How would he like to die? What’s happening with The Men From The Pru? And why is he wearing pyjamas in a graveyard? Our greatest comedy misery-guts reveals all

As well as being a protection from the unsettling glare of his fame, the Giorgio Armani sunglasses Ricky Gervais wears are a concession, a hint at his status as the British comedian, writer and director who went to America and came back with an armful of Emmys, Golden Globes and Hollywood contracts. But at least he is not wearing them indoors. We are wandering through a dappled churchyard not far from his house (and his office) in Hampstead, and the sun is shining.

Gervais couldn’t be accused of dressing like a star, though. Tramp would be closer to the mark – a 47-year-old tramp who hasn’t shaved for days and is wearing trainers, a cord coat and what looks like a pair of the pyjamas they give you when you fly long haul in first class.

At the mention of these I get to hear the manic Gervais laugh that is familiar to fans of his podcasts. ‘They are pyjamas! But I got them from M&S. I do wear the ones with the v-neck that you get on airlines. I walk around the house in them looking like William Shatner as he is now, not how he was in Star Trek. I always choose what to wear based on how soft and comfortable the clothes are. There’s no point killing yourself.’

When we come to a bench which has a slat missing on one side, Gervais half-heartedly offers me the good side, but having just listened to him explain how important comfort is to him, I insist on taking the bad. He quickly agrees, on condition that I mention that he offered.

We sit down and contemplate the gravestones, some gothic, some lichen covered, some at strange angles, thanks to subsidence. Shelley would have approved. He was never far from a graveyard. Nothing he liked better than a memento mori.

On the subject of which, there is a photograph of Gervais taken years ago when he was the epicene singer in a new romantic band. Does he contemplate that photograph now and weep for his lost youth? ‘No, but whenever it is brought out I do groan, not because I’m embarrassed at how I looked then but about how I look now. I had great cheekbones then. I removed all the mirrors from my house in about 1990.’

Gervais likes this graveyard, but not out of religious sentiment. Indeed he is a patron of the National Secular Society. ‘I feel angry that I even have to say I am atheist. The alternative is so ludicrous to me. I don’t want to dignify the idea of religion by saying that. The burden of proof should be on their side, not mine. I feel like saying to Richard Dawkins: “Don’t bother. Not worth it.” I know there is no God more than I know anything else in this world.’

Gervais became an atheist at the age of eight when Bob, his older brother by 11 years, asked him why he believed in God. ‘My mother went “Bob!” and that was it. I knew she was hiding something and he was telling the truth. My tool to understanding throughout my life has been non-verbal communication, observing the minutia of human behaviour. It’s in my acting and my writing and that was where it began.’

I ask if he is familiar with an Arthur Miller quote about mankind’s craving for immortality – that it is as futile as scratching your name on a cube of ice on a hot July afternoon. ‘No, but I like that. I would like The Office to be still considered good in 20 years’ time, but after I’m dead I don’t care. I don’t care what it says on my gravestone.’

How will the papers report his death, does he suppose? ‘It depends how I die. I might have won an Oscar and found the cure for Aids but if I die by slipping and landing on a giant spike, the headline will be “Man Dies From Spike Up A—.”‘ He’s laughing again now, as am I. ‘The awful thing will be the funeral when people who haven’t read the papers ask how I died and when they are told they will get the giggles.’

Gervais met his partner, Jane Fallon, when they were at University College, London. They decided not to have children but to concentrate on their careers instead (she is a television producer and a novelist).

I ask what he makes of the idea that there is a form of immortality in passing on your DNA. ‘That’s just scratching your name in a cube of ice in a very cold country,’ he says. ‘It’s not real immortality. There are loads of reasons why people have children. You think it will be nice and good and worth the hassle. But in human terms, procreation hasn’t been about propagating the species for years. We’re safe. The human race is good.

‘So I don’t think the genetic legacy idea works. I don’t think people on their deathbeds go: “At least half my DNA is still walking around.” They say: “Can you remove this spike from my a—, please. Say it went through my head and it happened while I was saving a child from a burning building. And it wasn’t even my child”.’

Gervais stretches out on the bench. There is a chinking sound of coins falling on the ground. ‘My money has fallen out! Now you’re going to see me scrabbling around in an undignified way in case it’s a pound. If it’s 20p I’ll leave it. That’s the problem with wearing pyjamas.’ He gives up looking. ‘Karl says you’re alright, by the way. That’s high praise from him. That’s like getting six out of 10 from a teacher who never normally gives more than three.’

Karl is Karl Pilkington and two and a half years ago I became the first journalist in the world to interview him. I don’t imagine he has done many interviews since because he is a man completely lacking in ambition and, as Gervais regularly points out, he is ‘f—ing lazy’. Pilkington acts as a deadpan muse to Gervais and his writing partner Steve Merchant. The three do podcasts together, the most listened to podcasts in podcast history, and lately they have been bringing out a series of downloadable audiobooks, too, called The Ricky Gervais Guide to…

So far they have done guides to the arts, medicine, natural history and philosophy, clocking up around three million sales per episode. The latest, available from next week, is The Ricky Gervais Guide to… The English. Later, when I email Karl to tell him how it went with Gervais, he replies: ‘People always say he’s nice but that’s cos he doesn’t try squeezing your head.’

‘Me and Steve treat Karl like an experiment,’ he says now. ‘We’re a couple of chancers going around 19th-century America with a thing in a cage.’

For all the abuse Gervais directs at Pilkington, he loves him really and the two talk on the phone several times a day. In fact, if you want to know the real Ricky Gervais you could do worse than see him through the strange prism of Karl Pilkington. ‘Karl is a lovely man with unexpected talents such as dancing, editing and illustrating. He’s an idiot savant who will make you see a subject in a way you have never seen it before. He’s a friend first and foremost, but, well I know how to work him, get the best out of him. He’s the funniest bloke I know, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.’

On the podcasts, Pilkington will say something so unexpected Gervais will lose his breath as he giggles like a hyena and says: ‘I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!’ Pilkington, he reckons, inhabits a cartoon world. ‘He doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body. Completely unpretentious. Pretension is a concept that doesn’t exist in his world. He’s not comfortable when things go right. It’s like he feels guilty about the audio books doing so well because he doesn’t consider them a proper job. He goes down to Kent and does painting and decorating as well because that feels more like real work. He feels guilty about how easy the podcasts are. I’ve gone through the same thing, to an extent.’

There is nothing Pilkington wants, he adds. ‘And I’m a bit like that. I didn’t want fame and neither does he. And we are both creatures of habit. The only difference between us is formal education. I’m not ambitious in the sense that I will be prepared to compromise to get an extra million viewers. It’s like if they say there is a red carpet event I should attend because it will help the film I refuse to go. They are saying the wrong thing to me. They are always saying the wrong thing.’

Who ‘they’ are is not clear but you suspect it is uncreative people, administrators, conformists. Gervais doesn’t seem to hang out with other celebrities much. He prefers staying in watching television to going out. But Pilkington reckons there is more to it than that. He doesn’t use the word ‘misanthrope’, but that is what he means. He points to the fact that Gervais can’t bear hearing people chewing, for example. ‘I don’t know whether it’s a phobia or a neurosis,’ Gervais now says, ‘but it’s often justified. The sound of traffic, mating geese, thunderstorms, no problem. But if there is someone next door with their telly on too loud I want to go around and kill them.’

As for his other flaws, Gervais admits he has the attention span of a toddler and can be grumpy, too. ‘When it comes to creativity I’m ready for war. I’ll square up if someone says they have “notes” on something I’ve written. Steve will say: “Calm down, Rick, calm down.” He’s a very calm person. When Steve was 23 he was 52.’

They met in 1997 when Gervais was presenting a radio show on the music station Xfm. He needed an assistant and hired Merchant, a man 13 years younger than him, and a foot taller. Gervais would make Merchant laugh with a character he called Seedy Boss. One day Merchant filmed him for fun and, after that, they began writing a comedy around the character.

The BBC commissioned a pilot and, in 2001, it broadcast the first episode of The Office, with Seedy Boss now called David Brent. A new genre was born, the comedy of embarrassment, and… we know the rest. The Office has now been shown in 70 countries worldwide and has been remade eight times, the latest being the Israeli version. India is also planning a version and Gervais and Merchant think they might be hands on with that one, executive producing it as they did for the US version.

Extras, their follow up to The Office, explored the world of a bit-part actor, Andy Millman. It managed to be just as funny and even more moving, yet could not have been more different in approach – a testament to their confidence as writers. Now they are working on a film together, set in Seventies Reading and involving the aspirational yet ultimately frustrated lives of men working in insurance, one of whom will be played by Ralph Fiennes. It was to have been called The Men From the Pru but the real men from the Pru read the script and decided that, er, on balance they didn’t want their company name used in the title. Gervais now wants to call it Cemetery Junction after a place in Reading, but Merchant has doubts, saying he thinks it sounds too depressing.

Meanwhile, Gervais has just finished This Side of the Truth, a film he has written, directed and starred in, and which is due for release in September. The cast list reads like a Who’s Who of US comedy talent: Tina Fey, Jason Bateman, Jeffrey Tambor, Christopher Guest… Such is his control freakery he has the final edit – the only other directors who get away with this are Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino – and the film will not be tested on audiences.

Although he starred in last autumn’s box office hit Ghost Town, Gervais did not consider that film ‘his baby’ because someone else wrote it, albeit with Gervais in mind. ‘This one is definitely my baby,’ he says. ‘It’s set in a world where humans haven’t evolved the gene for lying. I play a loser, and when I discover I can lie it becomes like a superpower.’

A couple walk past and do a double take when they see Gervais. ‘Round here people tend not to bother me,’ he says. ‘When I’m in the sticks, it’s a bit hairier. People behave as if an alien has landed. First time people started looking at me I didn’t know what they were looking at, then I remembered, “Oh yeah, I’m on the telly.”

‘The first time I was asked for my autograph I said: “Really?” and they looked hurt, like I had insulted them. Now I’m more polite. But my dread is missing a train because someone wants an autograph and I don’t want them to think I am being rude. I can’t even send my soup back now. Before I would have sent it back for being too cold but now I have to be gracious. It’s exhausting.’ He grins his fangy grin to show he’s joking. ‘It’s like I had to offer you the nice seat. And now I have to pretend that I don’t mind I’ve lost that pound coin that might only be 20p. I’m going to come back after you’ve gone and have a proper look for it.’

What do people normally shout when they see him then? ‘Well I don’t have a catchphrase so what they tend to do is the David Brent robot dance instead. What I don’t like is when people take sly pictures without asking. It’s just a matter of politeness. I don’t mind if they ask.’

What about if they were to take a photograph of him when he was out jogging? ‘I don’t care. What are they going to say? That I look fat and sweaty? I’m a comedian running. I’m not a model. What bothers me is intrusion. It would give me the creeps if someone went through my rubbish, and actually my shutters are always down to avoid long lenses. I live in a giant panic room.’

If he met his 20-year-old self right now, would he find him gauche and embarrassing? ‘I would. He was cocky. I’ve got less cocky as I’ve got older. But that 20-year-old me was only cocky because he found everything too easy. He felt sorry for kids who weren’t as clever as him. He played his cleverness down. Up until about 25, I prided myself on getting the best mark possible without trying.’

Being seen not to try, of course, gets to the heart of Englishness. So does the class system. Gervais grew up on a council estate in Reading. His father was a labourer. ‘I think class is more significant than race or sex,’ he says. ‘To this day, in a room full of overprivileged Oxbridge graduates I feel them giving me a sideways look.’

Meaning? ‘Perhaps I’m being paranoid but I do feel that they are saying: “We know… We know that eventually you are going to let yourself down. Eventually you are going to make a faux pas at this dinner party.e_SDRq’ That’s awful. ‘I don’t care. I quite like it because I’m not going to make the faux pas at this dinner party unless I mean to – you know, using the wrong knife deliberately.’

This paranoia surprises me because I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone with an ego as healthy as his – anyone less insecure, I mean. But then perhaps there is a pattern here. When I interviewed Stephen Merchant a couple of years ago he told me: ‘Ricky has an incredible memory and a natural intelligence but is happy for people to think he is an oik from Reading.’ He also said that Gervais didn’t realise his background was working class until he went to UCL to read philosophy.

‘That’s true,’ Gervais now says. ‘I don’t think we even had a middle-class teacher at my school. I could read as well as I can now at three. I lost that art at the age of four. Got bored. I had better things to do. At the age of five I would be outside all the time turning over leaves to find a stag beetle.’

Did his father advise him not to become a labourer? ‘No, I always knew I would move away from home at 18 and go to university and everything would be all right. Blind optimism.’ A Candide figure, perhaps. But it was Mike Leigh, not Voltaire, who was the biggest influence on his formative years. ‘I remember seeing Abigail’s Party when I was 14. I loved it but hated it at the same time, because the mockery of working class aspiration was a mockery of my family. I’m a snob when it matters. Snobbery can be a shot at excellence. But if someone mocks people for breaches in etiquette, I hate that.’

I ask Gervais about his relationship with Merchant, who, though younger, seems to be the more mature of the two, or at least the less frivolous. ‘It’s us against the world. You have to be complete fascists when it comes to art. There is no room for democracy. We don’t want anyone else’s opinion. I don’t know about Steve but I do this for the fun, for the creative process, not to see my fat face on the telly. It’s about bringing something into the world. All my DNA is in the work that I’ve done.’ He stops. Shakes his head. Looks worried. ‘I ended on a pretentious note. I’d been doing well until then. F—ing hell. I also said we ended and that sounds rude, like I’m cutting the interview off… So now I’m worried about two things. I’ve been pretentious and I’ve been rude. F—! And now I’ve sworn again.’

As you enter Professor James Lovelock’s whitewashed cottage on the border of Devon and Cornwall, you see a contraption on a stand, a small box with a few curved wires. It’s an invention of his, one that should be in a museum. He used it to alert the world — via Margaret Thatcher —  to the dangers of CFCs, specifically the damage they were doing to the ozone. In the next room there is a photograph of him with the Queen, on the day she made him a Companion of Honour (honour is the word, there are only ever 65 people entitled to use the letters CH after their name). And beyond this is his study, sprawling with wires and cables. He writes his elegant prose in here, a series of bestselling books. But this is also where he likes to keep his inventor’s hand in, working on projects for the Ministry of Defence, the sort of gadgets Q makes for Bond. Back in 1954, he invented the microwave oven but, not being that interested in money, left it to others to realise its commercial value. He had another discovery to preoccupy his agile mind — a theory so radical and lyrical it would one day lead to his name being mentioned in the same breath as Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, one of our greatest, and most controversial, living scientists.  We shall come to that.

There is also a model of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic rocket in here, the one that Lovelock will be flying to space in later this year, shortly after his ninetieth birthday — the ‘ultimate upgrade’ he calls it. The trip will be a sort of present from Branson — who credits Lovelock with inspiring him to pledge billions of dollars to fight global warming. Lovelock is not worried about the dangers. ‘If I die, I die,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Doesn’t bother me. I’ve had a long life and it would be a good way for a scientist to go.’

His training has involved going in a G-force simulator. Three Gs so far, rather than the full six he will experience with vertical take off. His doctors have advised against it, not least because he once had a heart bypass. ‘The centrifuge beats any fairground ride,’ he says. ‘Great fun.’

I’m not sure his wife Sandy, an American 30 years his junior, is quite so nonchalant about his trip into space. She is protective of him, making sure he wraps up warm when we go outside, for example. They met at a science conference when he was 69, (shortly before his first wife, and the mother of his four children, died after a long illness). ‘The age difference did not occur to us,’ she says, speaking with a warm, St Louis accent. ‘When you are in love you are in love.’

Certainly, Lovelock does not look his age. He has a full head of silver hair, a glint in his eye and a strong and rolling voice, albeit one with a slight lisp. When we sit down for lunch, homemade vegetable soup, he says: ‘This soup is the secret to my longevity. I have it almost every day.’ If he looks fit, it as nothing to his mental agility. In conversation, he never hesitates or has to search for a word.

‘I imagine Sir Richard’s medical and legal advisors are assailing him,’ he says, ‘warning him of the adverse publicity if I drop dead in the spacecraft. But I’ll be fine. They keep making me take all sorts of tests to see if I am still alive. There was a funny one I had to do in St Louis a few months ago. They injected me with three millicuries of thallium-201, which is a gamma-emitting isotope, then got me to ride a bicycle and did a scan of my heart to see if it was working properly. It was fun watching the scan on the screen to see if the ventricles were contracting properly, expelling all the blood they should. The medical team were all cheering because it was working so well. What they would expect for someone much younger than me. So they have no excuse not to let me go up on medical grounds.’

He grins. ‘To be honest I am so carried away with the thought of doing this trip, I don’t care about the consequences. When I was young I was daft enough to do rock climbing in plimsolls, without ropes. I had some scares but I’m glad I did it. I’ll be the same before this flight. I’ll be scared but I’ll be glad I did it. It will be important, this chance to see the earth before the ice caps vanish. It will be an important moment for me personally.’

This is something of an understatement. Lovelock has spent a lifetime contemplating our gently spinning, green and blue planet — its beauty, its poise, its apparent luminosity in the blackness of space. Even before the first colour photographs of it were taken —  40 years ago this summer, when Neil Armstrong took his one small step for a man — he was able to ‘see’ it with his mind’s eye, and understand it, in all its spherical glory.

In 1968, his neighbour, the novelist William Golding, helped him with come up with a poetic name for his theory that the earth and all the living plants and creatures upon it are inextricably bound together, interacting in complex ways to ensure that the environment can sustain life. While walking with Lovelock to the village pub one day, Golding suggested calling it ‘Gaia’, after the Greek goddess of Earth.

‘Bit of luck,’ the professor says. ‘Living next to door to a man like that. Who would be interested in the theory if I had stuck with its original name, Earth System Science?’

According to Gaia theory, ours is a living planet, the only one we know of in the universe, and the human beings upon it are transitory and irrelevant to its survival — though not to their own survival, if they go on over-heating the planet with the Co2 emissions they cause. Lovelock’s belief in Gaia was reinforced by research showing that, even though the energy reaching the Earth from the Sun had increased during a certain period, the temperature and chemical makeup of the atmosphere remained unchanged. The only explanation, he decided, was that the Earth was a self-regulating system that had found a way to preserve its equilibrium. The organisms on Earth had kept their environment stable. This seemed to be Gaia in action.

The hippies loved it. The idea of Gaia caught the imagination of academics everywhere, too. It prompted John Gray, professor of European thought at the London School of Economics, to describe Lovelock as ‘the most important and original scientific thinker in the world today.’ What appealed, of course, was its metaphorical potency, Gaia seemed to be giving us a subtle lesson in the physiology of a planet. Was he aware of the poetic power of his metaphor right from the start? ‘No, my first feelings about it were “Oh yes, that’s a nice word.” I have a bit of poet in me, I suppose, and I like words with a ring to them and an interesting provenance. But I was shocked by the way the American scientific community went berserk. They thought it was dreadful usage. Still do.’

Because it is too whimsical? ‘They call it trying to mix myth with science. It was all nonsense, they said, because it was too much of a threat to their comfortable way of living. You see science has sold its soul to the politicians. It has got so bad nowadays, the wooliness of political argument about Green issues. And the Greens themselves have becomes so fanatical. I feel the Green attacks on the airlines particularly half baked; all this stuff about carbon footprints is hogwash. Greens can be such Nazis.’

Um, isn’t that rather an unfair comparison? ‘Not really. Compared with the amount of fuel we use just keeping ourselves warm, the amount you use per year flying is trivial.’

But surely it’s not just the fuel used, it’s what jumbo jets do to the atmosphere. ‘They hardly do anything to the atmosphere. I suppose the jet contrails might be harmful but it depends where they are produced. In some areas it will produce warming, in others cooling. There is a lot of argument still among geophysicists about what effect it has. The way I look at it, if you add together the CO2 produced by the nearly seven billion people in the world, and their livestock, it is ten times the amount of CO2 produced by all the airline travel in the sky. So if you want to improve your carbon footprint, hold your breath. The number of people is the problem, and it’s all happened so fast. When I was born the world population was two billion. In my lifetime that figure has more than trebled.’

He has a solution to this which is chracteristically unexpected. ‘If women were more empowered around the world there would be fewer children. The chief increase in population occurs in the Third World because there the women have so little power. If there were more women politicians around the world there would be a natural curb to population growth.’

I ask if he ever catches himself straying into misanthropy when he contemplates these global issues. ‘I suppose so. I think there is a lot of misanthropy in all of us. Think of that song “if you were the only girl in the world and I was the only boy.” I’m a little agoraphobic and can’t think of anything worse than a crowd. I’m a non-joiner.’

Is that a mark of eccentricity? ‘You would know, not me.’

Eccentric means outside the circle. There is something in his character to which that applies, the way he is always thinking outside conventional wisdom. ‘Possibly, but it is not a deliberate act of thought. It comes naturally. I tend to see in more dimensions than most people, I suppose. I used to get cross with your profession because they always referred to me as a maverick. A maverick really is an outsider. The village idiot. As far as science goes I am far from being a maverick. I belong to all these important societies, and didn’t join them, they elected me.’

Is he a contrarian then? ‘Not for the fun of it.’

According to Dr David Weeks, a clinical neurophysiologist at Royal Edinburgh Hospital, an eccentric tends to be intelligent, curious, outspoken, unmotivated by greed, dogged and healthy. Eccentrics don’t know they are eccentric, moreover. They think their abnormal behaviour is perfectly normal. Because they are not concerned about conforming, they are naturally much less prone to stress. And because of their humour and happiness, they tend to live longer. This definition seems to apply to the inscrutable Lovelock in spades. He is entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. Though he is a Fellow of the Royal Society and has worked for NASA, Shell, MI5 and various universities, he has always preferred to plough his own lonely furrow, funding his research with his 40 or so patents and the various prizes he wins. Eccentrics tend to be only children, as Lovelock was. Brought up by a grandmother, he saw the world as ‘very cosy and comfortable’.

At school he made his own working short-wave radio receiver from scraps of wire, jam jars and pencils. Later he would make his own explosives with which to blow up obstructions on local footpaths. He grew up with Quaker principles, and became a conscientious objector in the Second World War. I suspect he enjoys being a member of the awkward squad.

In name and in spirit, Gaia seemed to represent the opposite of rigid scientific enquiry. It advocates a ‘holistic’ view of the Earth, rather than the traditionally ‘reductionist’ breaking down of systems to their constituent components. No wonder the Prince of Wales is a fan. Last summer he invited Lovelock to ‘teach the teachers’ at his Education Summer School at Cambridge University. But that doesn’t stop Lovelock voicing his approval of GM food, one of the Prince’s bête noirs. The Greens don’t know quite what to make of him either. In some ways, as the father of Gaia, he is an environmental guru, a folk hero. In others he is the devil. His biggest thought crime, as far as the Green movement is concerned, is his enthusiasm for nuclear energy. He believes it is now our only hope in a  fight against global warming that may already be lost. All other options — biofuels, wind energy, solar heating and so on are a waste of time and money.

‘I’m not a religious person,’ he tells me, ‘but if I were I would say, look, nuclear energy is the energy of the universe. God has given it to us and what do you fools do with it? You use it as weapon. It could have resolved all your problems.’ He believes that when London is flooded around the middle of the next century and 10m people have to be relocated, that generation will be cursing us for burning fossil fuels. ‘They’ll be wondering why we were so stupid not to accept the beneficence of nuclear power.’ The real dangers to humanity and the ecosystems of the earth from nuclear power are almost negligible, he reckons. As for Chernobyl, ‘thirty-odd brave firemen died who needn’t have died but its general effect on the world population is almost negligible. All around Chernobyl, where people are not allowed to go because the ground is too radioactive, the wildlife thrives. It doesn’t care about radiation.’

But what shall we do with nuclear waste? ‘Stick it in some precious wilderness. If you wanted to preserve the biodiversity of a rainforest, bury nuclear waste in it to keep the developers out. The lifespan of the wild things might be shortened a bit, but the animals wouldn’t know, or care. Natural selection would take care of the mutations. Life would go on.’

Blimey. He also believes that if we must have cars, then they should be electric vehicles charged by nuclear power stations. ‘They’d have much less range than the present models and so they’d be much less nuisance.’

Though he is in no doubts that man-made global warming is a reality, possibly an irreversible one, he doesn’t agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consensus that the increase in temperatures will be smooth, slow and continuous. He thinks they will be more like a mountain, a concatenation of slopes, valleys, flat meadows, rock steps and precipices. We are in a brief chasm at the moment, for example, caused by the melting ice caps lowering the temperature of the Atlantic and temporarily stopping the Gulf Stream. ‘The problems is that climatologists base their projections on models, not observations and measurements. Actually the sea level is rising twice as fast as they estimate. This is shocking. Even the economists are doing better than that. And it is mad of politicians to try and make predictions about the climate 60 years from now. The models suggest that if you cut back CO2 by 80%, all will be well. But they cannot possibly know, based on modelling.’

In his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, he writes: ‘We do not seem to have the slightest understanding of the seriousness of our plight. Instead, before our thoughts were diverted by the global financial collapse, we seemed lost in an endless round of celebration and congratulation.’ For all this, his new book is less pessimistic than his last, The Revenge of Gaia, which rather shocked the world with its bleak, nothing-can-be-done, outlook. ‘I’m less pessimistic and more,’ he says. ‘We’re not clever enough to get out of this mess at all. But we are tough animals. We are going to survive because we, our generation, don’t represent the end point. We will go on evolving and hopefully, further down the line, people will evolve who are clever enough to tackle this thing.’

Does he feel frustrated by global warming deniers? ‘I’m not Dr Strangelovelock gloating at what is going to come, but it is going to come, I fear. What is the point of being cheerless though? My message is, if we are all doomed, enjoy it while you can. My memory of the War is that war is more exciting than peacetime. I suppose we are in the Phoney War now and the equivalent of building shelters in the garden for the coming blitz is putting up wind turbines. They won’t do much good. Other that the psychological benefit of feeling you are doing something.’

I can see that windfarms that blot the landscape are a mixed blessing, but what about at sea? ‘I have no objection to them putting them out at sea, if that is what Brown wants to do to create jobs, and keep the Germans happy, and improve his changes of getting a job at the EU when he retires. Good luck to him. But they are utterly pointless as a source of energy and not in the least Green because they all have to be backed up with coal-fired power stations. Blair was disgraceful on nuclear. Major was just as bad because he rescinded Thatcher’s instructions to renew the older nuclear power stations. She was pro nuclear because she was a scientist.’

Like Thatcher, Lovelock was a chemistry graduate. As a young man he was tempted by communism, but he later became a huge fan of the Iron Lady, especially when she embraced his theory about Ozone depletion (she was the one who fought for the global ban on CFCs in aerosols and fridges). ‘Margaret Thatcher and I got on like a house on fire. She really understood CFCs. We were so close, it was quite funny. But whenever I tried to talk about other issues such as the health service which I thought she was damaging she would say, “No, I only want to talk about the environment with you.” She could be very tough minded.’

His clash with Richard Dawkins, the author of the Selfish Gene, was not quite so amicable. Though you could argue that the Gaia Theory brings Darwinism home, replacing the shocking bleakness of its revelation of our animal ancestry with a living, breathing and ultimately consoling sense of our place in nature, Professor Dawkins hated the name. For him it reeked of unscientific New Ageism. He hated the concept too, arguing that, actually, our Goldilocks planet — not too hot, not too cold — manages life, not the other way around. A living Earth, moreover, would never have evolved by natural selection. ‘Well he’s been proved wrong now,’ Lovelock says. ‘He brought up the point that there can be no natural selection of things larger than the phenotype, but the latest theory is that, in the case of social insects, it is the nest that evolves, not the bees. Group selection is coming back.’ He grins again. ‘The neo-Darwinists were far too dogmatic. It was almost like Newton storming out and saying there is no such thing as relativity. That wouldn’t have been a very scientific way to behave. I suppose Dawkins couldn’t help it. He is a dogmatist. He can’t be an agnostic, he has to be an atheist. It’s his nature. But he was useful to me because he made me realise it wasn’t life that did the regulating, it was the whole system.’

In his ninetieth year he does not hold out much hope of being around long enough to see how the Gaia story continues — see if we really are doomed by global warming — but this, he says, does not frustrate him. ‘That would mean worrying about my own end point and I’m not worried about that. If you can stay healthy you can reach 90. So 100 is my next step. A long way away. No need to worry about that.’

He seems to have absolute certainty about Gaia Theory. Never a doubt. ‘Oh no, that’s the worst thing you can have. No scientist should have certainty about anything. I’m confident. There is a difference.’

At first I assume the references to ‘the Leader’ are meant as a joke at Harriet Harman’s expense. Westminster is buzzing with rumours that she is positioning herself for a coup against Gordon Brown and someone from her office has been sending me emails referring to ‘the Leader’ this, and ‘the Leader’ that. But Harman doesn’t do jokes. Her title is Leader of the House of Commons, so that is exactly how her staff refer to her.

She has other titles — Secretary of State for Equalities, Minister for Women, Lord Privy Seal, Deputy Leader (and Party Chair) of the Labour Party, and, since 1982, MP for Camberwell and Peckham, so her unofficial title ought to be Seven Jobs Harman. The gist of the emails, by the way, is that I am to be her shadow, have some access, get to know the real Harriet Harman. The day will begin at a primary school in her constituency, then we will travel together to her weekly surgery and after that there will be an interview in her office at the House of Commons before she returns home for the photographs. Whatever can it all mean?

It’s been a funny old week for her so far. She was standing in for Gordon Brown at Prime Minister’s Questions a couple of days ago. Acquitted herself well. Looked like she was enjoying it. And it emerged that she is the bookies’ favourite as next Labour leader, after the Tories win the election. But her popularity is not universal. Yvette Cooper, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is being touted as a ‘stop-Harman’ candidate. And last night when it was announced at the end of Any Questions that Harman would be on the panel next week, the audience hissed. Hissed! And today, Friday, the Telegraph has ran an op ed piece by Jeff Randall which describes her as ‘monument to absurdity.’ Ouch.

So. It is 8.15am and as I approach the school I see two armed policemen. Yup, I think, the Harperson must be here already.  ‘No, no,’ she says when I bump into her approaching the school on foot from the other side. Those policemen are for The Home Secretary. Jacqui lives on that street.’ And we all now know what goes on behind those closed doors (and curtains) when Jacqui’s away. But the news of her husband’s viewing habits is yet to break. For now, Harman adds: ‘Of course I don’t have police protection.’ A touchy subject this, as we shall see.

Harman has come to meet some of the children availing themselves of what is called the Breakfast Club, a newish initiative. Working mothers can drop their children off at 8am and the children play games, have some breakfast, listen to music. Harman sits down at a tiny chair and asks a seven year old if he knows what an MP is. He does. ‘Well, I’m your MP. I work with the Prime Minster. I’m going to give you this leaflet to give to your mummy.’

She asks a group of three children what their mothers do — a social worker, a nurse and a teacher. It could almost be scripted. One child says he recognises Harman from the telly. Well, she is recognisable: white teeth, sharp nose, big eyes that are greeny blue (not blue as always reported). And she looks younger than her 58 years. Can it really be a quarter of a century ago that Alan Clark was asked who he thought was the more attractive, Edwina Currie or Harriett Harman, and replied: ‘Oh Harriet, of course. It’s simply a matter of class.’? (Her uncle was Lord Longford, you see. Her father was a Harley Street consultant. And she had a private education at St Paul’s Girl’s School.) She is wearing comfortable shoes today, rather than the stilettos she has been favouring lately, and she is carrying a bulging handbag that hangs open to reveal Kleenex, diaries, keys, ID cards, stuff. She goes off to another room to play one of the children at Connect Four. He beats her. Twice.

When she goes to meet the teachers in the staff room, the headmaster holds a door open for her and she doesn’t make a fuss about it (she once savaged a male civil servant for doing this). She has a slightly pigeon toed walk and when she isn’t using her tortoise shell glasses for reading, she rests them on her hair like a headband. After this she heads down to the school gate to greet parents arriving with their children. Quite a few recognise her and some know her and stop for a chat.
Afterwards she gives me a lift in her car, a Rover she shares with her sister. One of the CDs, I notice, is Jonny Cash. ‘Anything dodgy should be blamed on my sister,’ she says.

I imagine she is more an Arctic Monkeys person. ‘Gordon was quoted out of context about that.’

So ends the banter. When, at 9.30, we arrive at Peckham Town Hall, I actually hear her swear, but not convincingly — more like how a headgirl might swear, with an extra ‘bloody’ that spoils the rhythm. She is talking about how she wishes she could hold her surgeries in the open area rather than in a small adjoing room and adds that ‘it bloody pisses me off.’

Her constituency is 23% African diaspora, the highest percentage in the country. There are bout 20 people waiting. They are mostly immigration and housing cases. The first is a Nigerian woman who is facing a deportation order. Harman knows about her case and is prepared to write to the Home Office on her behalf. ‘God bless you,’ the woman says. The next is a man married to a British citizen who is also facing deportation. This time, Harman takes notes and asks him to sign a form giving her permission to check his police record. ‘We won’t help them if they are known to the police,’ she says to me out of the corner of her mouth. ‘That sends out the wrong message.’

As she is leaving, she says a matey ‘See ya!’ to the receptionist and it reminds me of something the political commentator Quentin Lettes wrote about her in 1998. While listening to her in the Commons he realised that she was trying to change her accent. She was dropping her aitches. It was suddenly Arriet Arman.
Back in the car she realises she has forgotten to have any breakfast and I ask how she keeps her energies levels up, what with her seven jobs. ‘I was very knackered when the kids were little,’ she says, ‘so not having young children at home means that things aren’t so demanding. But being the Leader of the House you are always arriving just as the cleaners are leaving. During the week it’s like being a pit pony, not seeing the outside world.’

She goes to the gym at the weekend, she adds, and gets seven hours sleep, rising at 6.30 and going to bed after Newsnight. ‘Oh you haven’t got a pass,’ she says chewing on her lower lip as we reach the Commons. ‘You might be lucky. I’m going to look confident.’ The policeman asks her to pop her bonnet but the lever is jammed. ‘Oh bugger it,’ she says under her breath. He waves her through.

The table in her office came from David Cameron’s office, apparently. There are few cosy touches — Pugin green wallpaper and a sword propped against a wall, something to do with the Commons swimming competition, it just ended up here. There is a bowl of fruit. I push it towards her, reminding her of her missed breakfast. She has a banana.

I couldn’t help noticing she wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest when we went around her constituency this morning. ‘Oh, that.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘The thing was, Charlotte, who you met, always takes photographs. That morning we were going out with the police and they routinely put a jacket on you. I suppose I could have refused to wear it, but if you are offered one you just put it on and then it went on the website and then the press got hold of it. And the next thing I know the Daily Mail are saying I’m afraid to go out in my own constituency. But I do surgeries every week. I’m outside school every week. I would never think of wearing one.’
When William Hague teased her about it at PMQs last year, she gave as good as she got. She said she wasn’t prepared to ‘take fashion advice from the man in the baseball cap’. Not bad, that. Still, this whole business of PMQs… I ask her why she thinks there is so much speculation at the moment that she wants Gordon Brown’s job.

‘Well I don’t think there should be and I’ve never done anything to fuel it. I promised when I was running for the deputy leadership that I would be a loyal and supportive deputy to Gordon Brown.’

That was in 2007, I point out, haven’t circumstances changed since then? Labour now has its lowest poll ratings since the 1980s. ‘No, I don’t think you can stand for election on one thing and then say circumstances have changed. I believe he is the best person we could be having for prime minster. I get the chance to see him very closely, work with him very closely, and the things he has argued for from the beginning of the recession …’ she lists the things Brown has done for the economy and when she finishes I ask if she can imagine any circumstances in which she might like to stand. ‘No, no, absolutely…’

If the job of prime minster became vacant, say? ‘There’s, there’s no, I’m absolutely campaigning for Labour to do well. You know it’s not for me to throw in the towel and start talking about when Cameron wins. I mean, I know Cameron thinks the next election is in the bag for the Tories, but we are determined to make that not the case. So just as I don’t go around speculating about who would be the next MP for Camberwell and Peckham if I was to fall under a bus… I mean it’s not appropriate; I am the MP there. Similarly it is not appropriate for anyone to say who is going to take over from Gordon Brown. Like with the flak jacket it is wending its way, but there is no basis in it, just as there was no basis in the flak jacket.’ I think I know what she means, then again Harman could never be accused of being articulate, with her ums and ars and false starts. ‘So don’t think there’s no smoke without a fire,’ she continues. ‘I used to think there was no smoke without a fire, but now I know differently.’

But Gordon Brown won’t have the job forever. There will come a point where he stands down. ‘But he’s only been doing it for a year and a half. So don’t take any notice of the bookies because they had me coming last in the deputy leadership election, describing me as an outsider and an also ran, so don’t take any notice of the bookies.’
That must have felt good, I say, winning, after all those years in the wilderness. ‘Oh!’ she punches the air. ‘What was so great was some terrible things had been written by… people were saying it was laughable that the Labour party would want to support me to be deputy leader, so to prove mean critics wrong I did have a moment to savour there.’

She joined the Cabinet as Social Security Secretary when Blair formed his first government in 1997, but was sacked just over a year later (her competence was questioned). ‘No one likes to be sacked,’ she says now, ‘but actually it was a good experience to be on the backbenches while we were in government. It gave me time to be on various committees, like the childcare commission.’

Yeah, right. How did her ego recover? ‘I was worried that I would be setting a bad example to my kids. Cocking things up and being a failure and then a very good friend said: “This is your chance to set the very best example to your kids.” If you have a knock back you don’t feel sorry for yourself and blame everyone else, you say, “Right, what do I do now?” You actually press on and that was the best advice. I decided there and then to…‘ she taps the table. ‘Not to become bitter and not become miserable. No one is interested in a moaner.’

Why does she think she is such a divisive figure in the Labour party? She blinks. ‘I, I, don’t think, I wouldn’t say, I think that, um, I don’t know, can I just have a think about what I think the premise to that question is? I don’t, er, I think that I do have some, you know…’ She taps the table again. ‘Trenchant views which… ruffle feathers. And, so for example, being, you know, a feminist in a parliament that was 97% men did not make you mainstream. I was very much on the margins.’
The most divisive thing was her choice of school for her three children. Though it was Labour policy to ban selection in schools she decided to send her eldest son across London to a grant-maintained Roman Catholic school and, a year later, her younger son to a non-Catholic selective grammar school in Kent. Blair stood by her, not least because he had done the same thing. What nobody in the Labour leadership expected was the intensity of the anger from the party’s own MPs. It was hypocritical of her, wasn’t it?

‘I’ve never discussed it and don’t discuss it because it involves the children. It’s no secret. People can make whatever judgement they want. And they do. But. I slightly balk at the idea of being a divisive figure because I want the party to be united. I can’t be that divisive because the majority of the party voted for me.’ She smiles tightly. ‘So I will swerve round that question.’

How would she describe herself? ‘Um, “cheerful” I think and I think I’m quite focused and hard working and I’m quite surprising to myself. I think I would never have thought I would be deputy leader of the party and in the Cabinet. I’m still taken aback when I get up in the morning and I’m a member of the cabinet!’ [One doesn’t imagine she is alone in this.] ‘That’s an amazing… I mean I have to double take and, er, that is an amazing thing. You know, er, some people feel they were born to be in the Cabinet whereas other people feel like imposters and blink.’

So she is a blinking imposter? ‘Yes. Will I be found out?’

What about some of the words other people use to describe her? Prickly, say? ‘Well, perhaps tenacious. Tenacity does annoy people. Irritatingly I’m not prepared to step back and say, “that’s all right.” I do have arguments.’ She nods thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean now by “divisive”.’

Hectoring? ‘I think I am perhaps not sufficiently row averse. But it is usually about trying to make progress. It is not a row for the sake of it. But sometimes you do have to fight your corner. And you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. But as far as, what did you say? Hectoring? I certainly don’t mean to be.’

Abrasive? ‘These are just words for “horrible” aren’t they? I think my agenda is an embattled agenda that wants change. It’s not congenial to keep saying we haven’t done enough on equal pay or maternity leave.’

Does she have a thick skin? ‘I do, I think. Well you have to have a thick skin, because there’s no justice in it. It’s unfair but nothing that can be done. Sometimes people say I wouldn’t do what you do for all the tea in China and they look at me and I can see they are being sympathetic but actually to be able to represent a constituency and to be a part of a government that is struggling with a massive economic challenge trying to do everything you can to protect people in a difficult situation…’

So when she sees unfavourable headlines about herself, the shutters come down? ‘Obviously when you do something stupid like, I shouldn’t have taken that photograph of me in the flak jacket, but at the end of the day no one is perfect.’

Was it stupid to get involved in the Sir Fred Goodwin debate (when she went off message to say the Government would remove his £700,000-a-year pension, senior Labour figures accused her of chasing populist headlines in a bid to become leader). ‘No! I am totally against people vandalising his house. I think that’s terrible. But that bank is only still standing because of public money and he led it to the bring of disaster and I don’t think £700,000 can be called a pension when you are only 50. That’s severance pay. Reward for failure.’

Has she ever felt patronised for being perceived as attractive and glamorous: the big eyes, the stillettoes? ‘Oh, I feel patronised when people continuously say I am stupid because, basically, when I was a young women, there was an ethos that you shouldn’t be too clever because you’ll never get a husband, because no one wants a wife cleverer than him. So you start with don’t be too clever and you go straight over into being too thick. So I’ve either had “you’re too clever” or “you’re too thick” all my life. It’s very annoying to be described as stupid but I think there are a lot of people who get described as stupid and aren’t, and they probably recognise what is happening to me and think “that happens to me, too”. So erm, so I just, you know, so I feel that’s patronising.’

(For the record, she has a degree in politics from York University, trained as a solicitor and became a QC, so she can’t be that stupid.) Meanwhile, her fierce campaigning for women over the years has brought her unwanted attention from pro-father groups. It culminated in June last year, when two protesters from Fathers4Justice climbed on the roof of her home in Herne Hill, south London. She pulls a mock grimace when I remind her that she once joked that if she became PM ‘there aren’t enough airports in the country for all the men who would want to flee’. ‘Never a good idea to make jokes in parliament,’ she says now.
That reputation among men is presumably to do with her 1990 comment that: ‘It cannot be assumed that men are bound to be an asset to family life’. It seems a bonkers thing to have said and, speaking as a father, a rather insulting thing, too. ‘I was probably talking in the context of domestic violence,’ she says. ‘I might well have been saying that there are some family lives where the father’s role might be quite a destructive one. Obviously, I think children do best if they have a close relationship with both parents. Of course they do. It’s been used as gender warfare which it wasn’t meant to be.’

Harman is married to Jack Dromey, Deputy General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. What did he make of that comment? ‘Well, he supports the arguments for equality. There are a lot of women member in his trade union.’

He describes himself jokingly as Jack Harman, nee Dromey. They met on a picket line in 1977 and married in 1982 when she was pregnant and about to become and MP. It is sometimes said that they are the ideal New Labour couple: the one working class (his father was a road digger), the other middle. Harman once said that neither of them are frivolous people. They had always been ‘in the struggle’.

Is hers a right-on household? I mean, her children take her surname not his and I notice she isn’t wearing a wedding ring. ‘Well I think that, urm, weddings are much more fashionable now than they were in my day. Than, er…’ She blinks. Frowns. ‘I don’t know why I don’t wear a wedding ring. Are we a right-on household? Erm, politically correct? I don’t know. How would I know? What would be the measure of this? We’re partners.’
What’s the family conversation like over the breakfast cereals? ‘Well it is pretty much politics. Masses of newspapers. The Today programme is on. I guess, it’s, yeah, political. Very political.’

Who does most of the tidying round the house? ‘Jack does, but that’s not to do with, that’s just because some people like things to be tidier than others. But, you know, I do the gardening. I do the cooking. He does the shopping.’

Her relationship with her father, what was that like? ‘Good.’ Was he a Tory? ‘He was.’ So was her becoming a socialist an act of rebellion against him? ‘Not really because he wasn’t active politically. And my mum was progressive. A liberal. She didn’t work when we were little but qualified as a solicitor when we were in our teens.’
Who is the more posh between her and David Cameron? ‘Weeell… I’m now regarded as being so unbelievable posh that I’m about to ascend to the throne. I’m surprised I don’t have an amazing estate somewhere with a castle on it. I mean, it’s ridiculous. My background is middle class rather than landed gentry.’
But titled. ‘Well you know, but that’s my father’s sister, she married into a titled family, but so what? Alan Duncan, who is my opposite number, is very funny about this. He taunts me.’

Although we have been alone in the room, her press secretary has put a tape recorder on and this has just stopped. ‘Should I get Des to fiddle faddle the wotsit?’ she says. She has a go but gives up and hands it to me. As an interviewer, tape recorders are one of my few areas of expertise, so I am soon able to fiddle faddle her wotsit.
She was seven months pregnant when she first entered parliament; I ask if she felt guilty about being a working mother. ‘There’s a lot of guilt attached to being a mother full stop. I think the midwives thought it was good exercise for me running up and down stairs in block of flats campaigning and handing out leaflets.’
And here she still is, now one of the longest serving women MPs in the House. And she still seems to get a kick out of it. ‘There must be something wrong with me because I enjoy doing PMQs,’ she says, widening her eyes. ‘I realised either you are going to feel miserable and nervous or you can enjoy it so I thought, yeah, why not? Everyone thinks I’m going to be a big flop so there are no expectations to defeat. And it’s just a bunch of MPs. The House of Commons is not Helmand Province. It is demanding but ridiculous. Banked up on both sides. Gladiatorial.’
With William Hague as Maximus? ‘He’s very good at it, very clever at it. He’s very funny but I have to keep reminded myself not to laugh at his jokes because I’m supposed to be the victim of them.’

After Labour’s defeat in the Glasgow East by-election last year, Harman was reportedly overheard saying: ‘This is my moment.’ She denies it but it stuck and Mr Hague teased her about it the other day at PMQs: ‘Why don’t you step in? When Chamberlain lost his party’s confidence, Churchill stepped forward. When Eden crossed the Atlantic exhausted, Supermac came forward. This could be your moment.’
I have to say, if her intension in agreeing to this interview was to show her more human side, get away from her reputation for being a humourless automaton, it has sort of worked. She has pulled faces, rolled her eyes, laughed engagingly. A friskier more playful side has emerged — less the earnest, head down, brittle Harperson of folklore. And while she is still not exactly a ‘character’ in the way that Ann Widdecombe is, or Mo Mowlam was, no one can deny she has staying power. She has been a Bennite, a Kinnockite, a Smithite, a Blairite and now she is protesting too much that she is a Brownite. When I ask her where she stands, she adopts a northern accent and says with a laugh: ‘I’m LA-BOUR!’

Perhaps she does do jokes, after all. As we are walking back down to her car I ask what Gordon Brown is like behind closed doors. She gives a long-winded answer that is supportive, but the phrase that sticks in my mind is: ‘Well, I wouldn’t say he’s happy go lucky.’ Again, quite funny.
In the car once more, staring at her Jonny Cash CD, I ask her if she had a nickname at school. ‘No. Did you?’ What do her friends call her, then? ‘Some of them call me Hattie.’ She frowns for a moment as she considers this then concludes: ‘I suppose because Hattie Jacques was a Harriet.’

A former contender to the Tory crown – and eventually beaten by Iain Duncan Smith… – Michael Portillo has now turned his attention to fist-fighting

With his arms not so much folded as wrapped around himself, Michael Portillo looks as if he is being restrained by an invisible straitjacket. This turns out to be more about physical discomfort than defensiveness; a “dickie tummy”, as he calls it.

He has just returned from a research trip to Basra where he ate something he shouldn’t – and he is looking gaunt anyway, thanks to the diet he is on (“being fat” is what he dislikes most about his appearance). The man with the great political future behind him, as he likes to joke, dresses well, but his hunched posture spoils the lines of his finely tailored suit.

He was feeling similarly ill when he filmed an extraordinary scene in his latest documentary, Horizon: How Violent Are You? To find out if we all have an innate propensity for violence, he travelled to the Bolivian Andes to take part in the Tinku, a strange annual fighting ritual among villagers. Dressed in tribal costume and with coloured straps around his knuckles, he has a fist fight with a shortish man who looks old enough to be his father.

Portillo doesn’t appear to relish the confrontation – indeed, he looks rather appalled at the indignity of it – but he nevertheless gets stuck in and lands a couple of tasty punches. “I must say I wasn’t in the mood because I had altitude sickness. It was a revealing exercise, though, because I had never had a fist fight in my life and assumed I would not enjoy the experience.”

And he has a taste for it now? “I did get some satisfaction from knocking the man to the ground. I have always been a passive person, but it taught me something about myself – that I can be physically aggressive. I can be fairly aggressive speaking to people, but that is different.

“I’m not saying I now enjoy violence,” he continues. “For 55 years I haven’t, so that wasn’t going to change in five minutes of beating up some poor Bolivian fellow at 9,000 feet.”

The conclusion Portillo draws is that we all have a capacity to enjoy violence. “It’s to do with the release of dopamine – the same powerful chemical reaction that makes us enjoy sex. I spoke to a football hooligan who really got off on violence and had been addicted to it for that reason. He couldn’t wait for the next Saturday.”

While Portillo admits that he sometimes pouts, slams doors and thumps computers, the equivalent adrenalin rush for him is more likely to come from public speaking.

“People don’t understand it, but the most intense occasions in the House of Commons were the ones I enjoyed most. When events could go either way and you could find yourself out of a job by the end of the day; those were the times when you were most on a high. Tony Blair used to get a real buzz from emerging from difficulty unscathed.”

Portillo would be inhuman, I suggest, if he didn’t now look at David Cameron, the Tory prime minister-in-waiting, and think: that could have been me. “Yes, but I’m relaxed about that,” he says. “I know him very well and always thought him impressive. I’m pretty sure that when I first met him in 1991 I thought that Cameron might one day be leader of the Conservative Party.”

After Portillo? “I wasn’t as intent on being leader as people thought, actually. I felt other people were more intent on my behalf. When I stood for leader in 2001, I was feeling pretty disillusioned. I was flattered into it by colleagues.”

In the end he lost… to Iain Duncan Smith! Was that a humiliation too far? “I don’t think I’ve got a thick skin, but I’ve not felt particularly humiliated by the things which people think I would have felt humiliated by, such as losing my seat in 1997 and not being elected leader in 2001. In the second case, I felt relieved.”

It got personal. Chief among his detractors was Norman Tebbit, who told me around that time that Portillo made his “toes curl”. How rude was that? “Tebbit was rude, it’s true. He said the Tories should vote for a family man, and when I dropped out of the contest it had just been announced that Gordon Brown’s wife was expecting a baby; sadly, the one they lost. Gordon was Chancellor then and I was his shadow, so in my last appearance at the Dispatch Box I said: ‘Congratulations on your wife’s impending baby. I know Lord Tebbit will be thrilled.’ ”

Portillo and Carolyn, his wife of 26 years, do not have children. She is a headhunter for an international firm, a job that involves a fair amount of travelling. “When I was Minister of Defence she used to accompany me on foreign trips. I suppose that would be thought disgraceful now. Now, it is more often the case that I will go along as a spouse when she is the one on business trips. She didn’t come to Basra, because that was all flak jackets and helmets.”

Back home, umbrellas might seem more appropriate, for their marriage does seem to have weathered some storms. Four years ago, a client of Max Clifford’s claimed she had had an affair with Portillo and, though he declined to comment, Portillo did give an intriguing answer to a newspaper. Q: “To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?” A: “She knows who she is and why.” Q: “Which living person do you most despise, and why?” A: “She knows who she is

and why.”

And, in 1999, Portillo admitted in an interview that he had had homosexual experiences as a student. There was a certain awkwardness to his public persona before then; was that because he knew this subject would one day have to be confronted? “Well, yes. I chose the timing of it because I was fed up with the innuendo. Outrageous things were being said and printed, so I thought, when I get the opportunity I will put that record straight.” He laughs darkly. “This was not a brilliant decision.”

Because he didn’t need to? “Exactly.”

Just as Cameron decided he did not need to answer the question about whether he took cocaine as a student? “Well, there you go. Perhaps I helped show Cameron how to play these things.”

He does still miss politics. “To be in the media is to be in the wings. Being in politics is being on the stage. It is so exciting. If we’d had a happier time in that shadow Cabinet, I might have stayed. But I felt I had come back into a very poisonous atmosphere. William Hague’s staff had identified me as the enemy and made life very difficult for me from the beginning. It was tiresome.”

But surely he was always plotting against Hague? “No, I think that rumour was unjustified, though in the end things did get tit for tat. I still think William wanted to do to the party what Cameron has since done, but he lost his nerve.”

Portillo’s body language when he announced he was standing down suggested ennui. “Ennui is quite a good word for what I felt. I had grown tired of collective responsibility, not being able to speak my mind. Tired and bored. I also found it stressful and the occasional highs were no longer compensating for that stress. You need staying power and evidently I didn’t have it.”

And there was also, perhaps, a little self-loathing. The trait he most deplores in himself is, after all, self-satisfaction. And his greatest regret is his “who dares wins” speech to conference – he shivers with embarrassment whenever he recalls it. He has also talked about a certain stiffness in the way he holds himself and walks. “But I think I was worse when I was a politician. Whenever I was being Paxo‑ed, I always looked tense, sitting back in my chair.”

He adds that when he left politics and reinvented himself as a documentary-maker, he had to change his relationship with the lens. “The camera had become a thing to be feared. I always admired the ability of Blair and Cameron to look relaxed on camera when under pressure. I only found that level of comfort in front of the lens once I had left politics.”

Well, up to a point. In another experiment for his new documentary, Portillo is deprived of sleep for two days – kept awake by recordings of a crying baby and then forced to work a stressful shift in a busy kitchen to see if he will lose his temper. “Sleep deprivation over quite a short period of time can make you paranoid,” he says. “If it had gone on longer, it would have driven me to violence, I think. I was becoming very edgy and paranoid about the whole experiment and quite aggressive to the people, the programme-makers, who I saw as my tormentors. I felt persecuted.”

On the subject of paranoia, I wonder how he felt about having Max Clifford breathing down his neck all those years. It wasn’t paranoia, of course; the Tory-hating publicist really was out to get him. Was he aware of that at the time? “Not particularly.” He gives a rubbery smile that makes his eyes disappear; it doesn’t reassure so much as chill.

When I tell him about the time the publicist boasted to me about a “Portillo story” he would make public if Portillo became leader, he wraps his arms around himself again and says: “People like him like to say things like that.”

To big themselves up? A shrug. “I guess.”

When Julie Burchill opens the door to her studio flat, a short distance from the sea front in Hove, she is wearing sunglasses, a black top, a black skirt, black tights… and a white and blue foot brace. ‘This? David Beckham had one of these for his metatarsal injury. Mine is for something less glamorous called Charcot’s syndrome. I’ve had it on since Christmas and it comes off in May. I did apply for disability benefit but they said it wasn’t allowed. I wasn’t disabled enough. They must be frigging joking! But I can live with it. I suppose I never was the most active person in the world and I didn’t really need an excuse to sit on my sofa watching Frasier all afternoon. Nice to see you again, by the way.’

This is how she talks, in a rhetorical, breathless, stream-of-consciousness that is so rapid she sometimes runs herwordstogether. In interviews it is traditional to mention that she also has a West Country burr as well as a high, girly register, and that these come as a surprise, what with her writerly voice being so metropolitan and muscular. But, as she says, we’ve met before so I’m used to both. ‘It has meant I’ve had to stop going to the gym,’ she continues, ‘which I can live with. Then the gym burned down, which I took as a sign from the Lord. I have a step machine now. It’s over there.’

And so it is, near a china leopard with a pink feather boa around its neck. On the windowsill there is a Venetian mask and a sculpture of a horse head. On the walls there are a couple of oil paintings. The most expensive cost  £15,000 (she is never reluctant to talk about money, Julie Burchill. It’s a working class thing, she reckons). And dominating the room is a large Bang and Olufsen television. It’s not on Frasier at the moment but Jerry Springer. ‘I love him. I shouldn’t watch daytime television but I do. That cost £7,000. It tilts back. Look.’ She points a remote. The screen tilts.

She makes me a coffee, which is the closest she ever gets to cooking, and hands it to me in a mug with the words ‘Queen of Fucking Everything’ written across it. Since we last met she sold her house for one and a half million. ‘Gave about a quarter of it away, because I’m a Christian. There was one guy…’ She takes a cutting off the fridge about a man reunited with his dog from Iran. ‘He needed £4,000 so I gave him it. I’ve never had such a rush. It was great. Better than drugs. When you give more than you think you should… ‘ She sucks in air between gappy teeth… ‘It’s gorgeous. I was like a sailor on shore leave chucking it everywhere. My accountant told me I was going nuts and I wouldn’t have anything left.’ She holds up her wrist. ‘I’ve got a Rolex. My third one. It’s so flash of me. So working class. Every time I go up one I give my old one to a friend and tell them to sell it. Sarkozy said if you don’t own a Rolex by the age of 50 you are a failure. Actually, anyone who hasn’t given away two by the age of 50 is a failure. Can I buy you lunch? Trouble is, I don’t trust myself not to drink and I’ve got to present a prize to probation officers this afternoon. I can’t turn up drunk because I’ll only ask for drugs or something embarrassing. I’ve never presented a prize before. Got a little speech prepared. Do you want to hear how it starts? “Great to be here today. I’m assuming Zoe Ball and Norman Cook turned you down. I assume Nick Berry and that bloke who paints himself like a zebra and runs along the seafront have turned you down, too. I have no delusions about my place in the Brighton celebrity food chain.’

Surprisingly, given that she started her career as a music journalist and once said she had taken enough cocaine ‘to stun the entire Columbian armed forces’, she and Norman Cook, better known as Fat Boy Slim, don’t hang out together in Brighton. ‘No, but apparently he said his dream woman would have my mind and Kylie Minogue’s body, which was a trifle rude. But I can live with it.’

She does a coy gesture of closing her hands together on her knee and drawing her shoulders in. Under her dark glasses she might even be fluttering her eyelashes. I ask why she’s wearing them indoors. ‘They are prescription. Here, try them on.’ Wow. The room goes blurred. Powerful lenses. ‘I know, the only reason I married so many times was that I’m short sighted, everyone looked so good.’

One of her two sons from one of her three marriages is in a band and is practising his bass guitar in another room. When the music stops, a young man with dreadlocks and a ring through his lower lip wanders in. ‘Hi, man,’ he says. This is Jack, from her second marriage to the journalist Cosmo Landesman (who won the custody battle to raise him when he was young). Her first son was with her ‘starter husband’ Tony Parsons. She walked out on that one when he was three. Never even sent him birthday cards. Hasn’t seen him for years.

‘The trouble was, I realised that if I didn’t get married at an early age I would become a complete slapper. So I married the first person I slept with. God that was a mistake. Awful, awful man.’

Doesn’t she protest too much about Parsons. I mean, she did marry him. She must have loved him. ‘I liked him a great deal. I…’ For the first time she is lost for words. ‘Course I did, yeah, I wouldn’t marry someone I didn’t love, but it was the wrong sort of love. I loved him like a brother. He was like a brother who buys you flick knives. Second and third one I married for love. They’ve all been very good looking in their youth but poor old Tony looks like a sick old recess monkey now.’

Burchill had met Parsons on the New Musical Express when she was 17. That was in 1976, in time to cover the emerging punk movement. Ten years later, after writing a bestselling novel, Ambition, she took a job as a political columnist on the Sunday Times, delighting in praising Margaret Thatcher when it became unfashionable to do so. More recently she took a job at the Times — telling everyone she was on a footballer’s contract of £300,000 a year — but was ‘let go’ after two years. She announced to the world that she had ‘lost her mojo’ and was retiring to study a theology degree. For two years, as she puts it, she couldn’t get arrested. ‘Luckily my self esteem is so high I thought if I sit by a pool drinking cocktails they will start ringing again and so they did.’

Now, two years on, she is back writing the odd book, and weekly columns for the Sun. ‘I’ll work for anyone, apart from the Guardian. The other day they rang up and said: “Will you write an obituary of Jade Goody?” Icky. Women ain’t even dead yet. So I said, “I don’t want to soil the pages of the Guardian with my filth. I’m happy with my own kind on the Sun.”’

She could identify with Goody, a working class girl made (sort of) good. ‘I thought Jade was a big-hearted girl who made the best of her difficult life and was the victim of white, liberal, middle-class prejudice. She was in my programme on chavs. I though she got a raw deal over the Shilpa Shetty thing. That was a class war.’

Her parents were ‘Bill and Bette Burchill of Bristol’. Her mother was a feisty woman who had a job in a cardboard box factory and was forever jumping over backyard gardens to throttle her ex-best friends. Her father was more gentle, a communist trade union activist who worked for a distillery. ‘I wish you could have met my daddy, he was such a nice man.’ While she admits that her stubborn affection for communism may partly be emotional, she’s not exactly a Cameroon these days. ‘I don’t want a country run by old Etonians again. They had their chance. Inbred idiots. I don’t like posh people. They are not quite human.’

I see time has mellowed her. ‘I’ll tell you one thing my Christianity hasn’t helped me with. I’ve got bitchier. I sort of feel when I do voluntary week that it gives me a license to be bitchy about other people. A trade off. One of the main pleasures in life is being spiteful. I’m going to be 50 in July. Too old to change.’

I ask whether, because her journalism is so tied up with her personality, she takes criticism of her writing personally. ‘No, I was born without the vulnerability gene. When my parents died that was when I realised it, because it didn’t affect me much, even though I loved them. I’m not a soft person. Though I can be kind, even if I do have to work at it and overcome my natural cruelty. Seeking approval has always seemed like a wet thing to do. I’ve always thought it was attractive to be disliked and I’ve done quite well in that department. I shouldn’t say this, because it sounds kinky, but when I do get letters threatening me and calling me terrible names, it gives me a mild sexual frisson… I’ve done some cruel things and some terrible things — I’ve abandoned children — but I’ve never minded about what people called me because of it. Just couldn’t care less.’

Well, up to a point. It is said that no man is an island, but listening to Julie Burchill you do have to wonder. In some ways she is the least insecure person I have met, and yet she does seem to need reassurance that she is being amusing and/or bitchy. And I know she does care what people think about her because a few days later she emails me checking what she has said and sounding a little worried. She enjoyed out chat so much, she says, got so excited by it, that she got a little carried away and might have exaggerated one or two things. She is slightly more reticent about the subject of drugs these days, for example — on the record at least, because of the voluntary work she does.

These emails are to come, for now she is making me laugh by saying that ‘I think there was a biological imperative for to get me away from Bristol so that I didn’t inbreed.’ She is funny like that. Has a way with words. The humour is partly self-deprecating, partly self-approving. She finds herself funny. ‘I sometimes look at myself and have to laugh.’

In her new book, Not in My Name, a Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, she writes amusingly about how she is a very off message type of fat girl: one who gladly – gluttonously – admits that at one point she ‘reached the mighty dress size of 22 solely through lack of discipline and love of pleasure’. And who, it must be said, tends to despise people – except those with actual medical conditions – who pretend that is often otherwise. She’s is now a 16. Other targets are anti-war protestors, Muslims, cyclists, feminists and gay friendly homophobes. One line that really made me laugh was: ‘At the end of the day, it’s hard to control what turns you on and so long as it doesn’t say ‘quack’ or ‘I’m five’, it’s a free world.’

Last time I saw her she told me that living with someone was the death of love. Soon afterwards she got married, to Daniel, the brother of Charlotte, with whom she had had a six-month lesbian affair. Er, what happened? ‘Yeah but I don’t live with Dan. He lives in his own place across the square. We got walkie-talkies. If my health really went I’d want him here looking after me. But I don’t think that will happen, if anything, he is unhealthier than me, even though he is younger. I think I ruined his health.’

In what way? ‘I run him ragged. He’s a proofreader now but when he had an office job he would go in looking rough and his colleagues would say he’s being Julied. A new verb. He was frailer than me to start with, but he’ll be alright. Maybe we’ve had a bit too much fun. Getting riotously drunk all the time. We drink an enormous amount. Trouble is, we like having friends round and I don’t want to go off my friends any more than I already have so I don’t want to see them sober. I’ve got lots of single friends, bless em, and they can be quite needy. They ask me clubbing but I don’t want to be the fat old bird at the disco so they tend to come here. Besides I can’t get out much because of this.’

She holds up her brace again and tells me she only realised how much her foot had deteriorated when she was taking two blind pensioners for a walk — her voluntary work — and one of them asked if she was leading them, or they were leading her. ‘The doctor had told me it was gout but that was a misdiagnosis so I was then told there was a 25% chance I would lose my foot. You don’t ever envisage yourself as an amputee. I was well scared. When I thought I was going to be an amputee I went on the net and typed in ‘hot amputees’ and there are loads of people out there who fancy them, so that wasn’t so bad.’

Armando Iannucci – co-creator of The Day Today, Alan Partridge, The Thick of It, and now In The Loop – is an erudite classical music aficionado who raised the bar for swearing on the BBC. Yet no one (except Alastair Campbell) has a bad word to say about him

It is five minutes past nine in the morning, though you wouldn’t know it from the clocks in the Iannucci household. The one in the kitchen is ten minutes fast, in order to fool the children into not being late for school. The one in the study is an hour slow, or rather it has stopped, the time frozen until someone changes the battery. It seems an uncharacteristically nonchalant oversight.

Armando Iannucci – a busy, busy man – lives in a small village in Buckinghamshire with his wife, three children and two dogs. He has an office at the BBC – where he is a prolific producer of comedies – but it is here that he does his writing. The study is a wooden shed and, to reach it, you pass a trampoline in the garden. He overheard his middle child swear while playing on it a few months ago with a couple of friends – ‘This is f—ing great!’ Iannucci had to poke his head around the shed door and give it a stern shake, followed by a frown.

This may sound hypocritical given that, as the writer and director of the political satire The Thick of It, Iannucci is directly responsible for 93 per cent of the entire BBC output of the ‘f-word’. But he insists that the swearing in that comedy is not gratuitous. He wanted it to have a ‘realistic, documentary feel’ and all his research, talking to new Labour insiders, reading published diaries, revealed that this is how people in politics talk these days. ‘Besides, it’s not like anything else I write has swearing. There’s none in I’m Alan Partridge.’

And besides (again), the swearing in The Thick of It is funny, especially when Malcolm Tucker, the very angry and very Scottish spin-doctor based on Alastair Campbell and played by Peter Capaldi, does it. His most memorable line is: ‘Come the f— in or f— the f— off.’

Nevertheless, Iannucci found the experience of watching The Thick of It with his son Emilio, then 13, a little strange. ‘He laughed and then stopped because he thought he might be laughing at something I would disapprove of. It was slightly uncomfortable and confusing for both of us. He kept looking across at me to see whether I disapproved, sort of forgetting I had written it.

And I was feeling embarrassed about the language. We’d flipped roles.’

Alongside Peter Cook and John Cleese, Iannucci has been one of the most influential and innovative figures in British television comedy, first making his mark in 1991 when he assembled the team – including Steve Coogan, Chris Morris and Rebecca Front – that made the news spoof On The Hour on Radio 4. When it was transferred to television as The Day Today it became an electrifying and withering parody of television news. (‘Those were the headlines. Happy now?’)

It was also surreal. Chris Morris, who seemed more like Jeremy Paxman than Jeremy Paxman, would speak in headlines: ‘On The Hour and I am Christopher Morris – for it is I. Tonight’s sizey stories: Nineteen in fogbound bakery collision; Dinosaurs died out on a Tuesday claim experts; And where now for 107 of Ridley’s children?’

Iannucci, this giant of comedy, is not a tall man. At 44 he is wiry, balding and in possession of a fine set of dark and animated eyebrows. In repose he has an earnest expression which every so often, when you least expect it, is transformed by a toothy smile. He once described himself as a ‘big-nosed Jock wop’ – his father having been an Italian immigrant who came to live in Glasgow where he set up a pizza company. Though he is easy company and unspools articulate sentences in a mild and measured Glaswegian caw, Iannucci does have a tendency to say ‘yeahyeahyeah’ impatiently, when acknowledging a point.

His study-cum-shed reflects his three passions beyond comedy – classical music, the romantic poets and politics. The CD boxes on the shelves behind his desk all have the names of composers on their spines. (Somehow he has found the time to co-compose an operetta, which was recently performed by Opera North.)

The books on other shelves include some on Milton, who lived in a cottage 100 yards from here. (Iannucci is working on a documentary for BBC Two about Paradise Lost, which was also the subject of a PhD he began at Oxford but did not finish.) There is also a doll of George W. Bush on the shelves, one that spouts Bushisms when its string is pulled. Iannucci was given it by his wife [a former NHS therapist whom he met at university] while he was researching In the Loop, a film version of The Thick of It, partly set in Washington.

Simon Foster, a mild-mannered British minister played by Tom Hollander, inadvertently backs a war on prime-time television, bringing down on his head the wrath of Malcolm Tucker. Like all Iannucci’s Labour politicians, Foster is self-pitying, dissembling and vacillating, but not unsympathetic. In Washington, where a US General (James Gandolfini from The Sopranos) is trying to prevent the war, he rapidly finds himself out of his depth.

A crucial vote is pending at the UN Security Council. A dodgy dossier appears. Everyone stabs everyone else in the back…

When I ask if Iannucci’s observations about office politics are based on his experiences of working for the BBC, he shakes his head. ‘Actually they are based on my experience of the studio system in LA. You go there with high expectation and you think everyone sounds impressive but you soon realise that they don’t really know what they are doing either, you’re all bluffing but being paid vast sums to bluff.’

The film had its premiere earlier this year at the Sundance Festival and, such was the critical acclaim with which it was greeted, it was soon signed up for US-wide distribution, thus exposing Iannucci to the full glare of Hollywood ingratiation. But all that means in practice, he reckons, is that you get a lot of fruit baskets delivered to your hotel room.

Another thing he based his observations on is the way people in television are impressed by those who can make decisions quickly. ‘Unimportant decisions like which of five suitcases to use as a prop, and I think a lot of that must go on higher up. The busier you are the less time you have to make decisions. A minister will get a five-minute brief in the back of a car and then he will have to come up with a policy.’

The big question is whether The Thick of It, which began as six half-hour episodes and two specials from 2005 to 2007, will translate into a full hour-and-a-half feature film. In my opinion it does, hilariously. The cameras still skitter restlessly from character to character. And visually, it still has a news-as-it-is-happening feel, where actors are often only half in the frame or partly obscured while reciting a line of dialogue. But it has more variety of pace than the television version – more non-verbal cues, little looks, sighs – and that is as it should be.

But Alastair Campbell, who has also seen a preview, has dismissed the film as ‘unrealistic and unfunny’. He was, he said, ‘too bored to be offended,’ adding that he despairs of Iannucci’s cynicism, and wonders whether the satirist really thinks all politics is basically crass, all politicians venal. Campbell twists the knife by suggesting that Iannucci ‘like Rory Bremner’, is becoming less funny the more serious his subject matter gets.

Ouch. But he would say that, wouldn’t he. And anyway, Iannucci doesn’t think he is being cynical. ‘We try to show the politicians not as evil, but as morally tortured and compromised. I find that more interesting than goodies and baddies. The audience wonders whether they would do the same. I suppose delusion is better than cynicism.

‘Clare Short really believed she was doing the right thing in the run up to the Iraq war and managed to convince herself that it was better not to resign. There is a scene in the film in which the minister does something similar, trying to convince himself that war can sometimes be a good thing. What about the Crimean War? We got nurses out of the Crimean War.’

And, to be fair, Iannucci always does his homework. He established via research trips to the Pentagon and the CIA’s HQ in Virginia, for example, that a lot of Washington is run by ‘very intelligent but fairly un-streetwise 23-year-olds with degrees in Terrorism Strategy Studies’.

Though he is fascinated by politics, he doesn’t think he is a political animal as such. ‘I hate the idea of labels and saying you are member of one party or another and signing up to all sorts of policies that you don’t have a view on or don’t believe in. Because I’m not a politician I don’t have to be consistent in what I say and how I behave.’

The media, I point out, is always accused of undermining the political process, but surely comedies such as his are much worse offenders, undermining and ridiculing in a much more ruthless and efficient way. ‘Yeahyeahyeah, I know.

I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Hazel Blears said a few months ago that The Thick of It put people off politics and why can’t we make the West Wing? Show our British politicians being noble? But I think people would laugh at that for the wrong reason, because they wouldn’t believe it. It’s to do with our natural default position of disbelief and cynicism.’

Though The Thick of It was a critical hit, plans for a second series were derailed when the deadpan actor at its centre, Chris Langham, was arrested and charged with possession of indecent photographs of children. ‘My instant reaction was to think about Chris and how I could be supportive,’ Iannucci says now. ‘Not, oh, what will this mean for the project? It was more puzzlement than frustration. I didn’t want to do any more of the series until we knew the outcome of his trial.

‘We were able to do a couple of one-off specials which didn’t write Chris’s character out of the script but said he was in Australia.’ The two met up just before Christmas and would like to work together again, but not on The Thick of It. The BBC won’t even show repeats of the first series. Both accept that Langham’s rehabilitation will be a long, slow process.

When I ring round a few of Iannucci’s friends and colleagues, several mention his loyalty. Rebecca Front, who has known him since Oxford, says she has never seen him lose his temper. ‘If he ever gets frustrated he hides it – he doesn’t like conflict. He’s easy going but he will let you know when he doesn’t like something you’ve written, and he’ll do it in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling offended, which is a great skill. There is an “Armando Way”, an “Armando House Style”, and he tends to work with people he feels can deliver it. He tends to lose interest rather than lose his temper.

‘We had him and his family around for lunch the other day with some other friends of ours and they remarked afterwards about how low key he was. I think they had expected this full-on King of Satire to walk in.’

The playwright Patrick Marber was also one of the Day Today team. ‘I feel I owe my whole career to him because he saw things in me which I couldn’t see in myself,’ he says. ‘I think he’s like a good football manager, a Cloughie figure. Not a great praiser but he wouldn’t diminish you either.’

Iannucci is a fastidious man who worries about his diet: he won’t eat carbs at lunch, as he is convinced that they sap his energy levels. He admits to a certain physical awkwardness, saying that he finds kicking a ball and trying to look cool impossible, but reckons that he has become much more comfortable in his skin since turning 40 – he had always felt that was his natural age.

‘Armando always looked and behaved as if he couldn’t wait to turn 40,’ confirms Chris Morris, who then does an uncanny impression of his friend for me. Back in 1990, he says, Iannucci approached him and the two drove round and round in a car talking through their ideas for a new and experimental type of comedy.

‘What we both liked was the idea of delivering absurdity in an authoritative voice. Making the ridiculous appear sensible. Sometimes Armando would be downcast when he felt things on The Day Today were too floppily formed and needed tightening, but he was always able to make subtle-minded decisions that were, in the best sense of the word, cool.’

Iannucci doesn’t know whether this is a product of being not quite Italian and not quite Scottish, but he has always felt slightly detached from whatever community he is in. ‘Without being weird,’ he adds, ‘I don’t want you to think I’m a sick loner.’ Though he was a studious child who immersed himself in the world of books and classical music, he got the comedy bug at an early age. ‘I started quite young at school,’ he says, ‘compeering a charity event at an old people’s home. I would do stand up and impressions and enjoyed the laughter. It’s very addictive. It’s a lovely sensation to say something and hear a whole room laugh.’

Though he likes to leave comic acting to ‘proper comic actors’, he does perform himself from time to time, fronting some of the shows with which his name is associated, such as The Friday Night Armistice, or The Charm Offensive on Radio 4. ‘I was aware when we were doing The Day Today that if it was successful the public would home in on the cast rather than the creators,’ he says now, ‘and I did agonise a little with Chris over whether I should be in it. But then I realised I simply wouldn’t have been good enough compared to him or Rebecca or Steve.’

He knew he had found a gem in Alan Partridge on the first day working on The Day Today. ‘As soon as Steve did that voice we knew this Partridge would fly. It was very much Alan in the room, not Steve. Steve doesn’t write at a laptop, he paces up and down. So it was me and Peter Baynham taking turns on the computer, writing ideas down while Steve stayed in character. The trouble was he would keep it up all day. He would be Alan all day.’

That must have been a laugh, I say. ‘You’d think so but after eight months of it I just wanted to kill him. I remember thinking “I’ve been in a room with f—ing Alan Partridge for eight months. Won’t someone just shoot him.”’

When he and Baynham (who co-wrote Borat) get together with Coogan they often find themselves wondering what Partridge would be up to now. ‘I think Alan is desperate to get on one of these has-been celebrity reality shows,’ Iannucci says. ‘I think he’s feeling bitter about being so low status he hasn’t been asked on one. I think he is cornering the producers to get on living TV or Bravo.’ He claps his hands. ‘Ghost Hunt! That’s what Alan would like to be in at the moment.’

Steve Coogan has a reputation as a party animal – the drink, the drugs, the womanising – whereas Iannucci is, by his own admission, more a cardigan and comfortable shoes type. ‘I would never give Steve advice about his lifestyle. It is so alien to me. He knows that and I know that there is nothing in my life I could compare his situation to. We have a great relationship that tends to be very much about work. But I think recently his experiences have… well, he has turned a corner, as he puts it. Put it like this, I don’t counsel him, nor do I think he would accept counselling.’

When I ring Coogan, who is on tour in Australia at the moment, he describes Iannucci as a private person, not overly demonstrative or theatrical. ‘He’s not given to grand gesticulations and is economical with his emotions,’ he says. ‘But I think what we have in common is that we both like to expose the underbelly of things and prick pomposity.

Coogan says he always felt protected by Iannucci, who acted as a ‘buffer’ between him and the bureaucrats at the BBC. ‘He is the senior party, he’s like the sensible older brother,’ says Coogan. ‘Our relationship has never been about who is the funniest. I was more instinctive, he was more intellectual. My creativity was directionless so he could always rein me in and give me a focus.’

Coogan says the Day Today team knew right from the moment Iannucci gathered them all together in a studio that what they were doing was cutting edge and uncompromising. ‘He sort of unleashed us. In a way it was anti-comedy, not chasing the laughs, not doing comedy to win the approval of the audience. There was an attractive coldness to it. I think Armando’s taste has evolved since then. There is a painful vulnerability to his characters that wasn’t there before.’

Though his work can be politically attuned and socially topical, it can be whimsical and absurd, too. In his brilliant 2006 television series Time Trumpet, a nostalgic ‘list show’ set 30 years in the future, Charlotte Church vomits herself inside out while exploring the outer limits of binge-drinking, Tony Blair pays television cameramen to expose themselves while filming Gordon Brown, thus causing him to lose the thread of his argument, and Tesco mounts an invasion of Denmark.

Comedian David Baddiel first met Iannucci on The Mary Whitehouse Experience in 1989. ‘Armando has never given up on the idea that comedy, as well as being silly and making you laugh, should also be an intellectual pursuit at some level,’ he says. ‘His linguistic humour was apparent, he was always coming up with new words that seemed somehow right, like “mentalist”. I love the way he uses the

f-word in The Thick of It. There is a real poetry to it. You know like, “what’s the story in Bala-f—ing-mory?” The “f—ing” is so well placed there, giving an almost Rabelaisian lyricism to the obscenity.’

Though Iannucci is associated with what is known as ‘the comedy of embarrassment’, there also seems to be an anger behind his comedy. I ask him if he worries that as he gets older and more comfortable he will lose his edge? ‘Not really. I have never felt as angry about anything in my life as I felt about the invasion of Iraq. I went on the march and took the train from Gerard’s Cross, which is in the stockbroker belt, and to my surprise it was packed with protesters with lunch boxes and sturdy walking boots, and polite notices like “Really, Mr Blair, think again”.’

He was 17 when his father died, did that leave him angry, thinking ‘why me?’ ‘Yes, but it’s more I…’ He hesitates. ‘He died the summer before I went to Oxford and he was so pleased… He had this van he drove around in and he said he was going to drive down to Oxford and see me… So the immediate thing was sorrow that he never got to see that moment happen. He hadn’t been to university himself. He had been 16 in the war and joined the partisans and left afterwards to come here. Just got on a boat.’

There was no swearing at home when Iannucci was growing up in Glasgow. ‘Well, there was some swearing, from my dad. But it was in Italian. Because he was always working hard, it tended to be more my mum that I saw and it’s nice that she was able to come to the premiere of In the Loop in Glasgow, with two of my aunts. She was used to the swearing, having seen The Thick of It, but still, we have this photo of three little old ladies in the front row watching a 40ft Malcolm swearing his head off and…’ he gives an embarrassed shrug and his unexpected, toothy smile.