TV Interview: Dan Clarke stars in How Not To Live Your Life

There aren’t many things we can thank the economic downturn for. Bankers weeping. Being able to watch every episode of Neighbours as you sit in your unemployed misery. Yet for comedian Dan Clark, it was his route to success.

Commissioned to make one-minute comic shorts for the Comedy Channel – “we just took the camera and I directed it and it was really all done on the fly” – he developed an online following, and before long the BBC was knocking on his door.

The shorts were in list ­format, showing Clark in a certain scenario – 10 Things Not To Say To Your Date, etc. “And we said well, you can do that for half an hour, but that would just get tedious. Can you imagine, 28 minutes of it? 100 things?”.

But it soon developed into a neat hook for his own ­sitcom, How Not To Live Your Life, in which the lead character, Don, occasionally stops time and flips through ­possible outcomes. What did they see in it?

“I think they saw a good hook, and everyone in TV likes a hook. But I think they also saw that you could make something with a high gag count without spending a lot of money. Obviously, they gave us a bit of a bigger budget for the series…”

The economy’s bust has clearly been Clark’s boom. After a strong run on BBC Three, which saw it repeated on BBC Two, tonight sees the final episode of the first ­series, and next Tuesday the start of the second. And a third is in the offing.

HNTLYL follows the adventures of late-20s idiot savant Don Danbury (Clark) as his supreme lack of empathy and social grace destroys every half-promising situation he finds himself in.

“All budgets have been cut across television,” says Clark. “So I suppose being cheap does help. Actually, the recession does seem quite good for comedy. I was just up at the Edinburgh festival and it’s boomed. See? The recession is good for some people!”

Clark is shuttling between London and LA as he remains in talks about a US version of the show – “it’s funny how quickly you get used to it. When I first went over, with one DVD of just the pilot, I thought: ‘Who am I?’ On the second trip I was saying: ‘I’m not sure we should go into that meeting. I’m not sure they’re the right people for us’” – but it’s hardly been a tale of overnight ­success for the 33-year-old.

Having spent time as a stand-up, he got his first big break as a callow 23-year-old to co-write Channel 4 series Estate Agents. It was panned, with one critic saying “the person who commissioned this should be taken out on a boat and shot”.

“Actually, some people liked it,” counters Clark. “But yes, about 70 per cent of the press gave it a good kicking. I think the problem was it was about estate agents. Channel 4 had this big idea that people would love estate agents being really horrible. But ­actually people were like: ‘These guys do a job that hinders my life, why do I care?’”

And his hopes for the new series? “Well, I actually like that the first series didn’t get promoted that much. It found its audience, and people always like comedy more if they’ve discovered it.”

The second series of 'How Not To Live Your Life' begins on Tuesday 15th September at 10.30pm on BBC3