Pete Hughes meets a comedian who confesses his teen years were anything but funny

In the opening pages of his latest book, before he even gets to the introduction, David Mitchell says: “In depressed moments, I often console myself with the thought that I WILL NEVER HAVE TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL.”

The establishment in question is Abingdon School, which also produced another of Oxfordshire’s major cultural phenomenons, the rock band Radiohead, so it must obviously be doing something right.

Over the phone, Mr Mitchell backtracks slightly: “I was a teenager so it wasn’t the happiest time in my life but it wasn’t the school’s fault.

“I got into a lot of things I’ve enjoyed in later life, acting and comedy and debating.

“That part of my life has informed everything that came after.”

The Peep Show star and host of Radio 4’s The Unbelievable Truth has always maintained in interviews that it’s OK to be unhappy at school — you’re supposed to be unhappy at school, and anyone who really likes school that much is probably in for crushing disappointment in later life.

It certainly holds true for Mr Mitchell, who has made a career from drawing on some deep well of bitterness to spew bile on the most ridiculous failings of the modern world, from chocolate-flavoured toothpaste to the plague of political lobbying.

The bile is turned to gold in Mr Mitchell’s sparkling prose, the product of two independent schools and perfected at Cambridge University.

Born in Headington where his parents still live, before Abingdon School Mitchell attended the prestigious Oxford prep school, New College, which was founded in 1379.

He admits he was much happier there than at Abingdon.

“At prep school I didn’t know how unusual I was.

“Until 11 or 12, when puberty really hit, I was happy being a swot at a school where being a swot really counted.

“You don’t get as much kudos for that at secondary school.”

When he did have to leave the comfort of New College School, Mitchell escaped the discomfort of adolescence by watching his favourite comedians on TV and putting on plays with friends.

For anyone who went to a state school, staging a production of Tom Stoppard’s 1968 play The Real Inspector Hound might sound dangerously close to work, but Mitchell recalls being “chuffed” that Abingdon School’s teachers actually “let” him and his friends do it.

He recalls: “That was an early experience of self-generating something.

“I was acting and we were sort of all co-producing.

“We all mucked in getting costumes and props.”

This was alongside acting in school plays from the age of 10.

“I always loved that. I think I was at an age before I thought being a professional comedian was something I could aspire to.

“I was madly into comedy as a teenager but you don’t know what’s a realistic option at that age.

“It was really only meeting Robert Webb at Cambridge who also wanted to go into that business that made me realise it was.

“I would have wanted it in my heart at 14, but I would have said out loud I wanted to be a barrister or something my parents would approve of.”

Mr Mitchell studied history when he went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge in the early 1990s.

Luckily for generations of comedy fans, he found spare time to join the Cambridge Footlights, which seems to have produced almost every famous comedian in the last 50 years — from Monty Python to Fry and Laurie.

There, he met Robert Webb, and his academic success began to come second (he left with a 2:2).

After they left university, the duo worked together writing for other programmes including Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan’s anarchic sketch show Big Train.

Finally they got a break with their own sketch show The Mitchell and Webb Situation, which ran for six episodes on the now-defunct cable channel Play UK.

They were spotted by Peep Show creators Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain and thence propelled to national fame.

But it is perhaps as a guest on panel shows such as QI that Mr Mitchell really gets to exorcise his demons. And for that he has to thank Abingdon School.

It was at the school’s debating society that he first discovered the power of argument in comedy, and the power of comedy in an argument.

“In that forum,” he says, “if you stood up and said something that made people laugh, you would win the debate.

“If someone makes a point through a joke it is tripled in power. Not only have you made an argument the audience can follow, you’ve also made the contrary argument ridiculous.

“If you have managed to do that, you’ve won.”

His conspicuous talents in that sphere are perhaps best displayed on the show Would I Lie To You?, in which two teams have to persuade the opposition to believe outrageous stories.

Needless to say, it’s all quite ‘Oxford’. Although he escaped his roots to go to university at the ‘Other Place’, Mr Mitchell says Oxford was a “wonderful place to grow up”.

“It is a beautiful city, and it’s a place where questioning things and learning are deemed the most important thing and it’s even got a car factory to keep one foot in the real world.

“The only problem with Oxford is it’s not at the seaside.”

Thinking About it Only Makes it Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life, published by Guardian Faber, is available in hardback for £8.45 or on Kindle for £4.79.