Rory Bremner interview: When satire day comes

Not that he denies the side that took him into counselling; it would be a bit hard to anyway because he has so much nervous energy it engulfs you like a wave and he just talks without pausing almost as if he's frightened that if he stops you'll ask a question he doesn't want to answer and all through the first part of the interview I have the sense that under this lovely, polite exterior, he's inwardly hyperventilating and trying not to curl up into a foetal ball about the fact that he should really be getting back to work.

He keeps to a minimum that old comedian's ruse of avoiding talking about himself by slipping into other voices. Used sparingly, it's very entertaining hearing him do both sides of a conversation between Tony Benn and David Frost. He realised the power of laughter early on in life. Brought up in Edinburgh, he was sent off at the age of just eight to boarding school in the city and he remembers wanting to be popular. It wasn't that he was bullied. (He likes to joke that came after he became an impressionist.) "I just realised that making people laugh was sort of my passport. I am hopeless at confrontation."

Why? "Oh!" says Bremner, as if startled by how very abrupt 'why' is. He laughs. "I can always … um … I think I fundamentally at some level think it's my fault things have gone wrong in the first place. If I get really angry about something I always regret it afterwards. I very, very rarely get angry because I just can't do it. I think I was away from school the day they taught anger. Never mind anger management, the day they had anger classes. I'm just hopeless at it."

Now angst, he can do. It's like Brecht says. (Bremner is a genuinely smart man, as opposed to a show-off, with a degree in French and German that has led to him translating operas and plays, so you have to stick with the references to French philosophers and German playwrights, I'm afraid.) Brecht noted that oysters only produce pearls when they have an infection and sometimes it might be better to do without the pearl if it meant the poor wee oyster didn't have to get sick. (That may be a bit more colloquial than Brecht put it but you get the drift.)

When performers have a history of anxiety and depression it's always interesting to know if that tips them into creativity, or whether creativity saves them from their own inner turmoil. Bremner says in his case, it's a curious mixture of both. Since 1993 he has been working with John Bird and John Fortune to produce regular series of weekly topical satirical shows for Channel 4. The pressure to instantly turn that week's events into comedy is stressful but it's also quite structured and that actually suits Bremner.

"I often work best under those deadlines and weekly pressures," he says. "That becomes its own comfort zone." We are sitting in the London office of the production company that makes the programmes and an entire wall is lined with a Bremner video archive. But the old certainty of series after series, of another video on the shelves, has gone. Stories have appeared saying he's being axed from Channel 4. "We don't know," he admits. "To be honest with you, I don't think Channel 4 knows. Nobody knows what is happening in television. I mean, politics is in meltdown, broadcasting is in meltdown, the City, religion … it's an extraordinary time."

For the moment, budget cuts mean he is recording themed specials rather than the topical series that needs weekly recording time. People say nobody saw the financial crisis coming but he has sketches going back to 1996 in which John Bird and John Fortune lampooned the whole City culture. "It's all there," he says. "I think we should do John Bird and John Fortune, The Nostradamus Years." But in any case, things have changed because of what Bremner calls the "character crunch".

"To my mind, the golden age of Blairs and Prescotts and Mandelsons and Blunketts – and George Bush – is behind us. Now you have the John Huttons and the John Denhams and the George Osbornes and the Nick Cleggs. I can't remember a time when politicians were less inspiring."

Everyone thinks – mistakenly – that MP scandals make this a wonderful time for satire. "John Fortune and I always laugh about it because you hear it from taxi drivers … you've got so much material. But usually when people say that they mean the politicians or the bankers or whoever are making such idiots of themselves that they are actually way beyond parody and what I should be doing is suing them for copyright. I watched Cameron the other night saying, 'Oliver Letwin will pay back the amount he claimed to mend a pipe beneath his tennis court. Alan Duncan will repay the amount he claimed for his gardener …' How can you possibly be sillier than that?"

The themed specials have to be filmed in a short time and his mind is a whirl of different scripts. "I think I must have some sort of attention deficit or something. If something has my undivided attention then I can do it, but if my attention is divided then I'm never too happy. Years ago I did meet a counsellor and we were chatting away and I said, 'I am very much a chameleon,' and he said, 'Yeah, but you shouldn't sit on a patchwork quilt.'"

Does he get excited or unnerved by the prospect of major change now? "I think as I get older it takes slightly longer for the colours to change. The cartridge has run out because I can't change as rapidly as I used to. It's sometimes a bit of a grind, a crunch of gears, but on the other hand I love new challenges."

If he has to change direction he would like to diversify into documentaries. "There are two or three ideas I have in my head." One is travel documentaries. "And one is about the whole dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADD, autistic spectrum thing." Since he's already joked – twice – that he has attention deficit, I ask if his interest in these subjects is personal. If I didn't know Bremner doesn't get angry, I would think there was irritation in the look he gives me. I can't make up my mind if that's because the question is way off beam or spot-on. "Well you know, I know people through friends and relatives who have different experiences of those particular … so …"

His reaction nags at me, so ten minutes later I return to it and say, look, I may have got it wrong but I thought he looked startled when I asked if his interest in ADD and autism was personal. I asked the question because plenty of creative people – like artist Peter Howson – have spoken openly about their autistic spectrum conditions. (And plenty of creative people have obsessively perfectionist tendencies.) In reply, he says: "I think I realised what a butterfly brain I've got and sometimes I see it in my children. I know exactly what it's like. It's a variation of that Philip Larkin poem, they f*** you up your mum and dad. Sometimes when I'm trying to get my daughters' attention I realise I'm hopeless at paying attention too. And also, with work, I've always asked do I take it too seriously? But you always want to do your absolute best and that can drive you very hard. People do become perfectionist and they cross the line between perfectionist and taking it too seriously." Make of that what you will.

He can never take his own abilities for granted. "I can't relax. You know you can do it but you still have the self-doubt, the lacking in confidence … because you just want to do your best. Funnily enough, everyone I know and respect who I've talked to about this has the same thing. I think it's an artistic thing. You are constantly questioning or doubting yourself because you are pushing yourself."

It's interesting how civil and unassuming Bremner is because his job depends on observational skills and there are few things in life more cruel than accurate observation. Does he worry about hurting his 'victims'? "Sometimes you meet people and get to like them and that can soften you," he admits. "I think sometimes you have to keep a distance, an objectivity." But he once played tennis with Blair. How did that work? "I never particularly had a problem with Blair and it became less so as his premiership developed. I think once we got into Iraq I wasn't too worried about the fact that I might not be playing tennis with him again for a while."

He has voted for every political party at some point in his life but has gone further left with age. He is not a cynic – or even a sceptic really – and thinks Conservatives are pessimists about human nature while Labour supporters are optimists. His father was a Conservative and Bremner's right wing tendencies came after what he calls "the brainwashing" of public school. "I think I was expected to join the Thatcher Jugend," he says wryly.

But people and politics intrigue him and sometimes he gets tempted by invitations that bring him closer to politicians than is later comfortable. "Curiosity might not kill the cat but it can blunt its claws a bit," he admits. "You can get drawn into a relationship and that's a difficult one." Though, as John Fortune once said to him, nobody ever accused David Attenborough of getting too close to animals. Recently, he and his wife Tessa have become involved in Formula 1 and both love it, but it's a very extravagant and highly political sport and he recognises that his involvement blunts his capacity to be critical of it. He's very conscious of the dangers of hypocrisy. "Roy Hattersley used to talk about the House of Lords and what a terrible institution it all was and then they offered him a Lordship and he said, 'Oh yes please,' and became Lord Hattersley of Turncoat."

It would be a bit difficult if he had a close relationship with Gordon Brown, he acknowledges. Back in 1995, Brown asked him to write for him. "The great thing is he writes for me now," he jokes. He was doing a sketch the other day with Brown as the pop star Mika, a send up of his hit Grace Kelly. It went roughly along the lines of: "I can be Brown, I can be blue ... Why don't you like me, why don't you like me …?" As usual, Bremner was worried. As usual, he thought it's not good enough. Then he saw the edited version and everyone was energised by how well it had worked. "For that brief moment you think, 'Yeah, I am happy with that,' and you enjoy it." That's the side of him that just loves what he does, that relishes the moment when anxiety fades away and he gets the buzz of success. That's real too, he insists. That's the other side of the coin.

SO, TAILS then. The calmer side. After some turbulent times, Bremner's private life has become less angst-ridden than his professional one. At boarding school, Bremner learned a few early lessons. "Discarding your emotions sort of thing," he says, "because if you cry a prefect will come along and say, 'Bremner, are you crying?' So you sort of … that's why the spy thing came out of the public school system. They are very good at dissembling."

He has a broken marriage behind him (though obviously Mr Non-angry is friends with his ex). Now married to artist Tessa Campbell Fraser, he has two little girls aged seven and five and the children provide a perfect antidote to his professional angst. "There are times when I am with them that I shut out everything else in my life and I think, funnily enough, this is the bit that's important." It has forced him to prioritise his life differently. "Sometimes in order to achieve, to have a really big success, you have to push yourself and block everything else out and with a family you can't do that. You can grab time but time is never entirely your own."

He used to say he wanted children even before he had them. But when he uses Stephen Fry as an example, you sense the wistfulness parents have when they half wish things were different, yet wouldn't change them either. "Somebody like Stephen Fry can absolutely follow his desires and his whims and his intellectual curiosity. He can read voraciously, travel, write. He's in a very stable relationship, I think, but his family is the world. He shares himself with all those interesting things."

Has it been good for him to be forced to change the way he thinks? Undoubtedly, he says. He has become more balanced. "There aren't the same demands with the girls. All that's required from you is to be there and be supportive and introduce them to new experiences. They love ponies and their friends go to pony club camp. Sometimes, if I hear myself talking in the supermarket saying, 'I must plait those manes in time for pony club camp,' I think, if I'd heard someone saying that in the supermarket five years ago I'd probably have wanted to take them out and shoot them. But it's part of my life now and enjoyable and fulfilling."

He's sad in a way that the children aren't old enough to understand his achievements. Not that he wants them to get any older; he has that parental instinct to keep them small. "But I can see David Beckham has a ten-year-old son and he'll be able to see he's still playing for AC Milan and watch his dad play. When my children are 12 what will I be doing?" But he quickly rallies the optimistic side of himself. "But hopefully I'll be doing documentaries and be well into my Palin years by then … and maybe they will be the most enjoyable and fulfilling."

Perhaps it was his happiness in his own children that made the search for his father on the BBC documentary Who Do You Think You Are? so poignant. His father had died of cancer in circumstances that would greatly influence the then 18-year-old Bremner.

Bremner Snr had worked for a cancer charity – then been sacked when he contracted the disease himself. "It wasn't until years later when it struck a chord and I thought, 'Hang on … it was just that sense of fairness really."

The Major had been married before and Bremner and his brother were his second family. In truth, his father was a distant figure in his childhood. "He chose to be elsewhere. He'd spend his time in southern Edinburgh in the evening and I was away at school so didn't see him a tremendous amount. To spend time with a father you knew years ago was a luxury – and something I owed him really."

Bremner met up with a Dutch war colleague of his father's, who described the Major's extreme bravery. "He was a bit of an army in his own right and he looked after the people in his battalion. He was in the thick of it and it was exciting and I think everything afterwards was a bit boring really." The programme re-established a bond that Bremner felt, despite their distance, had always been there. "It was to do with humour and sport. It wasn't always expressed and he wasn't always there – in fact he was very rarely there – but instinctively I knew that he was proud of me and that he got what I did. To some people it was showing off but he was proud of it and it made him laugh. He also liked to see me playing cricket or rugby so I think I knew that he was proud of me, and to see him as a young man in his prime made me very proud of him."

As a parent, though, Bremner sounds like he takes after his mother more, a shy, modest woman who would spend hours listening to him practise the piano despite being tone deaf. "She was lovely," he says. "A truly good and truly Christian person, a real giver. She could look very elegant and was a good hostess …" He stops. "Sounds like a trolley, doesn't it?" he jokes. "But she was a very loyal wife to Dad, who must have tried her patience to extremes. She absolutely adored my father and she threw everything into us children."

Despite learning to suppress emotion as a child, it is actually relationships that Bremner talks about most contentedly. His wife, his children. And while John Bird and John Fortune don't live close by, "they are mentors and friends and I worship them. I just adore their mix of intelligence and humour. John Bird is wonderfully unstuffy and can smell pomposity miles off. I think of him as being French and John Fortune as being Italian. For years John Bird drove a Citroen and smoked Gitanes and dressed in serge or brown so I had him very much marked down. He reminds me of a French intellectual from the 1950s or 1960s, like Sartre. And John Fortune loves people and food and cooking. The comedian Arthur Smith's dad was in a POW camp and he would stand on a soap box and tell people the meal he would cook for them when the war was over and sometimes I'll sit at John's feet and he will tell me what he's going to cook for supper. Nothing grand … but I just love them and they are father figures and friends and have taught me a lot about life."

You do get the impression that, at 49, Bremner's learned a bit about life. Between his divorce and second marriage he floundered through an unhappy period of doomed relationships where he seemed to search desperately for the emotional stability he didn't find until his forties. His career may be at a crossroads and yet you sense that whatever happens, he'll sort of be OK. Maybe his increased insight is the advantage of getting older, though he hates that process. The layers of silt building up. Ghosts of the past whispering in his ear. And the decaying body, of course, because he's got a very dodgy knee that he has to keep getting injections in.

He went by the Kennedy memorial near Regent's Park the other day. "I just thought, 'Shit, I'm older now than Kennedy was when he was shot.'" Nothing like the whiff or mortality to focus your thoughts. Heads or tails? I think Bremner would call tails. That's where his legacy lies and maybe his father helped him understand that. "In terms of family, you think of continuity and whatever else you do, what you put into those people in terms of your presence. They know that you're there and that they're loved, and giving them that sort of security is what becomes important."

• Rory Bremner will be talking to John Fortune at the Borders Book Festival (18-21 June) in Melrose on Friday 19 June at 9.30pm. For tickets, contact 0844 357 1060 or visit www.bordersbookfestival.org for online bookings.