You know that bit in Notting Hill where Julia Roberts invites Hugh Grant to a hotel and he discovers that he’s in with the press pack (minus Horse & Hound, of course) and instead of getting to curl up on the sofa with her he has to bluff his way through a series of questions about a film he hasn’t seen?

Well, that’s really how it happens – just without the bluffing (honest). You go to a suite of rooms in a central London hotel, and there’s a different actor in each one, and you take your turn. Also, there’s free coffee. And Red Bull.

I’ve drawn the golden ticket to meet Tom Hollander, star of In The Loop, Armando Iannucci’s feature length adaptation [‘putting the spin into spin-off’] of his acclaimed political comedy series, The Thick Of It.

Hollander plays Simon Foster, the Minister for International Development, who witlessly strays from The Government’s line on the possibilities of military intervention in the Middle East (the ‘line’, it turns out, is to remain totally schtum on the entire issue) and finds himself under uncomfortable scrutiny from the British media, Washington’s hawks and doves, and the PM’s sociopathic Scottish spin-doctor, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi).

Whereupon Foster — or ‘Fluster’ – spends the rest of the film trying to save his job, stop a constituency wall collapsing on a pensioner, and, if there’s time left over, prevent a war.

Hollander is a friendly chap, but guarded behind an economic, dead-pannish humour that doesn’t always necessitate smiling and certainly won’t wear out my ‘!’ key.

Without a flicker, the diminutive actor directs me to a ridiculous throne-sized green armchair that could conceivably have featured in The Wizard of Oz, and promptly parks himself on a low sofa, about three feet below me.

His acting story kicks off at The Dragon School, in a production of Oliver.

“I was Oliver because I sang in the school choir. Temperamentally, I would rather have played The Artful Dodger; but he didn’t do much singing.”

He subsequently attended Abingdon School, that in the 1980s also cultivated the talents of the actor Toby Jones, comedian David Mitchell and all of the rock band Radiohead (that’s one hell of an alumni dinner!).

“Toby and I did lots of acting. David Mitchell I didn’t know — he was much younger. The Radiohead lot did do a bit… and actually I played the piano one afternoon in a band that Phil Selway was in.”

Hollander moved on to Cambridge, to be in plays and study a bit of English literature on the side.

He joined Footlights, got an agent thereby, and acted with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg (this is not a suburban myth: Sam Mendes was directing Cyrano de Bergerac, and Clegg’s right there in the cast photo).

“Then I had a stint as a toy-demonstrator demonstrating the Magic Rainbow Drawing Board at Hamleys.

“It’s the sort of thing that out-of-work actors do. Because they’re thought to be show-offs. We just had to stand there all morning and demonstrate a board for five-year-old children, which no five-year-old could actually use because it was too difficult. And if you got rid of enough of them you got some commission. But I never did. So I just did it for my basic and then went to the pub.”

An artist to the core.

I comment on Hollander’s recent run of rather serious stuff: the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie; HBO’s John Adams mini-series; and the forthcoming film The Soloist. But now comes In The Loop. Does he try to schedule a mix of serious and comic roles?

“Well, no — because it doesn’t work like that, chronologically [Valkyrie, he points out, was shot several years ago]. I’m always very happy to do comedies. They’re just trickier to get right, because bad comedies really stink, whereas bad dramas are just boring. Bad comedies are really uncomfortable to be in, and to be associated with.”

And likewise the choice between films and stage work?

“Yeah, I don’t want to leave it too long before I do another play; but I also want to look after my old age while I have the opportunity.”

This seems excessively modest. Hollander’s only 41, and since he won the Ian Charleson award at 25 he hasn’t exactly struggled for work, performing in a range of stage dramas (The Judas Kiss), television shows (Freezing), and radio plays (Theremin) as well as major films.

He’s been so busy, in fact, that he never got a chance to watch the predecessor of the project in which he now stars.

“I never watch TV. Well, I watch the news. But I watched The Thick Of It as research, before my meeting with Armando.”

There’s a spoof In The Loop blog, on which Malcolm Tucker grimly calls Foster, “A blessing in disguise. But I tell you it’s a f**king good disguise.”

In the last few years his comedy roles — in The Libertine, Pirates of the Caribbean, A Good Year — seem to divide equally, and for want of better words, into gits and saps.

“I see. Yes, I suppose that’s true. Gits and saps. Hm… Yes, gits, saps, and just plain idiots.”

Perhaps it’s a height thing. Or the classic British problem of having good RP (and bad PR).

Later Hollander tries to “resist the categorisation”; but too late...

Foster “definitely is a sap. No question of that”. He’s not ‘on message’ (even when there is no message); he lacks the backbone even to give his cretinous advisor a proper bollocking; and he’s a prime example of The Peter Principle.

“He’s hopeless. Hopeless but just ambitious enough for the consequences of his hopelessness to get him into deep water.”

The character of Malcolm Tucker is obviously, openly, derived from Alastair Campbell.

But did Hollander study any particular ministers for material?

“No, I didn’t really. Simon Foster is in a state of ignorance. He’s reactive. And whenever anybody gives him the opportunity to say anything he has nothing to say. So I didn’t need to have huge amounts of stuff up my sleeve.”

Prepared by a lack of preparation: negative method acting?

“Yes, the method’s not so complicated if you just say, ‘the character’s me.’ If I were thrown into the deep end of this situation — into the thick of it — then this is what would happen. If I were a politician, what would I be like? I’d be like this.”

At Iannucci’s behest, In The Loop was shot using partial improvisation, a scripted-framework technique (what Hollander calls “The Scene In Which That Happens”) which he had previously experienced in Gosford Park.

Is it a fun way to work, or does the pressure — in comedy, especially — make everything rather serious?

“Initially I was intimidated by that, thinking, ‘crikey, I’m surrounded by very witty stand-up comedians who are all used to doing this and have done it before in this show playing these parts and people all agreed it was a huge success but now it’s different because I’m in it’.

“So that made me quite nervous. But the trick is to not worry and just play the situation without thinking ‘I must come up with the funniest thing ever’ — though if you do come up with the funniest thing ever you get the opportunity to say it.”

Several such moments made the final cut, and are, thanks to their realistic, hesitant delivery, among the funniest in the film.

I get the one-minute wave from the press lady.

One last question. This is a BBC movie. About a dodgy dossier that started the Iraq war [!!STARTED A HYPOTHETICAL WAR!! – Ed].

Is the corporation getting its own back for the pounding it took from the Government (and the Government’s spin-doctors) over its reporters’ allegations?

“Well, it’s different departments, isn’t it? I don’t know that the right hand knows what the left hand’s doing in an institution of that size… “The BBC’s in an impossible position, isn’t it? It does as many things which delight us as annoy us, and that’s its nature.”

He puts on a pompous, official-sounding voice. “Different departments, different departments! Currents affairs, comedy drama. This is a film, isn’t it?”

So no agenda then?

“Oh, I don’t think so. It was so long ago. Hang on, it was Greg Dyke, wasn’t it? [a split-second mischievous gleam] Different director general and everything.”

Well, that’s good enough for me.