The Podcasts you've worked on with Steve and Karl Pilkington... Are they a way of loosening up that strict way of working? Do you edit them much?

"Not a lot, no. Doing those Podcasts and Audiobooks... it's like a day off. It's the funniest thing I do. There's nothing funnier than Karl Pilkington. That's because he's not a comedian. He's not trying to be funny in the traditional sense. He's just a friend. There's nothing funnier than your friends.

"Your friends are funnier than any comedian, any film, any concept. That's because you've got a weight of investment in everything they do or say - and you know it's not staged. So, when Karl says something, it catches me like no comedy could."

Karl does have an incredible brain, though. He is naturally very funny. Like in the Guide To The Human Body, where he goes off on an increasingly strange tangent about when he was a kid and he told his mum that he'd been up all night talking to what he thinks was a ghost called 'Mrs Battersby'...

"HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"

It does remind me of some of the stuff he says in the earlier Podcasts. I wonder if he is becoming a bit 'aware'. That he's starting to realise that he is funny and that he can play himself as a bit of a character?

"A little bit, I suppose. But I still think he's totally genuine. That story about the ghost at the end of his bed - it transpired that it wasn't even his memory. It was his mum who'd told him about it!

"The thing about Karl is he's the least pretentious person I know. He can't be pretentious. He hasn't got the gene for it. He doesn't understand what it is. He's a child - and children don't have pretentions.

"With Karl, there's no malice. He genuinely thought that Anne Frank was just a squatter - someone who was avoiding paying rent. The idea of Karl watching the world is strange. So when he says something that seems harsh - or even racist - it's not. Because for that to be true, there has to be hate or an agenda involved."