Black on the attack

Lewis Black is calm. Really.

After arriving at “The Daily Show” offices, he pours some coffee, quietly goes through his mail and, well, OK, grumbles a bit about being busy.

Soon, though, he’s settled down, looking relaxed and talking about his career.

It should never come as a surprise that a performer’s persona is quite different from real life. But Black — best known as the enraged comic commentator on Comedy Central’s flagship show — says what you see is what you really used to get.

Even though he isn’t quick to anger anymore, he says, “I used to be, which is part of the reason it took my career so long to roll around. Because I had no built-in editing thing. I would just snap.”

In his family, Black says, “The more you yelled at somebody the more it meant you liked them.” So he never thought of high-decibel, mercurial communication as a bad thing.

“If something really bothered me, I would yell,” he says.

Now he feels he’s matured.

“A little late,” adds Black, 55. “But I’ve matured. I realize that just because I’m bored in a meeting with somebody who really has the power over my career, I don’t really have to express that boredom … or that I think they’re stupid. Because I would do that.”

In his “Rules of Enragement Tour,” which Black brings to The Met on Saturday, he rails about such topics as confusing health guidelines, corporate corruption and, of course, politics.

Punctuating many of his jokes are the Vesuvian eruptions his fans like so much — along with his trademark finger-jabbing with both hands that resembles stilettos attached to nunchukas coming at you.

“We have a two-party system: The Democratic Party, which is a party of no ideas, and the Republican Party, which is a party of bad ideas,” he spews.

“The Daily Show” anchor Jon Stewart says there’s more to Black that just a fulminating fusillade.

“He’s not just attitude. He writes jokes. He’s crafted what he’s done for years and years,” Stewart says.

Then, unable to resist a joke, he adds: “And, let’s face facts, in a lot of the clubs there’s a lot of drinking. Craftsmanship and alcohol. It’s really a powerful combination.”

It doesn’t hurt that Black has a master’s from Yale Drama School. He’s written some 40 plays, one of which recently was produced in Los Angeles, and he hopes to touch up and stage another.

Black also recently filmed a sitcom pilot tentatively titled “Educating Lewis,” in which he plays a high school principal, and he plans to write a book about how he got his comedic point of view.

“As a kid, I was not much of an actor, so that was out. But I could get up in public and talk,” he says, and that always gave him a certain confidence with stand-up comedy.

His biggest influences were George Carlin and Lenny Bruce. And he recalls a “mind-blowing” effect on his life from The Realist (a magazine edited by countercultural satirist Paul Krassner) which he started picking up when he was 15.

The act that fans see now dates back to the mid-‘80s when a fellow stand-up who typically yelled at the audience told Black: “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. I’m not angry. I’m screaming at the audience. You’re really angry, and you’re not screaming. The next time you get up, I want you to just do the same material, but I want you screaming.”

So Black went up and started screaming. “And it just made perfect sense,” he says. “Because I was sitting on the anger, which is really kind of scary. And that really became the persona.”

Then the late Sam Kinison became a star, he says: “I thought: ‘Wow, if they can handle Kinison …”

But the turning point didn’t come until Black started to make recurring appearances on NBC’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” a year or two before he began with “The Daily Show” in 1996.

Since then, his humor has particularly resonated with the cable show’s young audience.

“One thing they always tell me is, ‘You’re just like my dad — and you’re funny.’ And I think I express a frustration with authority that they feel,” he says.

“I think a big part of it (is) … I’m emotionally stunted, I have the vision of a 21-year-old. A lot of the way I see the world I came to by the time I was 22. And I haven’t really much moved from that.”