Expect a great escape — and birds.

Ben Bailey, best known for Discovery Channel’s “Cash Cab,” is coming back to Bellevue on Aug. 10-11 and will be performing his new stand-up act at Parlor Live. The act contains brand new material, and will be the same act that will be recorded for a new special in the near future.

“It’s cool that they get to see the finished product before it gets recorded,” Bailey said.

Bailey is also welcoming the revival of “Cash Cab,” which launched July 27. Through all of his television endeavors, Bailey has never really stopped touring.

“I’ve been perpetually on tour for years. I try to do two or three shows a month, but it’s not always quite that frequent,” he said.

Bailey recorded his last comedy special about three years ago and has been writing the material for this new show shortly following it. The yet-to-be-named new show will be a little different in comparison to Bailey’s previous stand-up routines.

“I’m a little more animated. I’m doing these characters and voices, and a lot of faces. I’m just kind of getting more into it,” he said.

Bailey has been performing stand-up for 25 years. In the past few years, he said he thinks he’s been taking comedy too seriously and forgetting to have fun with it.

“I just need to relax and have fun. I take this comedy thing too seriously. It’s so competitive because it kind of pushes you in that direction, but I just need to remember to have fun, so that’s kind of what I’m doing,” he said. “That translates to more voices, more characters and faces and stuff. But it’s still the same weird writing.”

Along with increased animation, Bailey said the audience can expect to “laugh from beginning to end” and escape from reality for a little while.

“They can escape from the parts of their lives that really suck. That’s what it is for me, that’s why I do it—so I can provide that for people. That’s always kind of been my role,” he said.

As a child, Bailey was the comic relief in his family and, because of that, he feels providing an escape for people is his job.

Developing new material has never been a complicated process for Bailey. He is inspired by “everything and nothing.”

“My ideas fall out of the sky. I literally don’t know where they come from. I just kind of see something or a thought occurs to me and I go ‘oh, that’s good,’ and I have to write it down before it’s gone,” he said. “I could be in the shower and think of a bit about a subway and go, ‘oh my god, I gotta write that down,’ but I’m in the shower [laughs].”

While his material is random, he said he expands upon previous comedy bits.

“I always end up having material about birds. I don’t know why. Every time I realize I have to get a special ready I go, ‘Oh my god why do I have like 15 minutes about birds in this thing? What is going on with me?’ he said. “I do like birds—I’m a bit of a bird nerd. There’s’ a million little birds around my house, and, I’ll admit it, I watch them.”

In his 25 years of performing stand-up, he said he feels incredibly proud and lucky to have been able to do comedy for as long as he has although he couldn’t imagine ever doing anything else.

Before comedy, Bailey worked at least 80 different jobs.

“I’ve done almost everything you could think of—roofing, landscaping, bouncer, bartender, personal trainer, limousine driver—I’ve delivered everything from prescriptions to pizza to people,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to work but if I didn’t like a job, I’d just go get another job and quit the one I was doing.”

It was one of these jobs that led him to comedy. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in films. He got a job answering phones for a comedy club. One night he was telling a few jokes in the green room with a few comedians and they all thought he was another comic. One of the comedians told him he should open for one of his shows.

“I was scared to death, but I got a laugh out of the first thing I said and I just knew immediately that I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing stand-up comedy,” Bailey said.

Bailey’s comedy hasn’t changed much since the success of “Cash Cab,” but he does talk about it some due to popular demand. When it was announced the show would return to the air, Bailey said, “never before has a comedian ever been so happy to go back to work driving a cab.”

“Cash Cab” is on the Discovery Channel Friday nights at 7 p.m. and tickets to Bailey’s comedy show at Parlor Live are available at http://parlorlive.com/parlor-live-comedy-club.html.