Jack Whitehall is currently galivanting around the country, folding his long limbs into his father’s car and chasing around various bookshops to promote the pair’s new book Him & Me, which does what it says on the cover.

Why he has chosen to do this now remains to be seen, because he is obscenely busy, filming, touring and promoting his endless TV shows, stand-up gigs, guest appearances and now books.

And yet Jack’s still managing to screech up to Blackwell’s on Saturday with his dad Michael to sign copies of said book, a strange hybrid of anecdotes and autobiography.

Popping into his old school The Dragon en route, Jack is looking forward to returning to his old hunting ground, his interview to the prestigious Oxford prep school being famously catalogued by Jack and his dad in the book. To cut a long story short, Jack mutinied on the day in question and was not only mute throughout the entire exchange, much to his father’s horror, but also displayed disturbing physical behaviour as well, which included licking the windows and spasming.

Suffice to say he didn’t get offered a place until his father intervened, and Jack of course loved it. “It was the closest thing to Hogwart’s that you could get,” he remembers.

But those were the heady days of a nonchalant schoolboy, not the hectic schedule of a successful comedian who has hit the big time at the precarious age of 25.

Thanks to Fresh Meat, Jack’s own TV show Bad Education, and the new show he co-presents with his father together on BBC Three called Backchat, based on the Edinburgh Festival show of the same name, he is flat out. “It wasn’t intentional but everything seemed to come out at the same time.”

So what’s it like spending so much time with his father. “It’s what everyone has to go through at Christmas, spending unnatural amounts of time with your parents, it’s just that mine started in November. So it’s nice if a little intense.”

But with his father co-hosting Backchat by interrupting and berating his son over his interviewing skills it’s actually the perfect timing for their new book. So who’s in charge? “He’s very much in control because he can shout at me whenever he wants – he’s my dad,” Jack says. “He relishes making me feel awkward, although he did get called a DILF the other day which I had to explain.”

Luckily the book tour is short and sweet, with a Dragon School type target audience, and taking in some rather affluent postcodes.

“We’ve done Bath, Barnes and Sloane Square where all the kids are callled Marmaduke so it’s hilariously gentrified.”

Not that he can talk, because Jack Whitehall has made a career out of being posh, and it’s interesting on reading his book to find out he is as posh, if not more so, than his TV characters and personas.

Privately-educated, he attended Marlborough College – where Kate and Pippa Middleton were also pupils – Freddy Syborn, his former classmate and Bad Education co-writer, recalling Whitehall as being “smelly and a bit of a slob”.

It was only when Whitehall went to Manchester University to study history of art, that he quickly realised university wasn’t for him, and in the evenings would perform stand-up shows, which he loved. “It wasn’t hard to choose which one to do for the next three years,” he says.

Clearly this was the right decision because while performing stand-up around the country, Whitehall, by now aged 19, was asked to present Big Brother's Big Mouth for two weeks and went on to appear on a number of panel shows, including 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Mock The Week and Have I Got News For You, which he guest presented.

His acting debut was in E4’s university comedy Fresh Meat, as posh student JP. Then, in 2012, Bad Education hit our screens. It broke BBC Three’s record for the highest-rated first episode of a comedy and later won the King of Comedy slot at the British Comedy Awards. To top it all, Harry Enfield, one of Whitehall's comedy heroes, joined the new series of Bad Education as Alfie’s dad. “In one scene I'm playing the grumpy kid and I had the sudden realisation that I’m doing Kevin to Kevin, and probably not as good,” Jack says, referring to Enfield!s iconic teen character. “But at least I’m trying to level the field by being a bit more self-aware.''

SEE IT
Jack and Michael Whitehall appear at Blackwells in Oxford on Saturday at 1pm to promote their new book Him and Me. This is a free event. See blackwell.co.uk/oxford