In the time between meeting and sitting down to start our interview, Charlie Brooker uses the word "weird" about ten times, "weirdly" another half dozen or so and "oddly" a few times too. The clothes lined up for the photoshoot are "weird". The cameras set up to film our interview are "weird". The chairs on which we sit are "weird".

"I've never made eye contact with anyone for this long," he tells me on realising how close together our chairs are. "I'm weird like that." When someone asks if we want breakfast, he fills me in on his "weird" diet - he only eats between noon and 8pm.

The days leading up to our interview have been quite weird for me too. To the horror of my daughter, who loves Brooker's Black Mirror, the show had passed me by. I still know him more as a Guardian columnist, a fellow contributor to the now defunct 10 O'Clock Live, the presenter of an annual review of the year and the husband of Konnie Huq. So in preparation I feel duty-bound to watch as many Black Mirror episodes as I can, from the first, "The National Anthem", in which a prime minister is forced to have sex with a pig, to the latest, soon-to-be-released-on-Netflix "USS Callister", part of series four, in which Jesse Plemons plays the malevolent captain of a spaceship and where, as always with Black Mirror, nothing is quite as it seems. It is wacky, clever, strangely compelling and weird. Much like the man himself.

SPOILERS! Watch the Alastair Campbell Charlie Brooker interview (includes spoilers)

Alastair Campbell: So I have been gorging...

Charlie Brooker: That is the phrase.

Including "USS Callister".

Yet to be seen by the public.

So where did the idea first come from to do this episode?

With each series, in a somewhat pretentious way, we imagine we are curating a little film festival. Each one has to be different and fairly idiosyncratic. It's best to imagine we are doing different genre pieces. We are a sort of sci-fi genre, but we have never done space exploration, so how would we do a space epic? That is what we thought.

The captain of the ship is a tyrant and we later find out why. Is the power of technology to corrupt a theme of the show?

It becomes a story about somebody wielding immense power and quite often in our stories what we do is we explore what happens when a normal, flawed human being is given immense power by technology. The programme is clearly inspired by shows such as The Twilight Zone or Tales Of The Unexpected, but where they used the supernatural we use technology. And it's almost like someone has discovered a superpower in which technology is imposing power on everyone else, creating a warped but logical system.

On the tyrant theme, you look at Putin interfering in the US elections and the way the Americans seem not to care. What thought does that put in your head?

I have often felt the worlds of social media and the internet are like a weird dreamscape. Even physically, when you are looking at your phone, you are out of it. It's like falling asleep and [snapping] out of it. The world in there doesn't feel entirely real. When you meet people you've interacted with on social media, they are not like they are on social media. Look at the American election or the rhetoric online, it is frightening and yet it doesn't feel like it is coming from an authentic place. It feels like it is orchestrated by bot armies seeding hashtags, so it is both sinister and weirdly reassuring. I think, "Is that something we are going to snap out of?"

What if it's not? What a lot of this is about is we don't know what is happening to our thoughts. We don't know the impact of all this.

That is something I worry about.

You're scared of the ramifications?

I'm scared about everything. I'm an anxious worrier. I worry about the downside of everything.

So if you see Trump and Kim Jong-un, you think there'll be a nuclear war?

Weirdly, I don't.

You look at climate change and think the planet will be destroyed?

Weirdly, oddly, things like that, as soon as a lot of people are worried about it, I ease off a bit.

Because you think we'll work it out?

I at least hope we will try. With Trump and Kim Jong-un, it would be bloody annoying for the world to destroy itself over that when we can see it coming. I worry more about an accidental nuclear exchange coming because 99 red balloons fly by. That would be more unexpected. I can quickly go to a place where I worry about society spiralling out of control.

Do you think technological advance is helping society to spiral out of control?

It feels more out of control than it was, yes, but I think what has happened is we have developed a new superpower, an ability, a new form of communication, which we as a species are not yet up to speed with.

Where does all this fear come from? Were you a fearful, anxious child?

Yes. A lot of it was to do with something now in vogue again: nuclear paranoia. I was born in 1971 and there was a point when I realised nuclear weapons were a real thing and terrifying. My grandparents on my mother's side were both CND supporters, my grandmother was at Greenham Common, and they had all these magazines called Sanity. I remember reading an account of Nagasaki, about the body of a pregnant woman found in a skip full of irradiated water, and I was like, "Jesus Christ!" I was watching things like Threads, on in 1984, and a QED documentary on what would happen if a nuclear bomb was detonated over St Paul's Cathedral. This stuff really went in. It is still there. I could not understand why everyone wasn't out in the streets panicking and screaming all the time. I couldn't understand why people were so calm and how they could care about biscuits and shoes and kitchens when this was hanging over us, it seemed demented. For a lot of people of my generation that was a profound fear. I was watching things like Threads at too young an age to deal with that.

Your children are growing up not just with nukes, but climate change, terrorism and existential threats. Are you more scared?

There is a weird sort of slightly optimistic streak. Part of it is to do with being an adult. In the Eighties, I expected to die within three years, at any time. There were two tribes and it felt that was about to happen. So the mere fact I existed through a time when it looked like it was going to happen and it didn't...

But it might one day.

Exactly, that is the 3am thought.

Do you sleep well?

No.

And do you dream a lot?

No, I never dream. No, that's not true. I very rarely dream.

I thought loads of your Black Mirror ideas must have come from dreams.

I only recently learned how to go to sleep. I wear a headband thing with sleep phones and an eye mask and I listen to a podcast or Desert Island Discs or a stand-up comedy thing. It must be something I am interested in, not just the circuits of paranoid thoughts.

How much are the 3am thoughts giving you ideas for the show?

The ideas for the show come about either in conversation or sometimes when I go for a run.

Are you actively looking for ideas when you run?

Weirdly it is best if you're not. It's best when you're relaxed, in conversation, "That would be great if that happened..."

Do you daydream?

I am totally the daydreaming type. I was always interested in cartoons or computer games, which were an escape from the real world. I did have a fascination with things that were disconcerting, that left me with a horrible feeling.

So you like fear?

I found it weirdly comforting watching something with a bleak ending because I was mistrustful of happy endings.

There was a period it looked like you were becoming purely a comedian, certainly a satirist. Now there is the odd laugh, but it is all pretty dark.

Yes, but usually I am pissing myself.

What do you make of Trump's use of technology and social media?

As soon as Trump was running for the Republican candidacy I remember thinking he is going to win and he will become president. Then thinking, "That is a crazy thought. Don't think that. It's the kind of paranoid thing you think." But I thought people would vote for him because he is a vandal and enough people want to throw a brick through a window, just because. So it felt to me there was a grim inevitability to all the stages. It started with everyone on the news saying, "Ha, he's such a clown," and then they had to pull a serious face. There is an odd thing - a few years ago if you told me the president of the US would be on Twitter threatening nuclear war with North Korea, I would have shat myself. But he is like a yapping dog. Weirdly, his words don't carry as much weight because he devalues himself; you know that it is noise and bluster. They will come out and say, "He didn't mean that." There's an element of it that is more ridiculous than sinister.

But he is the president.

That is the cognitive dissonance I keep having. It doesn't help that on social media when I see "BBC breaking news: North Korea fires missile over Japan", and I get a cold, lurching feeling, then the tweet hanging off that is an animated gif of SpongeBob SquarePants going, "Oooooh, noooo." That is not what I foresaw when I pictured the apocalypse as a kid. I didn't foresee animated reaction gifs.

Yet you did "The Waldo Moment" [the Black Mirror episode in which a cartoon character becomes a politician].

People often say it predicted Trump. That was me struggling with a sense that things were not working. I was doing 10 O'Clock Live and people would say, "You should be politicians" and I would think comedians are the worst people to be politicians. What am I doing if I do one of my Weekly Wipe shows? I am a 360-degree piss taker.

But Trump is a performer.

He is a demolition derby car, a disruptor, and you can see the appeal. It's the same thing that makes people vote for someone dressed as a banana.

Or the monkey mayor in Hartlepool. So Waldo could have won.

He comes second in the end. I thought winning was too far-fetched. It came about because, years ago, I did Nathan Barley with Chris Morris and we had this idea: what if someone came up with an animated MP and it was like Homer Simpson? You know he is not real and it doesn't matter because weirdly that inoculates him against accusations of being inauthentic.

So Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, this thing they share, authenticity, which doesn't have to be real.

It has to feel real. During the election, it was strange when Paul Nuttall started dressing like Nigel Farage and he looked...

Weird.

Like a bad regeneration of Doctor Who. At least when they regenerate Doctor Who they give him a whole new outfit. David Tennant doesn't just appear in Christopher Ecclestone's jacket. A strong flavour feels authentic. That is partly a reaction to everyone trying to be Blair, like Cameron and Clegg did, everyone feeling like a sort of bland neighbour in an episode of Holby City.

That's no way to speak of my old boss.

But everyone was trying to emulate that affable, nonthreatening feel.

Where would you put your politics?

More left-leaning than right. I am weirdly not as political as people think. I get wound up, but I am not hugely active. Like a lot of people, I am quite lazy or focused on working. I always vote Labour.

On the Labour spectrum, where are you between Blair and Corbyn?

I am probably in between. I have no place. I am not even on one side of that war. I am right in the middle.

So do you feel politically homeless?

I am less politically homeless than before the election, when I thought, "Where is Britain going?"

You don't feel that now?

I do, but weirdly not in the same way. It doesn't feel like it is becoming necessarily a right-wing dystopia. I don't know where it is heading. I was reassured that there was a big pushback against the tone of...

Hard Brexit?

People don't want that - that was clear.

Do people want the Corbyn version?

I don't really know. Before the Brexit vote, I thought Leave was going to win. There was a strong flavour from the Leave campaign. Agree or not, there was a clearly defined mood, two fingers up to everything. You could latch on to it.

You voted Labour last time. What about next time?

I have a very easy vote because the Labour candidate [Rupa Huq] is my sister-in-law. Also, if you look at the other side, who wants Boris Johnson in charge? Waldo was inspired by people like him and Farage who were becoming stock characters.

As Rees-Mogg is.

I don't think that will work, it is becoming boring. The next wave will be more approachable. Rees-Mogg is trying too hard.

Do you share my hope that Brexit never happens?

Yes, I do.

Can't you do a Black Mirror Brexit dystopia? Get political!

Sometimes we are overtly political, such as "The Waldo Moment" and "The National Anthem". Both were sympathetic to politicians, which is the opposite of anything else I do, firing a shit-gun over everything.

There is a great moment when the comedian behind Waldo has sex with a Labour candidate and then destroys her and she screams at him, "At least I am for something. What are you for?" Was that you having a dialogue with yourself?

That is me having a bit of a go, a snark for the sake of it, attacking the cynicism and attacking the anti-political, let's-destroy-everything desire.

Has having a politician in the family changed your views?

I hadn't thought of that, but I see how unbelievably hard they work. When Rupa says, "If there's anything I can do", she means it and spends loads of time helping people.

I agree the portrayal of the PM and his wife was very sympathetic in "The National Anthem".

Partly it is a contrarian thing. Usually in dramas politicians are scheming bastards. It is a cliché. "The National Anthem" came from two places. I was slightly fascinated by I'm A Celebrity. Brian Paddick ran for mayor of London, didn't win and by the end of the year he was in the jungle drinking a pint of liquidised kangaroo penis next to Timmy Mallett. Or was it crocodile? [It was camel.] Downing a pint against the clock to win some stars from Ant and Dec. That is an insane trajectory in one year.

Was Ed Balls on Strictly Come Dancing in the same category?

Less. The second thing was George Galloway on Big Brother. I was writing a show about a zombie attack on the show house [Dead Set], so I went down there. It was like peering into a zoo. I became fascinated by Galloway when he licked milk out of a bowl and everyone said, "He's finished." About a year later, I was in a cab and it was the George Galloway phone-in show on Talk Sport and he was using "Top Cat" as an ironic jingle. It is a weird thing where you can go on TV and shit into a bowl and nobody will judge you.

I have turned down all of those programmes and I trust you will too.

You're right to do so, but it is interesting that Ed Balls goes on Strictly and it becomes a triumph because he is a human being, doesn't take himself too seriously and tries his all. Good luck to him. He is the guy on the dance floor at the wedding who doesn't care that he looks like a dick. He is just enjoying it. It came from that. And also the pig episode - that incident when Gordon Brown was caught calling Gillian Duffy a bigot and there was a day when it felt like nobody was in charge and like the news was spiralling back on itself. The point in the radio studio when he did that [head in hands] and I felt human embarrassment.

He'd exposed a thought that if he had known the mic was there, he would have held in. Some of your stuff feels like that. People are not sure who knows what they're thinking. We're losing control of our own thought processes.

That happens a lot within the show. A lot of the stories hinge on what is authentic and real and what is an insecurity.

In "The National Anthem" when the PM has sex with a pig, the public react like it's a comedy show or a football match. They cheer as he faces the pig, then, as it goes on, they realise it is horrible and they are horrible for having enjoyed it.

If that was happening, people would tune in. Then the grim reality would set in; suddenly it is not fun at all. We relish seeing people destroyed, politicians and celebrities. There's a real relish and delight in seeing them fail.

Even though it might damage us.

We did an Election Wipe special and I looked at a lot of political interviews through the ages. As interviewers became more aggressive and Paxmanesque, it became a strategic game where politicians can't say anything. Politicians and interviewers are locked in a loveless marriage. It's horrible and the public get alienated, but it is also our fault because it is delightful to watch Michael Howard being asked the same question again and again and he can't answer it. His discomfort is delicious. But you end up with a scenario where nobody can talk straight.

You know so much about technology.

I am quite geeky. I used to be a video games journalist and now people alert me to stuff all the time. But I try not to actively research things, weirdly, because it might get in the way of a story idea.

Have you ever had an idea but thought, "That is too ridiculous"?

Yes, but then we went ahead and did it. People being picked off by drone bees [in "Hated In The Nation"] and I said, "This is too silly." Then it turns out drone bees are real, so what do I know?

Will you do this forever?

Till it gets boring. I'd hope it will get boring for everyone at the same time. The show has to refresh itself every episode so you don't get jaded.

The show is going big in the US.

You know you're breaking through when it becomes a phrase. When Trump was elected there were people with banners saying, "This episode of Black Mirror sucks." At that point you go, "OK, we stand for something in people's heads."

What is Netflix doing for the industry?

You're not beholden. They are giving a lot of creative freedom. Writers have a lot of power. There is more chance of people taking risks because things need to stand out.

What are you watching now?

I just watched Narcos. And Doctor Foster - I couldn't work out if I loved it or hated it. It may as well take place on the moon. We liked Big Little Lies. Our tastes have changed. I used to like nihilistic horror films. Now, I'm happy to watch Bake Off.

Where does your creativity come from?

I'm predisposed to imagine the worst case scenario in any situation, which is really useful. "What if this was invented?" and I go, "Yeah, but this would happen." If there's a kettle, I worry that I'll knock it over and scald someone. At the airport, I look at the other passengers and I'm like...

Who's got the bomb?

No. "Who's going to freak out and open the exit door?" The bomb is too obvious.

What are you for?

Doing Black Mirror, I am a campfire storyteller finding something oddly reassuring about things that are not reassuring. There's something to be said for satire and comedy with the state of the world. Pointing out the madness of things is reassuring to people because other people feel the same. In the Eighties, Spitting Image would be chilling and frightening and you would think, "Thank fuck someone else feels this is a madhouse." That helps your general level of anxiety and sanity. It's good to know other people are scared as well.

So you are here to share fear.

To reassure others by worrying out loud

Watch Black Mirror on Netflix now.

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