Whenever I tell people I'm a misanthrope they react as though that's a bad thing, the idiots. I live in London, for God's sake. Have you walked down Oxford Street recently? Misanthropy's the only thing that gets you through it. It's not a personality flaw, it's a skill.

[My parents when I was a kid] would go, "It's a nice hot day. Why are you inside watching the TV?" And you go, "Well, 'cause it's better?"

The biggest teenage taboo is being strait-laced. It's easy to tell a researcher you went to a house party that turned into an orgy. It's less easy to say you like eating toast and watching QI.

'Waldo' was one episode I always felt I didn't quite crack. And weirdly, now that feels like one of the more prescient ones.

In the U.K. I'm probably better known as a comedy writer - or certainly that's my background is in writing comedy.

Society? Can we trust us? Doubt it. We're probably not even real, as was revealed in the popular documentary The Matrix. That bloke next door? Made of pixels. Your co-workers? Pixels. You? One pixel. One measly pixel. You haven't even got shoes, for Christ's sake.

I wasn't really aware they were a religious organization for quite some time. But my grandparents were very devout and ran a Quaker meetinghouse and were missionaries at one point.