You would imagine that a short set at Jongleurs would be a piece of cake for Mark Watson.

For the past month he has been doing two hour-long shows a day at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

In the midst of all that, the quirky Bristol born comedian, who inexplicably adopts a Welsh accent during his act, even found time to break his own stand-up world record, spending a laryngitis-inducing 36 hours straight at the mic.

So it will be a relief to get back to the comedy circuit and the world of 20 minute sets?

"I don't know, I think it's going to be really weird," said the 26-year-old.

"It's very hard do jump from one to the other. It's a completely different discipline."

If any comedian can make the adjustment, Watson is your man.

As the undisputed king of the marathon gig having done 24 hours at Edinburgh in 2004 and 33 hours last year, improvisation is his comedy crutch.

"You can't come up with 36 hours of material so you have to think of gimmicks. I sent out a mate at the start of the show to find out how far he could get in 36 hours. He made it to Calais and back.

"That kind of thing draws the audience in, because they want to stick around and get updates."

With only brief respite for comfort breaks, it wasn't just the material that Watson had to improvise.

"You have to think up ways of staying awake. I don't like coffee or tea so I drank high energy fruit and protein drinks.

"It's a shame the audience didn't do the same. It gets very surreal in the twilight hours, somewhere between 5am and 9am, when at least a third of your audience are asleep."

The quirky show has worked up a bit of a cult following, with sections of the audience staying for the entire performance. Last year only 25 stayed the distance, this year 45 hardy souls made it through.

"I've actually made friends with a lot of them, we swap emails and stuff. It's a strange relationship, we start to share in-jokes and running gags."

No matter how bizarre the show becomes, Watson agrees that future marathons will probably never top his first effort, when he proposed to his girlfriend, Emily, at the end of it.

"Talk about improvisation, I had absolutely no idea I was going to do that at the start of the show, it just kind of came to me." Luckily for him, she said yes.

  • Mark Watson, Jongleurs, Lavendar Gardens, Battersea, Friday and Saturday, September 1-2, 7pm, £15.

Call 0870 78 70707 or visit jongleurs.com.