Seeking a solution to the problem, her mother asked if there was anyone else in her class who was unhappy at school There was, and Lorna invited her home for tea. When she was seven, Lorna moved from a local village school to a primary school in Exeter She found it hard to adjust, and often came home in tears. It’s one of the things I enjoy…BACK IN London, after our helicopter trip, I meet Edmonds at the Unique head offices He is more relaxed than he was in Devon We talk again about his retirement. He tells me about the last time anyone asked for his autograph in the street: in Exeter, the previous Saturday “Students,” he says, with some surprise. “The very sort of people you would have thought would have the balls to stick two fingers up and go, `Wanker!’ Crossed the street and asked for an autograph.”And he tells me a story about his daughter Lorna. But if you do the sort of shows I’ve done, it is amazing how much you become part of people’s lives If people write to me, they always get a response. I do try my level best – if you write to me, care of Unique, you will get a personal response.

I have.Me (obviously horrified): What are they like?Him: By the tone of your voice, they’re not like that.Me: Well.. I can’t imagine.. doing that.Him: Well, to a certain extent, I can’t. And one person has never failed to send me a good luck card at the start of a new series. Or send Helen and I flowers on our wedding anniversary.Me (mildly horrified): Have you ever met them?Him: Yeah. I probably get 100 letters a week asking me to do charity appearances And I try and do what I can But fan letters Probably half a dozen of those a week. What I do have is some very, very loyal supporters who write to me regularly and send me birthday cards.

And almost without exception they’re very unimaginative letters. It’s not because I’m frightened of what you’ll write, but because you’re here You’re in my world. I’m not in your world.”ME: How much fan mail do you get?Him: Very little I get more begging letters than I do fan letters Money.Me: Can I have some of your pounds 20m?Him: Hahaha Good one Yeah, very much so. A feature of anybody’s career in the public eye is that you’re going to give the opposition opportunities to take a pop at you.”He stops and leans forward.

“One of the biggest weaknesses I have is that I’m desperate to be liked I’m desperate – I’m desperate for you to like me. The fact that, for the first five years, both he and the show were phenomenally popular just made it worse. That he could also be a perfectly reasonable man with a happy family life seemed inconceivable.”Well,” he says “A lot of people hated it A lot of people hate me. And Edmonds – with his Colin-from-Accounts zaniness, his relentless cheeriness and his strangled “funny” voice – personified these values. What have I done to deserve this?”The answer? Noel’s House Party. The show was a totem pole of stupidity, a pyrotechnic fiasco of lowest-common-denominator broadcasting, a costly and inane weekly reminder of everything that was wrong with British culture. He says that because so much of his career was built on practical jokes and humiliation of others, people want – expect – him to be a man with no sense of humour He’s right, to a certain extent.

But it can’t account for Tony Parsons’s observation that he would like to beat him to death with a baseball bat. Or for the official statement from the makers of the programme Brass Eye, who hoodwinked Edmonds into making a ridiculous televised appeal condemning a fictitious East European narcotic called “Cake”; when he complained, they said that their only regret was that they had not killed him while they had him in front of them because he “is the Antichrist” This kind of demonisation baffles him “I’m not a paedophile,” he says “I’m not a mass murderer. It’s a reflexive response to any implication that people might dislike him, his public persona, or the television programmes that have made him famous. Through the window, we can see their daughter Charlotte riding her horse around the Olympic- sized indoor exercise arena.”That’s because,” he offers mildly over his Coke, “of the joker-who-can’t- take-a-joke thing.”Edmonds uses this line a lot. Is that an answer? I have an 11-year-old Bentley which I drive occasionally.