The comedian on his lonely obsession with the Phantom, his love of Tom Lehrer, and his early life as a piracy criminal
Your show Hero Complex is based on your childhood obsession with the Phantom. The comic book character doesn’t really have superpowers, so what was it about him that you were obsessed with?
This is a question I’ve asked myself for 30 years, Emma, because everyone else in school liked Batman and Superman and X-Men and for whatever reason I was drawn to this naff, kitsch little black-and-white comic of this dude with no superpowers. His main skill was that he could shoot the gun out of his enemy’s hands without killing them, so he was basically like a good guy. And he was the cheapest comic; $1.50 at the newsagents in the 90s.