Robert Popper, comedy writer

TV writer Robert Popper joins me for a chat this week, fresh off the sixth series of his Channel 4 sitcom Friday Night Dinner. Robert has been involved in some of the best British comedy of the last 20 years; he co-wrote the cult favourite Look Around You, a spoof science documentary series that ran from 2002 to 2005, and worked as a script editor on Peep Show, The Inbetweeners and The IT Crowd. He is also the alter ego of Robin Cooper, author of The Timewaster Letters. He tells me how he made an artform out of writing insane things to strangers; the unorthodox way he broke into the television world (it also involved letter-writing); and why in comedy, the story must always come before the jokes.