Are you happy with Cemetery Junction? No compromises?

"I'm so proud of Cemetery Junction. It's the best thing me and Steve have ever done. That won't stop it being slagged off as the worst thing we've ever done, though. But I've come to terms with that.

Does criticism bother you?

"It really doesn't, because it's what builds careers. People hating your stuff as much as people love it - that's what makes you. Otherwise, you potter along and do stuff and become a national treasure.

"But a national treasure is just someone who lived to 78 and didn't hurt anyone's feelings. You've got to keep risking everything. You've got to keep the same feeling of wanting to tell everyone you're here."

Is Cemetery Junction the most personal thing you've done?

"It is, but then I've always written about what I know. The Office, Extras... Even The Invention Of Lying which, on the face of it, is a big, high-concept, Hollywood rom-com. But it's about the thing that I'm more sure of than anything in my life - there is no god and our point on this Earth is to be nice to each other.

"Cemetery Junction is more personal in a slightly more sentimental way - family, friends, growing up... I'm very patriotic and it's my love-letter to England. I don't mean patriotic in the jingoistic sense, but patriotic about the things that are peculiar to England. The nostalgia of it all...

"And nostalgia plays funny tricks, but then so does Hollywood. That's where Hollywood is at its best, really - selling someone else's vision as a dream.

"Cemetery Junction came from a lyric - Bruce Springsteen's 'Thunder Road'. 'It's a town full of losers and I'm pulling out of here to win.'

"It's a bigger emotional journey. We've left the veil of irony behind. It's set in 1973, but we're not laughing at the funny haircuts or people saying stupid things. We're right behind the characters. They're cool people and we want them to succeed."

So it's not like The Royle Family...

"No, it's more like Saturday Night Fever or Diner or Saturday Night And Sunday Morning. And yeah, those are quite dark films in a sense, but everything we do is existential, it has that 'What's the point?' thing underneath it.

"You have to get people thinking like that. A comedian's job isn't to make people laugh, it's to make them think.

"But I still want everything I do to be uplifting. Even the drudgery and the terrible tragedy of The Office... we left them with hope. Same with Extras."