Where do you live? And why?

London. Because it’s impossible to live anywhere else. A few years ago, I moved down to Dorset, because I fancied a spot of country living: I could afford a huge country pile, and the kids would have a better quality of life, and we’d grow our own vegetables and watch deer frolic on the lawn and all that stuff, because I’m a writer, and I could write from anywhere, right? But I think you’re either a city person or a country person, and I missed London very badly. We moved back after a couple of years, and I have no plans to leave again.

Where do you write?

I have an office at home. I tried renting an office, just to get out and about every day, but I decided a staircase was more than enough commuting for me, thank you. Why waste an hour or more travelling to and from work when you don’t have to?

Did you enjoy school? What is your most vivid memory of your school years?

At the time, I pretty much loathed school. When adults used to tell me they were the happiest days of my life, I didn’t know whether to strangle them or hang myself. I think that erroneous adult belief stems from the misconception that problems children have are as nothing compared to the real world stress inflicted on adults. That’s wrong. Children’s problems are every bit as distressing. Adults rarely have to fret about physical bullying, for instance. Or genuinely worry if there’ll ever be a day when they get to have sex with another human. And cruel, petty-minded teachers have much more power over you than, say, cruel bosses in the workplace – you can always walk out and get another job, which isn’t an option at school. That’s not to say it was a thoroughly hideous experience, just that the lows were very low indeed. And, to this day, I have recurring nightmares about school. The most prevalent is I’m about to sit my French A level, and I know precisely what I know today about French, which is how to order an orange juice badly. I studied French for ten years, and I did get my A level, just about, but I can’t string together a simple sentence in the language without a French person replying in distressingly perfect English. Merdre.

What educational qualifications do you have?  Have you had any formal tuition in creative writing?  If so, where and what?  Did you find it useful?

I got O and A levels, but got kicked out of University at the end of my second year, even though I was on a BA course. I’m very sceptical of formal writing courses. In the early days, Doug sent off for a postal writing school course, but we just threw it in the bin, frankly. The nearest thing to formal training I’ve had was a two day comedy writing course taught by Danny Simon (Neil Simon’s brother). That was superb. Mostly, I learned about comedy writing from reading what little I could find from good comedy writers. Americans tend to talk about it as a craft much more than English writers. While Doug and I were starting out at the BBC in Manchester, a producer friend of ours made a radio series called ‘The American Way Of Laughs’, and he managed to interview just about every living American comic. He let us listen to the unedited tapes, and that was unbelievably helpful.

Did you always want to be an author?  If not, what did you originally want to be and when and why did you change your mind?

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. There was a short period when I wanted to be a scientist, just so I’d get to wear the white lab coat and invent things, and, naturally, I wanted to be Spider-Man. In fact, at the time, I thought I could probably handle both those careers simultaneously. Apart from that: a writer, always. I can remember, though, one road to Damascus moment: I was going to the cinema, and, in those days, they often had a double bill. I was walking down the aisle looking at the B movie on the screen, which had already started. It was Woody Allen’s ‘Play It Again, Sam’. I started laughing before I got to my seat, and I pretty much didn’t stop till the end of the movie. I have no idea what the main film was, but that was the night I decided I wanted to make people laugh. One day, hopefully, I will.

What were the first pieces of writing that you produced?  e.g. short stories, school magazine etc.

I’ve always written. As a kid, I used to write for fun. I used to make superhero comics with my brother. I used to make up serials to tell him every night, when we were in our beds, and I’d stop when I got myself in a big plot hole. He’d beg me to carry on, but, of course, I’d have no idea what was going to happen next, and I’d spend a chunk of the next day fretting about it. I first got published in the school magazine when I was nine or ten. It was a homework essay called ‘The Old Dark House’ and I’d had no idea it had even been submitted, so I was pretty damned pleased with myself. As I recall, the plot was subsequently ripped off in every single episode of Scooby Doo. I eventually became editor of the School Magazine (The Gryphon’) of which there was one issue per year.

If your house was burning down what would you save?

Nothing. I assume you’re talking about stuff, not people. That’s not to say I don’t love stuff. I’m a very big stuff lover. I love my computers and my gizmos – my Smartphone, my iPod and so on – but I’m not a collector, or anything like that anymore. I used to collect things, and hoard them: books, videos, laser discs, comics; but I like to think I’ve grown out of that now. It suddenly occurred to me that I’d been carting books around from house to house all my life, and I only ever re-read maybe two of them. And I had a massive video collection, but there was never anything I wanted to watch, and I was basically accumulating clutter I never used, and taking up acres of space for no good reason. So I got rid of them all, my entire video collection, including absolutely every episode of ‘Star Trek – The Next Generation’, and all of my books, except for a few vital reference books, mostly to charity shops. It was a great feeling: very liberating. I still buy books, but I pass them on when I’ve read them. And if I haven’t read them within a year of purchase, I get rid of them. I buy DVDs, but mostly collected TV shows, like ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ and ‘The West Wing’, and the odd classic movie: basically, stuff I can’t rent. Music CDs go straight onto the computer and then the iPod, then I put them away in a drawer and never get them out again. There’s things I’d miss if the house burned down, but nothing worth running through burning rafters to rescue.

What is a typical writing day?

I get up really early and start writing immediately, before I’m even awake. That way, my critical faculties are still slumbering and the little voice in my head that says what I’m writing is crap hasn’t had chance to brush its teeth. The hardest part of writing, for me, is getting started, and this is the best way I’ve found of avoiding that pitfall. By the time everybody else is up in the house, I’ve usually got going, and, if I’m lucky, something reasonably good will have come out. Then I feel like I’ve stolen a march on the day, and I can keep going. I set myself minimum limits, in terms of daily word counts, when I’m writing a novel. It’s not an issue when I’m writing a script: a novel is about 100,000 words, and a long half hour script is maybe 4,000. As the novel deadline approaches, though, the minimum word count goes out the window, and I just keep on writing till my fingers are numb.