remainers, the end game - they say the most important thing is to stop Brexit, probably by forcing a second referendum. At some point they've really got to stop insulting the 17 million leave voters. No argument was ever settled whilst you're still calling each other cunts!

It's a good source for comedy really. People often say, "How can you do comedy from the right, you can only do comedy that punches up?" But there are different establishments. The cultural, the artistic establishment, is an incredibly powerful thing! In my satire, I operate on the three Hs: hypocrisy, hyperbole and hysteria. If there are any of those - or ideally, all three! - then you can have a go. Those are valid things to have a pop at.

Look at the reactions to Brexit, much of it encompassed it all. An increasing number of remain voters can't afford for Brexit to work because they've staked their intellectual reputation, their credibility, on it. Obviously it could fail for a number of reasons, I totally concede that, but there's such an absolutism in the way many have gone about it. Think, their whole Twitter feed for the past two years... They've almost oversold their own case. They've over-committed, because it just can't possibly be as dystopian, third-world catastrophe as many high-profile remainers are asserting. If the Tories can come anywhere above Britain becoming a literal third-world country, it'll be a success compared to the Brexit orthodoxy that they're selling.

It's interesting to see that economic confidence is holding up reasonably well, which I think is evidence that the vast majority of people in this country - no matter how they voted or where they stand politically - are looking at it and using common sense. It's a bit like the Channel 4 series of Great British Bake Off, everyone saying "oh this is going to be terrible" but it was actually alright. And then, even being just "alright", it makes it a big win!

As for the tour, and the Fringe show, obviously that finished at the end of August and some of the things that made sense simply don't now. Satire, political and social commentary; it can expire very quickly. Right Leaning was very much a post-election show really, and I noticed even by the end of the month in Edinburgh, I had a bit about the Tory leadership and on the last three nights it got absolutely nothing. It'd been storming it for the whole festival till then, but hit a sort of use-by date. The news agenda had progressed.

Theresa May. She's dug in. She's made huge mistakes, but if she doesn't go after a weak response to Grenfell, if she can hold on after fudging the election, and after that embarrassing conference speech, there's a part of me that sort of admires her and thinks, "Wow. You really want to be Prime Minister at this point in time. Knock yourself out." Actually, knocking herself out was about the only thing left to do.

And Jeremy Corbyn?

We've had so many elections, so many votes, in the past few years, I think there are two weeks before and two weeks after each where people are a bit mental. You take a lot of shit, fall out with friends, have Facebook spats with people you like and respect. For two weeks after, the response to whatever's happened is completely irrational: "the whole country's racist", or for Scots "oh you just want to be run by the English", or "Labour actually won this election". Then after the two weeks people settle down a bit to what's happened and sensible discourse resumes.

There was a particular sobriety that followed the 2017 General Election, I think largely because the polling that followed did not show Labour suddenly streaking ahead, which many had expected to happen. There are a lot of people out there in the country who have never and will never vote for Corbyn. Ever. Too many people, I think, for him to ever win a parliamentary majority as Labour leader.

The other big tension at the moment is gender, which I think is hugely driven by politicised social media. I remember when I went to university in the early 1990s, the idea that gender is a construct and gender characteristics are nebulous, with no root in biology. Again, I think for most people in Britain their main daily concern is not with destroying gender orthodoxies! Comedically, men vs women material has been really passé for a long time, but suddenly it feels really vibrant again.

I talk in the show a bit - as I touched on in Right Leaning - about becoming a father, and realising that deep down somewhere I'd been expecting to do very little and kind of bluff my way through it. I'm not suggesting that's an acceptable thing to think or feel; and I look around the audience and women never seem angry or annoyed. The response is more relief, that at least someone's being honest about these issues of sexual politics. There are a lot of blokes out there thinking, claiming, to be this totally modern 21st Century guy - but 3 years later and he's never changed a nappy. I take that kind of thing up in the show and acknowledge that it's weird I think this.

There are great things about being a hands-on dad. But there are some days when you want a bit less responsibility. My mum raised me to believe I was mummy's little soldier, and there's a part of me that still thinks I should be allowed to piss about and do whatever. To me that's funny, there's comedy there because it's ridiculous there's a part of me that still thinks that.

Being a parent unleashes something, it changes you in ways you couldn't have predicted, and you have to spend time putting that back in the box. I'm still of the generation where my dad, my mates' dads, were quite distant and expected to do very little. So we're still battling that on some levels, what we learned to be parenting from our own fathers.

I'm as soppy as shit as a dad, but for me there are still a few red line issues! I'll never wear a papoose. I'd honestly rather have back pain! My wife noticed a few blemishes on my skin the other day; I moisturise and everything, but she asks if I wanted to wear some concealer and I'm like "No. Absolutely not." As a 41-year old man, I'm not judging anyone who does, but for me I had to draw my own line in the sand there! Ideas of manliness are funny; but there are a lot of people who still like those things. A lot of women who still want traditional masculinity in men. The liberal narrative is that what all women now want is an intuitive guy who can make a purée ... but in the real world, it's more like "well actually it'd be really useful if you could do some of that practical shit like my dad used to do".

My own marriage is quite traditional in a lot of ways. If I say that to people they'd presume that comes from me, which is actually pretty patronising. My wife, she's very strong, a strong-minded woman and a bright woman - she knows what she wants! She doesn't want to carry her luggage in airports, she doesn't want to put the bins out. Like that comment Theresa May made during the election campaign with her husband, clearly tongue in cheek, yet the right-on press and social media went mad, but it's another one of those situations where 90% of the public are sitting there going "... well that's what we do". It's that schism between social media and normal people. The rate of change, it must be so weird for those who spend all day in an echo chamber, to occasionally be reminded that, actually, life still operates on fairly traditional lines for most of the country.

We remember a lot of people very much in that social media, liberal metropolitan stereotype, who seemed aghast in 2015 that Ed Miliband had not swept to a huge majority, because that's all they saw...

Exactly. They take the piss out of that idea of their being in some kind of bubble, but it is a thing. You're right to mention 2015 as I think that was the first time we saw real evidence of those echo chambers. Then some said "oh we need to get out of these echo chambers and listen to people", but they don't really want to. Brexit happened more than a year later and again was a huge shock to them. Labour's performance at the General Election last year is another example of it. Look at Twitter recently, the #FBPE - 'follow back pro Europe' - thing. They don't want to leave their echo chamber, they're building their own single-view consensus.

Do you think they actually just want to have everyone agree with them, with no diversity of opinion, thought or experience?

I suppose it comes down to being like a to-do list of things they want to feel they've done. One bit I had in the Edinburgh show, clearly some people came to see me as someone outside of their echo chamber. Just one show. Then they can go and see someone else smashing the Tories later, and feel the world is set back in order and they're okay because they've heard one single person with an alternative opinion.

I think it's better on TV actually. There's more of a desire there, a meaningful desire, to reflect other opinions. I suppose they have to have it for business reasons, because 52% is quite a big number, but it's funny to me that it got to that point, that it took Brexit for a lot of people to realise they're out of touch with huge swathes of the audience.

Mrs. Brown's Boys is a great example. Every year it creams it in the ratings, people love it, and it gets 2 million more viewers than X Factor or whatever. Yet the comedy industry thumb their noses at it, find every criticism of it they can. A sitcom, stereotypical? Really? Its portrayal of a gay character is stereotypical - well its portrayal of everyone is stereotypical! That's what studio based sitcoms tend do to, that's how it's identifiable. Upstart Crow is a brilliant show, really funny. It's doing well, but there's nowhere near enough love for the show because it's studio-based, it's warm, it deals in some maybe old-fashioned certainties about men and women, in an indirect way. I love things like Catastrophe, but I like to sit with my family and watch something we can all enjoy, you know? I'm not going to sit and watch Catastrophe with my fucking grandparents! Maybe I'm wrong, maybe that's just my choice...

That's probably evidenced in the viewing figures.

Yeah. I'm glad that both shows exist. I'm glad there's something like Mrs. Brown's Boys keeping audiences tuned in to the very idea of studio-based, family sitcom, and I'm glad there's Catastrophe doing something different.

It's good to have different styles of comedy; in the end they all support each other by getting audiences watching comedy on TV. Mrs. Brown's Boys certainly shows there are still huge viewing figures to be had for that style of sitcom.

Exactly. What I like about it is it goes for the big laughs. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying I enjoy all of every episode, but I enjoy the ambition and the scale of it. It's kind of like U2: I like they fact they want to play stadiums, marrying artistic credibility with a song that's big enough to get tens of thousands of people waving their hands in the air. I think that's the epitome of ambition. I'm currently trying to sell out 85-seaters in Southend.

The truth is I do want to make everybody laugh, and as a so-called political comic, the difference is I'm not trying to exclude anyone, I want the left-wingers and Labour voters to come as well. I think that's more fun. Watching, as often happens somewhere like Edinburgh, them relent and giving those reluctant laughs is the best sound of all. If you're doing a routine and the audience is there for you, but there's one person doing a lot of arm folding, you can deal with them bit by bit, try to bring them into it. The last thing I want to do is create my own echo chamber - that's the complete opposite of my original point.

How did you first start writing and performing as a right-wing comic in such a left-dominated field?

When I did Conswervative in Edinburgh a couple of years ago, at the beginning of the run before I'd had the first few reviews I was getting stared out on a lot of nights. It's hard because as a club comic, you've got a palpable need to be liked. Maybe there's a kind of perverse, contrarian desire to strip all of that back.

There's a perception amongst some that I've artificially created myself as a right-wing comic, that I've put 2 and 2 together, noticed a gap in the market for a right-wing comedian. The truth is that it was in 2013, no one was really talking about it. The coalition was still in so politics wasn't as tribal as it is now. For the Leicester Comedy Festival, I felt I wanted to do something slightly different but I didn't know quite what. Then my wife said to me "well you're a Tory in comedy, that's weird isn't it?" and I thought "yeah, I guess it is a bit" so I did just about 15 minutes about that in the show, just to see what I could do. But the show felt so different to what I'd done before, got nominated for Best New Show, and there was a real buzz around it.

The head of Radio 4 comedy at the time, Caroline Raphael, in about the April of that year, she wrote the first article of what has now become a bit of a cliché, "where are all the right-wing comics". I said to my agent that we should probably give her a shout, and it grew from there. I've certainly pushed more into being a right-wing stand-up and trying to fill that gap a bit, but the original decision was very organic, maybe something psychological "how can I make this as difficult for myself as possible, what is it about me that's the opposite of what I was as a club comic?" You know, as a club comic, like I say, you're desperate to be liked. Now as a political comic you're willing to be hated.

In 2015 I got a couple of reviews that gave me shit - and rightly so - for backing away a bit. The not wanting to be disliked got the better of me on occasion, so when I felt the audience going I'd sort-of plead with them a little bit. But now I'm used to getting the odd triggered reaction. A gig in Bristol recently, I was doing a routine about Corbyn and one woman got all upset and said "stop making jokes about Jeremy", as though he's not a powerful man. Then she left, and in that sort of no-platformed herself.

I've had that before, there was another woman in a 2016 audience saying to me about Brexit, "the thing with Europe, if you think it's wrong you should stay and fix it". We argued a little and then she left. And I'm there thinking "you couldn't contradict yourself more adroitly than just to go 'oh fuck it' and walk out"! I don't want that to happen; maybe there are other comics who are more comfortable with it, or even want that kind of reaction, but it's not within my natural nature, I do still want to be liked. So if someone gets the hump I do try to talk, debate with them. But I'm not going to lose sleep over it either.

Criticising Labour, Corbyn, Remain - it's also good comedically as a form of misdirection. The audience is not necessarily expecting it because it's not what they've been drip-fed by satire for the last 30 years. It can be really difficult to work out how to do that well, but when you find it it's a rich vein to tap because it's the last thing they're expecting you to do. I guess an increasing number of people are being openly critical of Corbyn now, but you know.

There's real tension in Corbyn's views on Brexit too. That he has never, ever supported the EU. And the policy of renationalising the railways, and points to how well they run their railways on the continent, largely nationalised. But he also thinks they shouldn't be allowed to come here and run our railways, whilst looking to them for inspiration.

The thing about the right at the moment is that because we're so used to being the bad guys, you have to develop a thick skin and a sense of irony. Consequently, a lot of the right-wing politicians I've worked with, been on shows with - they're funny people. Whilst on the left, not always, but far more the politicians are not expecting to have their moral pomposity pricked. That's not true of audiences! They think that somehow putting a cross by Labour or by remain is a green card that they're a better person. They may or may not be, but who you are as a human being is a lot more complicated than who you vote for! This idea that's emerged that good people vote for Labour and bad people vote for the Conservatives; I know plenty of Labour voters who are pricks and quite a lot of people who vote Tory who are quite nice indeed. I won't name names...

Look at Corbyn for that. He has some incredibly negative characteristics, but because he imagines himself on this sort of moral pedestal, he stops thinking about whether he's guilty of things. When I see Tories, it's clear they're constantly self-editing, "could I be seen as ...-ist?", but it doesn't even occur to Corbyn. The hypocrisy of refusing to visit Israel and things like that, whilst proclaiming to be so caring and tolerant - it's just a very simple paradox at the heart of a lot of his views.

Are audiences outside the metropolitan centres different, more right-wing, more reflective of the results at elections? Or are they similar because they're still a comedy audience?

It depends. When I did my tour show in Bristol last year - obviously Bristol is very left-wing, very remain - they came to be challenged. Even in London, once the audience shows up and is there for me, they're there because they want to hear something a bit different. Yes you get the odd person who might kick off, but there are only a few things that come up that surprise me. Interestingly, the young Momentum Corbyn types are pretty cool; it's the older dyed-in-the-wool socialists who are the most likely to kick off. They've spent a whole lifetime with this simplistic view, Jedi vs Sith, Left vs Right. Maybe they've had however many years of political comedy where someone being anything other than scathing about the right has never happened. So they're more likely to become problematic. It challenges them.

Let's be honest, I get more of a sympathetic ear if I'm in Southend than in Manchester. But that's the good thing about doing a tour like this, it's not a simple stand-up show where you just reel it off. You vary it slightly, not always the content but the tone maybe. You can tell when you walk out, and then do a couple of jokes very early on in the show, deliberately to test. Like in Edinburgh I did have a joke about Diane Abbott; it was a good joke, but also I wanted to know who was in the audience and what their sensibilities were. It's good to calibrate in that way. I did it in Manchester and, you know the majority of the audience are not likely to be Conservative voters but they were good fun. I'm doing it in Hull this year for the first time - that should be interesting!

You can easily make mistakes as well. You can look at places and go "well they all voted remain" or "they all voted leave", but even in London 40% of people voted to leave. That's a lot of people. Similar in all the city centres; in Scotland too, 38% voted leave. More than a third. These absolutisms of saying "this place voted leave" or "this place voted remain" - no matter the overall outcome, in every single place there are a large body of people who wanted stay with, or leave, the EU.

Sadly I haven't got a Bristol date booked this year...

Any other themes in the Traditionalism show?

There's a mix of stuff: family, some straight party politics, talking a bit about Brexit, about the divide between parties, and moving into that social commentary a bit more, looking at those issues around gender identity and social politics. And one of the most hot topics at the moment, the sexual harassment stuff - just mention Weinstein and you can feel it in the air. Talk about Remain, Leave, Conservative, Labour, but the most fundamental thing every day is gender, male or female. It's easy to look down your nose at it as a subject but it's the most meaningful divide for the majority of people, the thing they encounter in their every day lives, more fundamental than religion, party politics, the EU. So, yeah, it's more of a mix of issues this time than just about being right-wing.

It's not going to be one of those shows where I come out like "Have you ever noticed in the Wild Bean Café..." - I see myself as a political comic. The only difference is whether that's big P or small p.

You do a lot of work writing for and with, and supporting, other comics, many of whom are fairly of the left, if not always a political comic such as yourself - how do you square that kind of work with your own politics and style?

If I'm engaged as a writer for someone, I'm engaged to write in their voice. That's my job at that point and I'm happy to do that. The thing about good comedians is that they're more interested in ideas than ideology. We're all more interested in a good joke than a political movement. All of those people became really good because they weren't that petty, to think that just because we weren't on the same page politically in our personal lives, doesn't mean we can't work together.

Equally, some of the people who've helped me out writing, I wouldn't say shared my views at all, which I quite like. It's a good synergy to get someone different. Particularly one person that I worked with, who is just so remain-y, but to get them to go "well what's the most annoying thing that remainers do?" If they're a good comic, then being on the inside as a remainer themselves, they know better than anyone.

It's kind of annoying in a way, it would be really convenient to create an image of the comedy industry where I was being shunned for being right-wing, but everyone's been really sound. At least to me in person, they've been really cool. It's quite humbling. Again, it's not my style to just slag people off or make conflict for no reason - the comedy I'm doing is conflict enough! I get enough shit on Facebook and Twitter from strangers, I don't really need it from people I like and respect.

If I made out that I was an outcast for my views, I think the audience would sense that was posturing. There's a certain audience that would like that, but it's not me. I think personally, to build an audience long-term - fans - you need to speak to people who are like you. I sense that the majority of people who come to my shows are centrists, in one way or another. They lean left or they lean right, maybe vote differently at different elections. Like me, they only lean, they're not die-hard either way, they don't want to hear arguments, they just want to hear some good stuff.

Other people are a bit further right, like it a bit edgier, like Leo Kearse - he's very good, a very funny guy, willing to get more in peoples' faces than I am. I was saying at Edinburgh, if you want your comedy a bit harder, go and see Leo. I think eventually there'll be more of a spectrum of comedians on the right. Maybe televisually, for audiences to get used to it, you've got to be a bit gentler when you begin, show a bit more courtesy because there's been so little right-wing on TV or radio comedy in ages.

What's interesting is that the most abuse I get is from articles I've written rather than any material or appearance I make. Stripped of how I say things, no tone - it changes it, it doesn't always come across when I'm taking the piss. And I love taking the piss. I really enjoy taking the piss out of sanctimonious lefties and liberals. It's fun! I went to a liberal arts college, Goldsmiths, and maybe it started there. From the moment there were people selling the Socialist Worker or talking about saving the whales - noble objectives, but something in me went "oh fuck off" and I've kept that ever since.

Any political predictions for the next 12-18 months?

Oh, the Brexit trade deal, like stuff last year, it'll be made out it's hitting a rock, and it'll probably be worse, but the vested interests are so great that it'll pass. Another Remain prediction will go by the wayside. I don't think there'll be another General Election this year. I don't think Labour have yet got together an offer to the electorate that could bring them to power.

There's obviously a level of clusterfuck the Tories could get to that leaves the public with no choice, and there's a chance of that: ministers doing stupid things, sex scandals, etc. Those things are more likely, and I think last year proved that. The sense of stupidity and bungling incompetence. The same thing that did for John Major in the 1990s could do for Theresa May.

I think this year will be a sequel, you know like 22 Jump Street is to 21 Jump Street. "You know that thing from before?" Trump, Brexit, Corbyn, May. Let's have some more of that. It'll be like that for the whole year I think. 2019 is when it all kicks off.

With Brexit not just voted for but about to actually occur.

As the genuine departure from the EU becomes more and more of a crystallised reality, the desperation for some will kick in. It will get way more adversarial. Could Brexit still be stopped? I think we're past that point already, but "it's the economy, stupid". There's a level of economic impact that could change anything. That's true with every government in history of course, could be to do with things that aren't remotely related to Brexit. But hopefully, from a selfish point of view, it continues to be fucking ridiculous for as long as possible, so that political comics like me can continue. It gives us new stuff to write about!