Don’t bother asking Wil Anderson anything about koala bears.

Yes he’s Australian, but he’s also a comedian who loves making things up.

“It’s always the first thing people outside Australia ask me,” said the 42-year-old star of the hit Aussie series Gruen. “I just make up a bunch of stuff for them — did you know koala bears are riddled with chlamydia?”

You can check him out at Just for Laughs Bermuda this week.

“This will be my first trip to Bermuda,” he said. “A friend asked me whether I fancied doing stand-up in Bermuda. A lot of things I’ve had to think harder about but not do I want to go to Bermuda. Of course!”

Mr Anderson grew up on an isolated dairy farm in Victoria, never imagining he’d have a career that would take him to far off places. The road he lived on seemed like the whole world but at 12 he realised he was never going to take up the family business.

“That’s about the age that they really put farm kids to work,” he said. “I liked indoor work with no heavy lifting. Farming was never really for me.”

He shoots down any suggestion that stand-up comedy is a difficult job.

“Farming is much harder,” he said. “With stand-up you work an hour a day and have someone else warm up the crowd.”

He started off as a journalist but hosted a number of radio shows in Australia early on in his career.

He’s since ventured into podcasts. In Whilosophy, he asks smart people stupid questions and tries to figure out the meaning of life. “Working in podcasts is different from almost every other thing,” he said. “In a stand-up joke you can give your opinion. In a podcast I can talk you through not only why Hilary should have won, but why I have issues with the Clintons.

“There is no other art form that allows you to put so much context to things, and allows for people to have such broad conversations.”

He’s happy to have found a career he enjoys.

“When you choose [stand-up comedy] you often end up doing some job that’s not necessarily your passion,” he said. “You might end up hosting a game show, for example, or be involved in a project that is not your project.

“I have been lucky enough to always work on projects I have been interested in. Stand-up is my number one thing.”

Mr Anderson splits his time between Sydney and Los Angeles and tours frequently.

“The hardest audience I ever played for was in Alaska,” he said. “There were about 100 men, all with ZZ Top beards and their guns.

“They sat in the audience with their guns next to them.

“I never put more work into a show. It was pretty weird but to be honest, the weirder thing, to me, was that everyone was smoking inside. I made a lot of jokes about guns that night.”

He typically walks around and soaks up the culture whenever he performs in a new country.

“I do a bit of research, but what I really try to do is experience it. I just like to walk around and see what people are like and what is going on.

“If I research about it, I will make jokes about things people have already joked about.

“The only place my comedy really changes is in Australia. It’s because I know the culture so well. I have a whole bunch of jokes I can only tell in Australia. Sometimes people from outside say to me, it sounded funny, but I had no idea what you were talking about.

“I love that comedy brings a group of strangers together in one moment.”

• Mr Anderson will perform at various locations with Just for Laughs this week. See www.comedyevent.bm for details. Tickets are available at www.bdatix.bm. For more on Mr Anderson visit www.wilanderson.com.au or on Twitter, at Wil_Anderson.