It’s not uncommon to get a breathless press release trumpeting a comedian’s cross-Canada tour, which features eight cities in four provinces. Or a North American tour with 15 dates in 12 cities. But when Russell Howard does a world tour, he really gets it done.

The English superstar is in the midst of a 90-show tour, stopping in 19 nations.

When reached on the phone in Nashville, he’s walking down a hotel hallway, trying his card at every door.

“I’ve stayed in so many hotels, I don’t remember which room is mine,” he says with a laugh. He suggests his Round the World tour might more aptly be called the Where Am I Staying tour, or the Point Me Where My Bed Is tour.

It’s the only downside to being on this long and winding road, which combines two of his loves. “Travelling with standup is such a brilliant way to experience the world because you wander around cities you’ve never been to, have chats with people in bars, and your standup evolves and world-view evolves,” he says. “And at the end of the night you’ve got people in a room to go and chat to. So it’s the perfect holiday for me.”

Howard is a superstar in the U.K., playing arenas across the British Isles. Vancouverites get to see him in the relative intimacy of the 420-seat Rio Theatre. Whether he’s playing to 200 in Atlanta or 18,000 in Manchester, it’s all the same to him. He’s not just trying to get arena notches on his belt.

Once, backstage after a gig in Montreal, he met fellow Brit Eddie Izzard, a veteran of many arena gigs, who asked him how many he’d done, hoping to one-up him. “I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And he said, ‘I’ve done 19.’ Yeah, okay.”

He doesn’t care what size venue he plays as long as there are people showing up and ready to laugh. On this tour he broke the record for consecutive shows at the Royal Albert Hall set by Barry Manilow and Frank Sinatra, playing the grand 5,000-seat auditorium 10 straight nights in March.

“The key thing, if any room is full, it’s fine,” he says. “That’s always your big show. If you’re playing to 300 and it’s full, it’s amazing. Or if you’re playing to 12,000 and it’s full, it’s kind of amazing. So that’s the key, really, as long as you get there and there’s people who are up for a good time.…And to be honest, someone like Michael McIntyre or Peter Kay far outsell anyone, so it’s not worth worrying about. They sell the most tickets in the U.K. by a country mile. Yesterday in Atlanta, the very fact there was a room full of people waiting for me, it’s just great. It’s real pinch-yourself stuff, you know, so I’m not really fussed.”

One would think with all the telly work Howard does, he’d want to relax a bit when not in front of the camera. With time to kill before a new series airing in September, he thought he’d rededicate himself to standup by hitting the road, something he can’t concentrate on when the TV lights are shining.

“I think my girlfriend prefers it when I’m working, when I’m busy,” he says. “I find it very hard to do normal life. In a sense, if you’ve been doing arenas for two months in England, you’re going to be bad company to sit around, so it’s better for me to be brought down to earth and do a gig in Nashville in front of 150 people.”

Russell Howard plays two shows at the Rio Theatre on Tuesday (May 16).