The 00s star has spent decades trying to escape the legacy of his beloved hidden camera show – only to realise it’s time to bring it back on stage. He talks about fooling a Python, hating Noel Edmonds … and why he can’t escape the giant phone

The first episode of Trigger Happy TV aired 25 years ago. Its very first sequence was of a man screaming into an oversize phone, startling the unwitting diners at a fancy restaurant. “The following Monday I was on a train, and that ringtone went off,” recalls the show’s co-creator and star Dom Joly. “Three people in the carriage stood up and went: ‘Hello! I’m on a train!’ And I sat there thinking: ‘Holy shit, something extraordinary has happened.’”

Joly isn’t often drawn into conversation about Trigger Happy TV. In the 20-plus years since the show ended in 2003, he has busied himself with plenty of other projects – books, columns, TV shows, podcasts – but nevertheless has found it hard to shake off his breakout hit. “Every time I do anything, even if I’m walking across Lebanon for 27 days for one of my books, someone will go: ‘Did you take the big mobile with you?’” he laughs from his home in Gloucestershire. “Of course I fucking didn’t take the big mobile with me. Why would I take the big mobile with me?”