JOE talks exclusively to Matt Berry, our new Agony Uncle…

Introducing MATT BERRY! Were you a fan of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, loved The IT Crowd and never miss an episode of Toast Of London?

Maybe Berry's parody anthropological shorts for BBC iPlayer brighten up your day or you love surreal sitcom House Of Fools, starring Berry, Vic Reeves, Bob Mortimer and Morgana.

However you know Matt Berry, you are going to be hearing a lot more of him on JOE.

This is part one of our exclusive interview with the award-winning writer and comic, who we are thrilled to announce is JOE's new Agony Uncle.

Let's get one thing clear early on, Matt Berry doesn't sound much like Matt Berry at all. Neither is he like Matt Berry you see on the telly or online.

And of course he is nothing the ridiculous, arrogant f**k-up Steven Toast of Channel 4 series Toast of London.

But what about on a night out? Has Berry never slipped into character after a few? "No way!” he tells JOE. “No way because I’m really happy and lucky and Toast is the exact opposite. He thinks he should have it all and be further up chain. Whereas I am the luckiest man in London!”

Berry may luckily fail to share similarities with Toast, but Toast is based on a real person, in fact he is based on about three people, all of whom haven't a clue.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFvfSS38h2U

“The main one is someone quite well-known who I work with," says Berry with a smile. “Because you know, you do voiceovers with other people quite a lot, like a young voice and one from a different generation...

"I won’t say who it is but one person I was working with properly lost his s**t in the studio, and I was watching it - and it was f**king brilliant. Of course it was so unnecessary, I didn’t say a word and nicked everything he did and stuck it in Toast, pretty much word for word.”

You’d think given the profile of the Bafta-winning show, seeing as it was recently commissioned for its third series, someone would have worked it out by now?

"No, because they are so arrogant they never think it is them,” says Berry laughing. "The other ones I’ve based things on, they actually say to me 'it's so-and-so', they go ‘I know you have based him on this or that person’, and in my head I’m going ‘I haven’t. It's you, d*ckhead’.” 

https://instagram.com/p/4EOZSKl2u-/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCSO2CkyJOk