Whenever anything nice happens in the world I always expect something appalling to happen immediately afterwards.

The difference between smartphones and cigarettes is this: a cigarette robs 10 minutes from your lifespan, but at least has the decency to wait and withdraw all that time in bulk as you near the end of your life - whereas a smartphone steals your time in the present moment, by degrees. Five minutes here. Five minutes there. Then you look up and you're 85 years old.

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.

Am I living in a simulation?

Seriously, if I switched on the TV and they were showing live footage of an army of fire-breathing pterodactyls machine-gunning people to death on the streets of London right outside my door, I'd be horrified, but not entirely surprised, nor any more scared than I already am. I'd probably just shrug and wait for them to smash the door down. We're so screwed, I don't even know what to worry about first.

If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects?

Overall, looking at the stories [Black Mirror], almost every story we've ever done is concerned with authenticity or reality in some way.