To break the monotony of endless interviews, Hannibal Buress will occasionally tell a little fib to his inquisitors. Just for himself. He likes to make himself laugh, whether it’s on-stage or off.

“I told one journalist a few weeks ago that I write for three hours every day,” he reveals to the Straight in a recent phone conversation from an “undisclosed location” during a break in his tour. “That’s totally a lie. I don’t write for three hours a day at all. I’d have so much confidence if I wrote for three hours a day. I could do it, but I don’t.”

Pretty inconsequential stuff. Other times he gets more creative.

“I told one that the reason I started comedy was because my parents got kidnapped by ninjas and to free my parents, the ninjas required me to do a topnotch spot in a standup set,” he says.

At least he’s come clean here.

Buress, the standup darling and costar of two (count ’em) TV shows, Broad City on Comedy Central and The Eric André Show on Adult Swim, has played Vancouver twice before—the first time at the Biltmore Cabaret, the second time at the Rickshaw Theatre (in a “fucking horrible neighbourhood”, he remembers). Thanks to his television exposure, he’s moving into a bigger venue this time around: the Vogue Theatre, next Wednesday (February 18) for the Northwest Comedy Fest.

“The people see me on the shows and then look me up and find out I do standup through that,” he says. “There’s a lot of people that don’t even know I do standup. Their exposure to me is just through these shows. So it brings a lot of new fans, man, that come to see me. Being on those shows definitely helps.”

The last time here, he went up against a Canucks playoff game, so the appearance didn’t sell as well as it should have. There’s no game to compete with this time, but even if there were, he’s at a new level now.

“I think I might be able to take the hit this time, even if hockey is happening,” he says.

So the TV work has benefits, financial and otherwise. But like most standups, he considers the small-screen shows a means to an end. That end is being his own boss, speaking his own words on a stage, big or small.

“I just enjoy saying ideas and creating different ways to make people laugh and make myself laugh, and just getting better at it,” he says. “So for me, I’m kinda obsessed about the idea of creating a solid overall body of work, and to do that, you gotta tour and you gotta write and you have to perform a lot. This will be my fourth hour that I’m touring right now and I really want to make it good. And I really want to just do good standup comedy.”

One of Buress’s ideas made headlines in October last year, when, during a show in Philadelphia—the home of Bill Cosby—he brought up the rape allegations against the comedy legend that had been sitting dormant for years. That clip went viral and no one’s thought of Cos the same way since.

Buress’s New York publicists, however, made it a condition of the interview that no questions be asked about Cosby, so you’re not going to glean any information here on how he feels about it now. Whether he still talks about it in his act, we’ll just have to wait and see.

He describes his current Comedy Camisado Tour (the word means “a military attack that occurs at night—I learned this maybe a month before I announced the tour”) as a continuation of his first three hours of material. “Same stuff, man,” he says. “Talking about music, sports, little bit of politics. All kinds of stuff.”

With that, I thank him for his time and for not lying to me during our conversation.

“No lies; this was a straight-up interview,” he says. “No, Guy, you’re a respectable journalist and you write good pieces.”

I guess he just couldn’t resist getting one whopper in before it was over.

Hannibal Buress plays the Vogue Theatre next Wednesday (February 18) as part of the Northwest Comedy Fest.