Not many people know much about his life, and yet, 30 years since he first graced our screens, his creativity is still quietly pumping like an understated garden fountain. Even getting this interview took six months of him wondering why the hell anyone would want to speak only to him. Apart from a few panel show appearances and some writing work, he hasn't really sought solo fame.

While Vic Reeves has gone on to present documentaries, stage art exhibitions and written books, Mortimer remains something of an enigma. Their quiz show Shooting Stars, which at its peak pulled in over six million viewers a week, once blessed a mainstream television audience with the sight of a confused Larry Hagman from Dallas being presented a 'Fartridge' (it's half fart, half partridge). If other comedians of their generation held up a mirror to society, then Bob Mortimer and Vic Reeves held up a watercolour painting of Sylvester Stallone staring at a potato. Their surreal sketches ranged from turning the pop star Morrissey into a monkey who reviewed electrical appliances, to making Masterchef's Lloyd Grossman a floating Frankenstein with cutlery for fingers. They were nonsensical, irreverent and intensely northern at all times. To some extent, he and his life-long writing partner Vic Reeves kickstarted a golden age of British television comedy, which started with the birth of their flagship show, Big Night Out, in 1990 and ended shortly after Ricky Gervais' The Office.

This is not strange territory for Mortimer – or, at least, strange territory is where he feels most at home. The show has already amassed 4.4 million listens and counting. At the end of each episode, Mortimer finishes by singing a 'Scottish song' about life on a strange and magical island that does not seem dissimilar from The Wicker Man's Summerisle. In another story, Michael Owen tries to open a restaurant called ISIS. In this odd world, the former England manager Steve McLaren operates as a carpet salesman, drives a clown car and owns a sensitive yellow snake called Casper who vomits everywhere. I'm listening to Athletico Mince, a podcast co-created and co-hosted by Bob Mortimer and Andy Dawson, which from episode one (it's now on episode 38) derailed immediately from its intended topic of football, and has since become a bizarre and engrossing world of idle chat, improvised tales and sketches that often prolapse mid-joke.

Groundskeeper willie brave heart