Twelve years ago, Troy Kinne was working as a delivery man for electrical company Retravision and weighing up what to do with his life. He had just been axed from Melbourne's Triple M, after his hot new radio show didn't last quite as long as he'd hoped.

Various options arose including a) quit working altogether and become a bum, or b) let his brother coax him into giving comedy a crack.

Fastword to 2015, and the 37-year-old has been riding high on the success of a second season of Kinne on 7Mate. He's currently touring the country with his comedy and bringing to life on stage such characters as the Impromptu Lifeguard and Actual Bachelor.

"The first time I did stand-up was the triple j Raw Comedy [competition] in 2003," said Kinne. "It was my brother who talked me into it . . . and I've said from the start that I'm going to do stand-up because I think I'll meet other people that are into the same thing I am."

Australian actor and director Josh Lawson (Anchorman 2) is one of the chaps he'd met along the way, and is credited as one of his best friends. The pair are now busy working on a narrative TV series and a feature film, though a third Kinne series won't be dismissed.

"I'm leaning towards saying no ... but I said that last time then did season two," Kinne laughs.

It's been a long and winding road to success with many failed television pilots along the way, mixed with years of manual labour to support his comic "addiction". But he probably wouldn't have done it any different, recounting some amazing memories from the stage like performing for Australian Defence personnel in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

"To this day it's one of the best experiences I've ever had - it was awesome," he said. "For a typical guy, it was like a two-week fantasy camp of pretending you're a soldier, because you get all the gear and you have a bullet-proof vest on and you go out in the middle of nowhere.

"It's just crazy . . . but these guys are just hanging for some sort of entertainment because they're surrounded by stuff that isn't fun."

Recently Kinne ticked another big item off his bucket list: performing at the renowned Comedy Cellar in New York, which he described as crazy and surreal.

"It was on a Saturday night, the 10pm slot . . . and being on [after Rove McManus] was weird - he clearly doesn't tell anyone who he is because people were like 'how are you two comedians back in Australia but you've never met before?' I said, 'well Rove is on a slightly higher level' - none of them knew he'd had his own show!"