Greg Behrendt consulted on Sex and the City, then his career sky-rocketed. (Ernest Doroszuk, Sun Media)

A few months back, comedian Greg Behrendt was in Chicago "and I was with a club owner and as happens occasionally, this woman came up to me on the street and said, 'Oh my God! You've changed my life!'

"And the clubowner said, 'I have been with probably every comedian there is in the past 15 years, and that's the first time I've heard someone tell them they changed their life. How does it feel?'

"And I said, 'It's nice, but I kind of wish she'd told me my standup was hilarious.' "

By a couple of pretzel-like twists of fate, Behrendt -- who's currently hosting the cross-country Just For Laughs Festival comedy tour -- has become the only male comic on the circuit with a virtually all-female fan base. This is courtesy of two best-selling relationship books he's written -- He's Just Not That Into You and It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken (the former of which is currently being shot as a feature film with Scarlett Johansson, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck).

He's Just Not That Into You was inspired by a discussion Behrendt had with a fellow consultant on the TV series Sex and the City, "consultant" being a job that consisted mainly of being the straight guy talking with women about sex. And this colleague had been out on a date and invited the guy back up to her place ... and her date declined.

But wait a minute, let's back up to that Sex and the City job. "Bizarre, isn't it, dude?" he says. "It just happened. (Sex and the City exec producer) Michael Patrick King had directed my HBO special, and we'd done standup together, and he felt I was the right guy. He said, 'There's seven women and two gay men on this staff and you'll all be talking about sex.'

"There's nothing better than sitting around in a roomful of women who begin conversations with, 'Well, y'know when I masturbate ... ' and I'd get a cheque. It's all fantastic. It was just such a great adventure. And I learned a lot about sex and women and relationships as well. It was all give-and-take."

He's Just Not That Into You (the off-handed response he gave his colleague) inspired a Sex and the City episode, and the books, co-written by Liz Tuccillo and Behrendt's wife Amiira respectively ("You can't write a book to women and not have a woman sign off on it," he says of having women co-writers. "Because you become very presumptuous then, lecturing women.")

The followup, It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken, he says was inspired by "a pretty bad breakup that ended up being one of the reasons I got sober. I wished there was some kind of guideline for a breakup. Just give me some rules, man, what am I supposed to do?" Like his first book, it was aimed mainly at women, although there's a bonus chapter for men called Dude, Get Off Her Lawn.

The whole thing culminated in a syndicated relationship talk show Behrendt hosted that lasted 123 episodes before being cancelled.

"It ended up being a spiky-haired version of Rikki Lake."

Still, he says, "I made one off-handed comment on a lunch break to a girl about a guy who didn't want to have sex with her, and it's turned into all this."

A standup first and foremost, Behrendt began with L.A.'s "alternative comedy" crowd in the early '90s, a bunch that included Jack Black, Sarah Silverman, Janeane Garofalo and Dave Cross.

"There was this place called The Diamond Club where Jack (Black) and Kyle (Goss) did their first sets (as Tenacious D), and Dave Koechner and Will Ferrell would do sketches and we'd do standup in between. It would be like this merging of church and state."

On the hierarchy of comedy draws, Behrendt says, "I could fill a theatre. I played for a thousand people in this college town on the East Coast recently, and as they're driving me to the airport they point out where Dane Cook's going to be playing, and it's a f---ing stadium!

"But do I want Dane Cook's fans? My fans are mostly ladies, and that's awesome. (Fellow comic) Dave Attell says, 'Man, you lucked out. I get all these dudes and they're always drunk.'

"And my wife loves every minute of it. She doesn't mind if I sign a breast or whatever. These women paid for my house and one of the reasons women love me is I'm crazy about my wife. It all folds in on itself."

The annual Just For Laughs Comedy Tour features an international bill of top standup comics. Host Greg Behrendt is joined by NBC's Last Comic Standing winner Alonzo Bodden, Tom Papa, Louis Ramey, Fiona O'Laughlin, John Wing Jr., Kevin Brennan and Andrew Grose.

Among stops on the tour: Massey Hall in Toronto tomorrow, Ottawa's National Arts Centre Saturday, London's Centennial Hall Sunday, the Centennial Concert Hall in Winnipeg Nov. 6, the Epcor Centre in Calgary Nov. 11, Edmonton's Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium Nov. 12 and the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver Nov. 16.