The Simpsons star Harry Shearer to play Port Fairy Folk Festival

While Shearer's visit to the Port Fairy Folk Festival in March will showcase his many talents, the charm of the festival and its seaside setting will be a nice change of pace for Shearer, who has a prominent place in pop culture.

As an integral part of the phenomenon that is The Simpsons, Shearer knows the impact his role as a voice actor for the show has.

The importance of his work, which includes voicing iconic characters such as Mr Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders and Principal Skinner, struck him during an elevator ride in New York City.

"It's an elevator that plays old movie clips and some of what they play are cartoons," Shearer explained.

"They were playing a Tom and Jerry cartoon in the elevator, it's New York so it's a 60-storey ride, so you've got time to watch the cartoon.

"I'm looking and it's really well drawn and the stunts and the jokes are really funny and I'm thinking, why is Looney Tunes so big, Bugs and Daffy and all that, and Tom and Jerry never really had that kind of life.

"Then I realised, Tom and Jerry don't talk, they have no voices, they don't have the personality that Mel Blanc had gave to all those characters in Looney Tunes, so I think we contribute a lot to how people view those characters."

Shearer explained The Simpsons was built around the quality of its dialogue, with voices ahead of pictures in the pecking order.

"We do our recordings first and then the animators draw to what they hear in our performances," Shearer said.

"So in a way, our performances and what we are doing is embedded via the pictures.

"We have that influence I think to every aspect of those characters."

The Simpsons has become a global, pop culture juggernaut since its debut in 1989, with Shearer in the thick of it from the start.

Aside from his four main characters, Shearer also voices a plethora of other The Simpsons cast members, including Kent Brockman, Reverend Lovejoy, Dr Hibbert, Scratchy and Lenny Leonard.

But when asked his favourite character, it is little surprise Shearer nominates one of the show's marquee names.

"Anybody in comedy likes to do the really, I hate to be an American and say bad guys, you know the more unfavourably depicted people, so yeah, C. Montgomery Burns would be my favourite," Shearer said.

"The most ridiculous level of cult following was that for a while, I don't know if it's still going on, but there were people in England who dressed up like Ned Flanders and you know had Ned Flanders conventions.

"You'd see a sea of fake moustaches for as far as you could look - I've seen pictures - I haven't been there myself, and they'd say 'Okily Dokily' to each other all the time, that's pretty far down the line."

The Simpsons has had the rare ability to entertain its audience while effectively provide social commentary with subtle and at times biting humour.

Shearer said his and the show's views on the world and how they were portrayed did, at times, align.

"The show's sense of humour and mine are not the same but they do intersect in a lot of places and we do pick on a lot of the same things from time-to-time," Shearer said.

"Sometimes I make fun of something on my radio show and two weeks later The Simpsons writers have made fun of the same thing.

"I'm not saying I've influenced them, but we are on the same wave length in many ways."

Shearer was speaking to The Standard ahead of his visit to the Port Fairy Folk Festival on March 6-9.

At the festival, he will be interviewed by Brian Nankervis ahead of a screening of the folk mock-umentary A Mighty Wind, in which Shearer stars and helped create.

He will also play double bass in the backing band for his wife Judith Owen.

Shearer described A Mighty Wind, which was made in 2003, as making "gentle fun" at the happenings in the folk music industry in Tin Pan Alley in New York in the 1960s.

"I was familiar with the music, I grew up listening to the real stuff and then the Tin Pan Alley version so there's a lot of it (folk music) I really like," he said.

"Judith did a tour a few years ago called a thousand years of popular music, which had a lot of folk music."

Shearer can add proud husband to his CV, with his excitement levels at getting to play on stage with his wife bubbling over.

His description of Owen as a "ridiculously talented singer-songwriter and piano player" leave no doubt of his admiration.

While he has travelled through country Victoria in the past, Port Fairy had not been part of the route.

"I didn't make it to Port Fairy and I really didn't know there was a festival there until Judith said guess what, there's a folk festival in Port Fairy and we are going to do it," he said.

For a man of so many talents, Shearer is self-effacing when asked what he wanted to be defined by.

"I just try to keep myself interested," he said.

"Very often I try to recover with the disappointment from the last project by thinking about something completely different to do."