"Does that make sense, man?" asks Richard Gadd for the third time in row, after a hat trick of tangential answers to introductory questions.

It's to be expected, though, from the comedy upstart who likes to do things his own way.

It's been a remarkable 18 months or so for Gadd, who never had intention of becoming a stand-up, but is now establishing himself as one of the most adventurous emerging talents in the country - quite the journey for someone who 'accidently' stumbled into comedy.

After being cast as Macbeth in his Fife schooldays, he realised he "liked being on the stage performing" and signed up for four years of Theatre Studies at Glasgow University, before acceptance into the prestigious Oxford School of Drama. In between putting his expressive face and intense stare to theatrical use, Gadd attempted stand-up at the Queen Margaret Union. "It had always been on my bucket list, and then it ended up taking over. I don't think I ever wanted to be a comedian - it happened."

A penchant for the unorthodox immediately set Gadd apart from the crowd, and he honed his act further, performing at the - sadly defunct - sketch comedy night Stockholm Syndrome, where he could be seen re-imagining Ronald McDonald as the world's worst father and performing a particularly profane rap about Santa Claus, while special guests performed 'suicide slots' - one-off performances characterised by fancy dress and surrealism. When the conversation turns to sketch, Gadd lights up, as if the conversation had turned to an old friend.

"How important was that in my development?" he ponders. "The great thing about Stockholm was it let you experiment with ideas. Scottish comedy is very conventional, the majority of comedians talk about Scotland, and it felt there was no platform to experiment and be different."

This period of relentless comic probing has paid off, but despite the buzz surrounding the 25-year-old, his challenging, often visceral material is unlikely to see him become a regular on Live At The Apollo anytime soon. Gadd couldn't be less bothered.

"I don't like comedy, man..." he begins. "You've seen my stuff, it's quite theatrical, more performance artsy. If somebody suggested for a night out, 'Let's go see some comedy then go clubbing afterwards', I'd be like 'I'll see you at the club.'"

If it seems a pessimistic assessment of his chosen profession, he then - without invitation - promptly starts endorsing the merits of his peers, waxing lyrical about last year's Fosters Comedy Award winner John Kearns, as well as Liam Williams and Lolly Adefope. He credits the likes of Sam Simmons and Tony Law as influences, and gushes about a comic called Daniel Webster who quit the scene. "I remember the first time I saw him, he blew my mind. He was just a guy who was really weird; he went on stage cracking these surreal one-liners. I remember people like him made me think 'comedy doesn't need to be man, microphone, telling stories.'"

Having established a style of sorts, Gadd did back to back shows at the Free Fringe in 2011 and 2012, with fellow Stockholm Syndrome graduates Matthew Winning and James Kirk; the aptly named Well, This Is Awkward and Well, This Is Awkwarder. The breakthrough came in 2013, with Cheese And Crack Whores. A sleeper hit that picked up rave reviews, its genesis was somewhat impulsive, born from uncertainty and anxiety.

"I graduated [from Oxford] and was like 'What do I do now?' It was the month before the Fringe and I decided 'f*** it - I'll go to Edinburgh.'"

Newly graduated, skint and out of a long-term relationship, Gadd turned his lack of direction, anxieties and misfortune into a hyperbolic disasterpiece. Was it a cathartic process?

"Definitely, yeah. Everything I've done so far has been semi-autobiographical. With Cheese And Crack Whores I completely heightened the emotions and heightened the stakes, and then found a truth somewhere within that. That show far exceed my expectations. I went up expecting that no-one would see it in the back-end of a scrappy pub in Nicolson Street, competing with football next door on the TV. I thought it would be a disastrous month, but it caught fire, and before I knew it I was doing the show at the Soho Theatre, I had an agent, I was doing all these things. It happened by chance and I quite like that."

Similar to its predecessor, Breaking Gadd is a tale of struggle, documenting all the way from childhood up to the present, an account of Gadd desperately trying to break into the Fosters Comedy Award at the conclusion of Cheese And Crack Whores. Again Gadd left it late, stirring up even more tension in the creative process of the show.

"I didn't start writing until mid June, so about six weeks before Edinburgh there were several instances where I phoned up my mum crying 'I can't do it this year, it's just not gonna work'. It properly broke me."

What doesn't break you makes you stronger, though, and the success of Breaking Gadd marks the creator out as an innovative talent with bright, and no doubt odd future ahead. He's in the midst of filming a "mid to large comedy drama for a mid to large comedy platform" that he can't talk about - although you can tell he would love to. Instead he concludes that his ambitious for the year are "pay my rent, on this pretence that I am writer, rather than working in a bar pretending I'm a writer."

It feels safe to hope that Gadd will, at the very least, once again supersede his own expectations.

Richard Gadd performs Breaking Gadd as part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival at Blackfriars, Glasgow on Friday. For full programme details, see www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com