[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.

That's not something that we've gone in thinking 'Right! How are we going to examine that now?' It's just when you take a step back you see that they're actually all sort of in that mode.

I mean, sometimes we do do that, The National Anthem was a caustic satire and sometimes that's the way to go with the story rather than me being particularly misanthropic.

You sort of perform your personality, I guess, to everyone on some level.

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

One of the benefits of aligning yourself with an indistinct cluster of people is that claiming to feel their pain is often enough.

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.