"I'm not a relaxed person," 47-year-old Rollins says. "I'm a very stressed person who's prematurely grey."

The first incident occurred in 2006 after a passenger sitting next to Rollins on a flight from Auckland to Melbourne spied him reading Jihad: The Rise Of Militant Islam In Central Asia by New York Times columnist Ahmed Rashid, and reported him to Australian anti-terrorism authorities. The first Rollins learnt of it was in an email from a government official. "It was an interesting moment. It made me actually very furious," Rollins said.

"I was furious with the woman who emailed me about it and said, 'my boss needs to interview you'. "I said 'let's do it. I'll come to his house right now'. I was so mad.

"We're talking about a best-seller I was reading, not, like, 'How To Build A Bomb'," he says, still incredulous. Rollins has since been let back into the country without further interrogation, but it is hardly an isolated incident. The trip he took to Syria last year saw him hauled up at the airport in San Francisco by suspicious officials.

"I was questioned as to why I went to Syria, and told I shouldn't go, it's a very bad place," he said. "It's a legal visa, there's nothing I did that was illegal.

"Everyone in Damascus was very nice, I hope I go back someday. "But (the officials) were actually visibly angry when I told them I had a good time." While such attitudes aggrieve Rollins, he says it is just a sign of the times.

"From the travel I've done in the last few years I'm sure I'm on somebody's list in somewhere in (Washington) DC," he said. "I have an Iranian visa in my passport, I have a Vietnamese visa in my passport, I have one from Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon.

"I'm sure some people are like, 'what's he doing?'." It all gives him plenty of food for thought when he's creating material for his live shows. A night at a Henry Rollins spoken word show is like being pummelled with words, information, anecdotes and ideas. In fact, get Rollins started on just about any topic in the current affairs spectrum and he'll come back at you with facts, statistics and opinions in rapid fire speak.

The US presidential elections? "In 2009 you'll have a guy for president named President John McCain," he said.

"I think Hillary is not electable, I think Barack is somewhat electable," he said, referring to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two leading Democratic Party contenders. "But if the Bush Administration has their way and gets into it with Iran before (President George W) Bush's term is up that will make it look good for McCain. "As they say, Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. They handed it to Bush in his second term and I think they'll probably end up doing the same again.

"I can't tell you how much I want to be wrong about that," added Rollins, who is personally backing Obama. How about something a bit further from home - last year's Australian federal election?

"I became very curious as to just how hard John Howard got his arse kicked," Rollins said. "I heard it was pretty substantial, which just says Australia wants change, which is a great thing to hear." Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to indigenous Australians?

"The fact that Kevin Rudd said 'I'm sorry' to the Aboriginal people, I don't know what that really means," he said. "Is it a gesture and we all move on, or does everyone get their 40 acres and mule, to coin an American term?"

The phrase refers to the promise to give "40 acres and mule" as compensation to each freed African-American slave's family after the American Civil War. "I don't understand where you go from there, but apparently it was a big deal for him to say that because John Howard didn't want to, and other people apparently did not want to acknowledge that there's a stain or two on the Australian historical backscape. "So maybe he's making some people here optimistic, and that's great."

Even convicted Australian drug smuggler Schapelle Corby is on Rollins' highly attuned radar: "Do we need to take a young girl who's like 20-something and probably not at all a bad person and ruin her life ... for a non-lethal crime?" When asked how he is able to keep so well informed, Rollins is frank.

"I'll tell you how I do it: I don't do anything else," he deadpans. "I don't drink, I don't dance, I don't smoke, I've never held a glow stick in any meaningful way, and as David Lee Roth says in the song Run With The Devil: 'Got nobody waiting at home. Woah yeah.'. "I just work and read and try and understand the insanity around me, and that's pretty much it.

"I'm a workaholic, work-obsessed drip. I'm a stooge, I'm a bore, I'm a rock by a log, I'm lichen, I'm a spore." He's also very funny and entertaining while he's busy stirring the pot on stage.

And Rollins is not about to give up his day job. He flatly rejects the idea of going into politics in order to try to affect change. He says he can be far more useful doing what he does.

"As a guy who can point fingers at things and get other people to look, and being able to say, 'hey what about that?' - I really enjoy that. "As a politician you're playing both sides against the middle all the time and trying to get everyone to like you, and I don't want to be that guy. No-one would vote for me.

"But as a concerned citizen I can do a whole lot and I quite enjoy that." Rollins is about to tour his spoken word show around Australia, taking in Brisbane, Perth, Fremantle, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. The Melbourne show will be filmed for a DVD, and will screen on a pay TV channel in May.

AAP