The 53-year-old is dressed unassumingly in jeans, boots a checked shirt, and has stand-up hair. His clear-framed glasses are missing one arm. He’s warmer and less gruff than his comedy persona, with a very active mind that continually takes delight in life. I don’t doubt his genuineness or his sincerity – but sometimes it’s not clear if he’s just telling me how it is, or he’s rehearsing for a future gig.

It’s only towards the end of the meal I feel confident enough to raise this. “I’m not sure where the anecdote’s heading,” he says. “It might become a bit. Everything becomes a bit.”

Hughesy’s TV career started in the 1990s and his radio career in the 2000s. He is one of Australia’s best-known comedians, but became extra famous when he spontaneously dropped $3 million at a home auction for the TV reality program The Block in 2017, without consulting his wife. He’s now combining the 2DayFM breakfast slot with a season of his show Fully Furnished at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

When we meet, he offers up a fist bump, explaining handshakes are out of the question. After a surfing accident at Surfers Paradise on New Year’s Eve, the past few months have been agony.

“It was a surf lesson. My board. It just speared me in the back.”

He dislocated his shoulder and the board “tore into everything”. It was the worst pain of his life.

“The joy of comedy is … you can turn your pain into laughs.”

Dave Hughes, comedian

“It really was full on, and I was begging for drugs. I was on the beach for two hours waiting for an ambulance which never turned up. I was in absolute agony.

“Even though I was in the depths of agony and wanted to die, I said to my wife, ‘take some photos of me like this because I want the story’.”

And yes, readers, the incident ended up as stand-up.

“Anyway, I got on stage a couple of days later on (prescription opioid painkiller) Endone.”

Why?

“Because I had the gigs booked. And I didn’t want to cancel.”

Why?

At this point he chuckles. Some people would have cancelled, I feel it is reasonable to point out.

“A lot of people would have cancelled. Comedians are very hardy individuals. In general because possibly we have a mentality of scarcity. Never knowing where your next gig’s coming from.

“I’ve never cancelled a gig through illness, I don’t believe. I’ve been on stage with a bucket next to the stage with full nausea and done stand-up comedy.”

It’s all incredibly determined. But it’s delivered up matter-of-fact, without a trace of arrogance. That’s just how it is with Hughesy. We deal with his ego later.

The food arrives. Hughes is a local, and a Sister of Soul regular, but they have changed the menu recently. He opts for the Penang curry, with roasted sweet potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, green beans and lotus root nestled in a pale brown creamy coconut curry. Crispy baked tempeh – whole soya beans fermented into blocks – rest on top. He declares it very flavoursome.

My Thai fried rice is crammed with Chinese broccoli, corn, tomatoes, onions, fried bean curd and topped with coriander, spring onions with a flavour more subtle than its trademark spicy pungent. The crispy black sesame rice cracker delivers a super-satisfying crunch.

“The joy of comedy is … you can turn your pain into laughs. And that’s always been my comedy,” Hughes says.

In fact, ever since he started in stand-up in Perth, turning his embarrassment at being on the dole into laughs. He moved west after dropping out of university in the regional Victorian city of Warrnambool and jumping in a car with a mate.

“It was a real reboot of my life.”

He had just turned 22 and stopped drinking in a country town where alcohol was everything. That was a very mature decision for someone so young, I venture.

“My father was a bad drinker. I can say that more publicly now that my mum has died,” he explains.

“I could see how I didn’t want my life to go. I’d seen the stresses that drinking can do to families. I was not good with alcohol. Life was not stable. Moods were controlled and ruined by alcohol.”

He went fully vegan about five years ago, also for health reasons, after a long period avoiding meat due to a family history of bowel cancer.

Hughes has been on FM radio since 2001 and flies to Sydney for several days each week to co-host the 2DayFM breakfast show with Ed Kavalee and Erin Molan. He has been a constant presence on TV for many years, from The Glasshouse to The Project and now The Masked Singer.

Given he is very successful and very wealthy, I ask why he doesn’t give away the stand-up. Clearly, I fundamentally don’t understand what makes him tick. Stand-up is who he is. It brings him joy.

He flies all over the country doing corporate and stand-up gigs. He even did a comedy set while in Los Angeles on holidays with his family. I laugh, he gets slightly defensive and says at least he doesn’t spend all weekend away from his family cycling or playing golf.

“When I’m bulletproof as a stand-up comedian is when I can look out of the crowd and look at someone who isn’t laughing. Someone who obviously doesn’t find me funny, someone who regrets their decision to be in that room.

“If that makes me laugh, I can’t be beaten. It’s that attitude to life. When you laugh at life, no matter what it presents, and it’s a decision.”

It’s a decision some people can’t make, I say.

“Yeah, but they can – but they choose not to. I made that choice back when I was 21 to stop drinking. Because I said, ‘if I make this choice, it’s going to be better for my life’. So I made the choice.”

It was partly driven by ego, he says. “Without an ego, I probably wouldn’t have stopped drinking. So part of me stopping drinking was the ego of thinking I was special.

“But also, me thinking I’m special is probably the only thing that’s really caused me misery in my life.” Here his tone is self-mocking. “Thinking that as I’m so special – I’m greedy. Looking at what you haven’t got, rather than what you’ve got.

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“My ego wants me to be the only comedian that’s ever mentioned, ever, by anyone for the rest of eternity.”

He has another powerful reason for wanting to be on stage. The comedian is undiagnosed, but thinks he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

But when he is on stage, the chaos in his thoughts vanishes.

“One of the great things for me doing stand-up and being on stage is I’m never thinking about another moment. I’m always present. It’s a beautiful thing to be present.”

But he is undiagnosed and wary of treatment. It might curb his creativity.

“I’m reluctant to mess with my mind, basically.

“Maybe the ADHD medication would help, but maybe I just need to be disciplined. I want to be less erratic in my thoughts. But I think I can take control moment by moment.”

There’s a tattoo on Hughesy’s finger in cursive writing right where you might put on a ring.

It says Holly. The couple met randomly in a bar in 2002. She was 22, he was 31. “And yeah, the rest is history.”

Dave Hughes and Holly Ife married several years later. Back then she was a journalist, now she is a teacher, and they have three kids – Tess, 11, Sadie, 12, and Rafferty, 14, who is 190.5 centimetres, plays rep basketball, pats his dad on the head and tells him that his teacher doesn’t find him funny.

“My son said to me, ‘you get recognised in the street. They dream of that – you’ve got it and you’re still insecure’. My own son said that at the age of 13,” Hughes laughs.

The meal is over, but half his Penang curry is untouched.

“I’m gonna be honest. And this is back to my possible ADHD. I completely f------ forgot about this. I do live around the corner. My manager texted me at 10 to 12 and said ‘You haven’t forgotten about the lunch, have you?’

“I was just finishing a tofu bagel.”

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We make to leave.

“It’s been good, I think. There’s probably a fair bit in that,” Hughesy declares.