Satire is not dead, it’s just been sleeping. Heavily. For a long time. The Comic Strip, whose original run of satirical films in the 1980s helped the likes of Ade Edmondson, Rik Mayall, Jennifer Saunders, Nigel Planer and Dawn French find a wider audience is back, with a first original work since 2005.

The target is on the soft side – taking a pot shot at Tony Blair, his dodgy connections and the machinations of New Labour is hardly original. Or difficult. 

But there are plenty of nice touches – with Tony Blair on the run for murder and being hounded by Robbie Coltrane, as Inspector Hutton (geddit?), taking refuge with Maggie Thatcher (Jennifer Saunders, channelling Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), and brutally disposing of a Marxist tramp (Ross Noble) on a train.

At its heart is a fine Comic Strip debut from Stephen Mangan as the former PM. Here’s what he had to say about it…

So, are you expecting controversy?
It is all utter fantasy. So, you know. I can’t see any reason for people to get upset. We are not remotely suggesting he actually slept with Maggie Thatcher, plotted to kill John Smith and Robin Cook – it is a fantasy. If people want to draw their own warped conclusions, that Blair was actually a mass murderer [raises eyebrow] or would have liked to have slept with Maggie Thatcher, that is their problem!

Jennifer Saunders as Maggie Thatcher: discuss…
If I was Maggie Thatcher, I would be honoured and thrilled that someone with the wit and humanity of Jennifer Saunders was playing me. So yeah, it is lip-smacking, the idea of Jennifer doing that. And she doesn’t disappoint.

And how were the cast? 
I almost had to pinch myself every day. Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Robbie Coltrane, Harry Enfield, the list was just endless. The first day of filming was the Jennifer Saunders stuff, what the heck, you’ve got to start somewhere! I mean the great thing about all of those people, it’s not just that they are funny, but they are genuinely very welcoming. I never for one minute felt I was intruding in someone else’s gang. They were fantastic.

How was the filming? 
It was really a matter of being thrown into the deep end over two frantic weeks, with me running around in my underpants, sack cloths, and some great 50s clothes, driving some great 50s cars, sitting in the back of a truck with sheep urinating on me! And falling headfirst into a deep body of water with a DJ on. It was good, it was mad.

What was your feelings about Blair, through the years?
My relationship with him? I think it was like a lot of people’s, very excited when he came in, had a lot of hopes riding on him. I suppose inevitably, like with any politician, really, that slow, steady disappointment creeping in. They never achieve what you want them to achieve, and then there was the hammer blow of the Iraq war, which was just a disaster and a slow-motion, headlong fall into this war that you never felt Parliament or the public was being told the truth about.

Do you think he’ll be watching?
I don’t know whether they will watch this sort of stuff, would you watch yourself being ridiculed? I don’t know whether they would be able to resist, or maybe their ego wouldn’t let them. There would be a lot of eye-rolling from Tony, saying "I’m not that camp!" I’d like to think they would laugh, I don’t know whether they would. Maybe they'd offer a full apology. No, that would never happen. But wouldn’t it be fantastic to be a fly-on-the-wall while they were watching?

How did you play him?
There are the hand mannerisms that everyone knows, the certain quality of voice that everyone knows, he has this way of answering questions as if to say this is painfully obvious, only an idiot would think otherwise - but the main thing I loved playing about him was his sort of Teflon coating. His ability for nothing to ever be his fault, never having to take responsibility. Cheerfully and self-importantly wander around causing chaos, death and destruction all around him – but he had the ability to justify every decision he made, however wrong it might look from the outside.

What do you make of the film noir style?
The whole story is an on-the-run, film noirish thriller with flashbacks to various decisions they made, and events. It is all set in the 50s, which is a very clever idea. It lifts it out of realism, you are in this fantasy world, this black and white thriller, steam trains and railway stations, trilbys, overcoats, bobbies on the beat.

Could you play any of the coalition?
I could give my Osborne or I could give my Cameron. I went to Public School, and that is pretty handy for the current crop of politicians. There are not a lot of working class heroes in the cabinet are there? So I may yet be called on to give my David Cameron – if only I can re-arrange my face so I look like I am carved out of Edam like he does, then I’m in!

Comic Strip Presents... The Hunt for Tony Blair is on 4OD now.