Biografie

Is terrified of frogs.

Auditioned for the part of Rimmer in Red Dwarf (1988).

Has a son called Ezra with partner Morwenna Banks.

Graduated from King's College, Cambridge, with a double-first in English Literature.

Is often reluctant to allow his father on any of his shows, because of his father's constant habit of swearing to embarass him.

[on the character played by Steve Coogan]: "Alan Partridge is gonna be that bloke who says the most offensive thing kind of that's on his mind but that's kind of true to him and real, but it's incredible that he's said it."

I like Genesis - up to and including Wind and Wuthering in 1976. I don't like them ironically; I think many of their songs are genuinely beautiful, and would remain beautiful if stripped of all Moog bombast and played on acoustic guitar. A long time ago, I stopped finding this difficult to admit. In fact, I now rather pride myself on it, and feel irritated by the name checking of the band in recent attempts by ageing musical journalists to reintroduce progressive rock into the acceptable cultural canon, always freighted down with ironic smirking. Genesis were brilliant. There, I've said it.

I think that people are terrified about race and religion, especially issues surrounding Muslims and Jews, and when people are terrified, what they really should do is laugh.

I really, really wanted to be a punk rocker. And then, at the start of 1977, my friend Dave played me Blood on the Rooftops, a song from the album Wind & Wuthering, by Genesis. Genesis! This was a time when, for a young teenager who was attempting to live his life by the rules laid down in NME and Sniffin' Glue, Genesis, along with Pink Floyd and Yes, represented everything that was dull, pretentious, overblown, middle-class and unacceptable about music before the year zero of punk. Trouble was, I really liked the song. Resistant though my ear was supposed to be to this particular quality, I thought it was beautiful. But I held on, fastened to the safety pin of self-denial, buying White Riot and New Rose and Peaches, until one day, possibly under cover of darkness, probably in disguise, I went to Our Price in Willesden Green and bought Nursery Cryme. And I was lost. Peter Gabriel had me at "I heard the old man tell his tale ". I didn't - and still don't - know why the changes of no consequence should pick up the reins from nowhere, but it suddenly became clear to me why I loved this band. They wrote fantastic songs.

I'm an atheist myself. But I am not interested in making people think that their faith is rubbish. I think it's good that people have faith. What I am interested in, however, is taking the piss out of the structures and the extremisms that grow up around that faith.