Chris Mountford spoke with Tony Vino

Tony: Yeah that's basically how it works, in that they are the trenches and it is almost like you have to prove yourself and edit not just your own character and onstage persona, but your material really gets tested. Jerry Seinfeld said a lovely thing, he said good audiences help you develop, bad audiences help you edit and it's those first early gigs that really help you edit your stuff down to make sure that all that's left is gold. It's like the refiners fire for comedy. If you can entertain that 20 people that are half interested, then scale that up when you've got 200 in a proper comedy club, it lands wonderfully.

Chris: Does comedy work when it's clean and not full of bad language?

Tony: Absolutely, a joke's a joke at the end of the day. Comedy and laughing is all about jokes. However it's packaged, a good joke is a good joke. I do comedy that's accessible to people of all ages and nobody is excluded, that's the thing, comedy is a really inclusive art and nobody should be excluded.

Chris: You perform at the Edinburgh Festival with the 'Clean (As Possible) Comedy Show', give me an idea of what might happen on any given performance.

Tony: It's a different line-up every night - each show in Edinburgh is an hour because each venue has one show after another, after another. We have been there six times with this show, I think. I MC it, making everybody comfortable, chatting to them, having banter, doing the intros, getting to know who is in the audience, getting some quick-fire jokes in and I'll kind of anchor it. I'll have two or three guests in, it depends on the night, but they will only do 10 or 15 minutes each.

Chris: What is the inspiration of the comedy? It says here - organised and compered by Christians. Is it Christian and Church related or not?

Tony: It is run by Christians, myself and Greg Sammons who curate the show choose who's going to be on it. Not all the people who are on it are Christians as there are quite a few comedians up there that just want to be on the show, but in a sense part of our ethos is about making comedy accessible and inclusive. There are no jokes about Church or Christianity or anything like that, but it is just a sense of we've brought it together and there's a few partnerships with churches going on up in Edinburgh. The show is linked with IJM, it's a Christian charity called International Justice Mission that works against human trafficking, so we profile that as well. It kind of brings it all together and is a stand up show available to all people, that is friendly and we would say has the Spirit of Christ to it, but there is no exclusive language or content.