The ads bill him as a comedian, and you might think that would be an amusing occupation. Katt Williams will tell you otherwise — and he’s serious about it.

“I’m a public official,” he said. “My job is to know what is happening so that I can translate that into my language, which is comedy. That requires me to know exactly what’s going on in the news today, and what’s happening in the weather, and what’s happening in sports, what the world of science is discussing right now, where is our space program going.”

“These are the things that I have to be knowledgeable about in order to do my job effectively. It’s not the same for all comedians. Some comedians make it a little easier on themselves, because it’s a difficult job anyway, but for my bang for the buck I like to make sure that we’re learning something. And at the end of the day, the best part of it is when they say ‘You know? It was hilarious, but I didn’t think I was going to learn anything.’ That’s extra credit.”

You can expect Williams’ take on hot-button issues such as race relations, global warming and immigration when he returns to Honolulu on Saturday for the latest stop on his “Conspiracy Theory” tour.

While that label is catchy and cutting edge, however, Williams said he won’t be talking about mere theory.

“In order for there to be a conspiracy theory, it generally means there’s some truth that’s being hidden,” he said in a phone conversation that was friendly, but serious. “People are trying to find the answers to something. Our whole dialogue is the fact that we can talk about all of the issues that are facing us — and it’s the issues that we don’t want to discuss which are the issues we have to discuss.”

WILLIAMS has lived a life so unconventional that when told that a reporter had been doing research on it, he apologized for its complexity.

Originally from Cincinnati, he “emancipated” himself at age 13 and went to live on his own, at one point working as a door-to-door salesman. It’s one part of his life that he’s not willing to discuss in detail, worried that some young admirer might see that as a path to the success he’s had.

He’ll admit that he was headstrong, and drawing on the Jewish tradition, he says he believed that “I was a man at that age. But I wasn’t. I was a boy.”

After he entered the public eye, the media has reported on various alleged run-ins with law enforcement around the country. There are more than a dozen incidents, ranging from accusations of gun possession at Los Angeles International Airport in 2006 to a 2014 robbery case involving rap producer Suge Knight and a paparazzi’s photo gear. Many cases have been dismissed, others ended with a fine and a brief jail term. Meanwhile, Williams continued to tour and entertain.

“That’s the weird part for me,” he said. “Imagine if you look at each of these circumstances, and you see what this person has supposedly done. Then you look at it and you see certain things that don’t make any sense, like this person has never had a drug charge, and this person has never had a DUI.”

Williams himself has joked about the arrests on stage — diving to the floor to “assume the position.”

“I have to discuss whatever’s there, and if it so happens that it’s me, I don’t just get to cherry-pick over that,” he said. “I have to deal with it.

“It’s more important to me for people to see what the situation is. If people can see that, ‘Hey, wait a minute! There’s either nothing here and they keep trying to manufacture something, or this is one of the greatest criminal minds that we’ve ever seen in a while.’”

WHICHEVER is true, it hasn’t stopped Williams, 44. Known for his coiffed hair and exuberant outfits, he’s been a regular on the comedy circuit for more than 15 years, and that has translated to roles in film — notably as Money Mike in the madcap 2002 comedy “Friday After Next” – and TV roles, including appearances on Nick Cannon’s 2007 sketch comedy series “Short Circuitz.”

No wonder that, despite the turmoil in the country and around the world, Williams expects better days ahead.

“The future is always optimistic, even if bad things happen,” he said. “I’m appreciative of the double term (of President Barack Obama) that we’ve had, and how much we achieved, while also understanding that we reached some of our lowest points in our racial conversation while in the hands of a black president.

“We would be remiss if we didn’t pay a little attention to what was happening, so if these conversations do come up again, we don’t have someone who can’t look after minorities. We live in a country that says ‘Give us your poor, huddled masses,’ and we’re against immigration?”

Williams was calling from Georgia, which had just been hit by storms, and was eager to get to Hawaii. He will be bringing three other comics, Red Grant, Mark Curry and Richie Redding, and he respects them all so much that he refuses to call them opening acts, because that might imply that they aren’t very good.

“We have a show before the show, and that show is so awesome that everybody’s talking about it,” he said. “The guarantee is that from the time you hear a voice to the time to you have left, you will have laughed consistently, continuously — all the way through.” ..