The director, actor, author, presenter and overachiever is joining us for a webchat on 5 September at 12pm BST

2.35pm BST

Is there another actor who could deliver the line, “I came here to drink milk and kick ass, and I’ve just finished my milk” with as much deadpan aplomb as Richard Ayoade?

Before he became a flipping household name as the painfully geeky Maurice Moss in The IT Crowd, the world has owed the actor, writer, director and flaneur a great debt. Since 2000, in fact, when he and Matthew Holness created spoof horror author Garth Marenghi, who’d transition from Edinburgh stage to Channel 4 show (all the while penning books like Afterbirth, in which a mutated placenta attacks Bristol, and Black Fang, which asks the question: what if a rat could drive a bus?)