"I've been away for a week and it's my first morning back with the kids," he says. "I've been playing soccer with them. They're 10 and eight, so they're full on."

Green, 52, originally from England but now based in Australia, has built his career around exploring the joys and absurdities of family life: the everyday minutia, the confounding nature of long-term relationships, the destabilising nature of parenthood. He will touch on these issues and more when he returns to Canberra to headline the Uni Pub on February 19.

Green takes particular pleasure in dissecting his relationship with his Australian wife. The two met at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 1999. His assessment of their relationship can be disarmingly frank.

"I forget the effect it has on an audience when I say the things I say [about my wife and I], because for me, it's a well-loved routine and I know how much exaggeration is involved to get the laugh," he says, "but cumulatively, the audience is like, `Wow, he talks in such graphic, critical detail'. That's what I've always done. Sometimes it doesn't win me any friends, and sometimes people love my honesty."

While Green cut his teeth on the independent stand-up comedy circuit, his real break came in the late '90s with a string of stand-up television performances broadcast in England and watched by more than 3 million viewers. He has appeared on a raft of television panel games, including the BBC's Never Mind the Buzzcocks and the ABC's Spicks and Specks, as well as BBC radio shows.

His first book, The A-Z of Living Together (2002) appeared on The Sunday Times Best Seller List. It was followed by The A-Z of Being Single (2003) and The A-Z of Having a Baby (2006). While Green says the process of writing books left him "joked out", if he were to write another book, it would be The A-Z of Australia. "I could point out the funny things you hadn't noticed about yourselves."

Green also reveals a topic he is exploring for a future stand-up routine: the experience of divorced fathers who get to see their kids only every other weekend. "I know we're supposed to feel sorry for them, but sometimes I think, `God, I would really like that!' For 10 days you can come and go as you please," he laughs.

"There's something there. There's something uncomfortable about that topic that isn't supposed to be talked about. They're the bits I zone in on."

Nothing should be off limits when it comes to stand-up, he says, provided the material is of sufficient quality. "I didn't say this. It might have been Robin Williams or John Cleese, but there are good jokes and there are bad jokes.

"Good jokes about a topic will illuminate it with truth. We can all laugh and it's a great experience, and it gets an important topic publicised and no one's made to feel uncomfortable. Then you get people attempting to do rape jokes or Catholic Church paedophilia jokes, and the jokes are not good enough and they diminish the subject, rather than making it important. So that's what you try to do. You try to write the good jokes about difficult topics if you want to be noticed."

Jeff Green

When: February 19, 8pm

Where: Uni Pub

Tickets: $20 online from facebook.com/UniPubComedy