Graham Linehan talks about his new sitcom...

Comedy is a risky, capricious business. One minute, you seem to have a direct line straight to the national funny bone, the next, you've slipped on the banana skin of fate
and landed on the whoopee cushion of comedy exile. One day, you've got Christmas Specials and sell-out tours, the next you barely warrant a slot on an undiscovered
satellite channel between repeats of Oh, Dr Beeching! And 'Allo 'Allo!.

Which makes writer Graham Linehan's run of successes all the more remarkable. Best known for the wildly popular series Father Ted, Black Books and Big Train, he's actually had a finger in more pies than Delia Smith. He's written for Brass Eye, The Harry Enfield Show, Friday Night Armistice, The Day Today, Smith and Jones, Coogan's Run and The Fast Show. He directed the pilot episode of Little Britain, is an award-winning advertisement-maker, successful journalist, occasional actor and stand-up. In short, he's either in league with the devil, or just genuinely funny.

A quick look at some clips from his new series, The IT Crowd, confirms the latter theory. It's original, affectionate, surreal and, crucially, laugh-out-loud funny. Linehan seems genuinely thrilled to hear this, and even a little baffled by the level of success that his comedies have achieved. But, as he explains, he never set out to be a comedian.

"I used to be a music journalist, and when I was writing prose I found that my default position was a comic position. I realised that while I fancied myself as a proper prose writer, it was closer to the truth to say I was more of a humorous writer. My most successful stuff was always the funnier stuff. Whenever I try to be serious or poetic it's always embarrassing and pompous."

The decision to concentrate on comedy duly followed, and at the nauseatingly young age of 25, Linehan wrote the first series of Father Ted with his collaborator Arthur Mathews. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership.

"I don't think I'll ever have as pleasurable a writing experience as I did writing with Arthur. That was as good as it gets. Insane as it sounds, we would literally come to work and laugh for an entire day. Actually, that is a misuse of the word literally. We didn't actually just come in and laugh. We would tell jokes to each other, rather than just sit there and laugh at nothing for an entire day. I love people who misuse literally. 'My head literally fell off'. I tried to put a few of them into The IT Crowd. Jen, at one point, says 'I'd literally rather sleep with a rat'. Anyway, with Arthur it was pretty close to perfect. We were just laughing all the time. My sense of humour was getting better and better because I was measuring it against Arthur's, which was so good. To make him laugh was a pretty big achievement in my book. We were constantly trying to make each other laugh and outdo each other."