Young Bond author Charlie Higson on comedy, Blood Fever and Casino Royale

Charlie Higson has a new spin on an old cliché. "Forget tears of a clown," he says. "It's tears of a nutter. Comedians aren't just miserable buggers - they're insane. They have very fragile egos. Stand-ups are the worst. The desire to expose yourself like that - that need for love and attention - shows deep emotional damage - reports CEN.

"Not me, of course," he adds with a grin. "I'm perfectly normal."

Well, naturally. As a writer, producer and performer, Higson, 47, has been at the forefront of British comedy for well over a decade, with a hand in such iconic shows as Harry Enfield And Chums, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and Shooting Stars.

But he's still best known for The Fast Show, the kinetic comedy he co-created with Paul Whitehouse, which single-handedly revived the sketch show format and gifted the nation's playgrounds and offices with more catchphrases per square inch than any programme before or after (and that includes Little Britain).

"It was huge fun to do and, as an added bonus, it seems to have stood the test of time," says Higson. "At the time, we were just making a show we enjoyed doing and we had no idea how big it was going to be, or even whether we were going to get another series. It's only in retrospect that you can see whether things were important and have a lasting value."

Higson and Whitehouse started out as painter and decorators (though the former had already enjoyed cult success fronting his band, The Higsons, who recorded several Peel Sessions for Radio One).

They shared a house on the same London estate as Harry Enfield, and the three of them spent many nights entertaining each other in the local pub. When Enfield's career began to take off, he invited his friends to write for him, and they went on to create some of his most memorable comic grotesques.

Their success led to other TV work - Higson, in particular, formed a lasting association with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer - but it wasn't until The Fast Show that they had a hit to call their own. For all his pride in the show, though, Higson is acutely aware he can't trade on its success indefinitely.

"You do realise that the first one was over 10 years ago now, and I ought to go on and do something new," he says, half-jokingly. "I doubt we'll ever to be able to repeat the success of The Fast Show - its timing and our age and things coming together in that way.

"But Paul and I are working on a comedy film at the moment, which would involve the other members of The Fast Show team. The Python's managed to go on to make some pretty good films, and hopefully we can too."

In the meantime, Higson has found an unlikely new role as the official custodian of an even more iconic British success story - James Bond.

A couple of years ago, he was approached by the estate of Ian Fleming, who were looking for a writer to create a series of novels based on James Bond's schooldays.

"They wanted to revive interest in the whole literary angle of James Bond, to remind the world that, actually, Bond started in books, not the movies," explains Higson. "So they approached a number of different writers and, for some reason, decided to go with me, which is nice. Maybe everyone else told them to bugger off."

Higson's first Young Bond novel, last year's Silverfin, has already racked up UK sales in excess of 150,000 and the second (in a projected series of five), Blood Fever, is out this month. But re-writing Bond - with its prevalent themes of sex, violence, death and sadism - for juvenile readers presents its own challenges.

"The age group I'm aiming at are not particularly interested in sex - they're a bit uncomfortable with that," says Higson. "But they love violence, so that's not a problem.

"I've tried to put as many classic Bond elements in, but scale them down to a level that kids will be familiar with. Violence and killing is a tricky one - obviously him being a character in a children's book, and a 13-year-old who's still at school, he can't go around killing people.

"But a lot of people around him die, and he does become more cynical and builds this shell up around him. By the end of the fifth book, we will see him poised to become who he is in later life."

The young Charlie Higson didn't require any schoolboy trappings to fall in love with James Bond. A solitary child whose public school education brought him precious little contact with girls, he was seduced by the glamorous world of international espionage from an early age.

"I grew up in the 60s, which was the decade of James Bond," he recalls. "If you want a symbol of what the 60s was all about, Sean Connery in one of his smart suits would pretty well sum it up."

Pushed to name the best Bond film of all time, Higson plumps for 1967's You Only Live Twice. "But I'm also a big fan of Dr No because, going to see a Bond film as a kid, there'd always be a double bill - and nine times out of 10, the old one would be Dr No. So I've probably seen that film 10 times more than any of the others.

"Also, in those days you'd just turn up and catch films from halfway through. So Dr No I was always seeing in bits and pieces. It was years before I managed to watch the whole thing right through."

Higson has high hopes for Casino Royale, which will see the arrival of Daniel Craig as Bond later this year.

"I think it's going to be really interesting," he says. "They're definitely trying to think of new ways of doing it and giving it a bit of a shot in the arm. I don't want to namedrop but I was speaking to Bond composer David Arnold, who happens to be a mate of mine, and he says they really are doing something new and exciting and different. So I'm really looking forward to it."

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