When you're being earnest, people think you're being sarcastic and when you're being sarcastic, they think you're being earnest. The moral in all this, of course, is that people should never attempt to communicate.

I'm trying to think overall. Some of our stories [Black Mirror], I think you're right in that they don't tend to have a message.

[Worshipping God] is like fellating someone who intermittently stubs fags out on your head for no good reason. And we all know how unsatisfying that can be.

At the other end of the spectrum, George Gideon Oliver King Rameses Osborne, the fourteen-year-old novelty Chancellor and future baronet of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon - a man so posh he probably weeps champagne.

I actually had that conversation with [Channel 4 Chief Creative Officer] Jay Hunt. We were at a bit of a crisis point. I'd written a totally different script - about war, basically - that got rejected at the last minute for various reasons. The whole of the series was in doubt. I said, "Well, there is one other idea ["National Anthem"]."

I think more and more people became aware that social media was starting to feel like a more toxic space. And, I mean - quite a lot of incidents of people getting very, very angry about all kinds of things and attacking people.

On the other hand [making a string of one-off episodes], there's a real freedom, because you're kind of reinventing the show every week.