Funnyman Dom Joly is best known for shouting into a big mobile and scaring pensioners as the star of Trigger Happy TV, but more recently he's carved a niche for himself as an award-winning travel writer and author, as well as continuing to front television documentaries.

Dom Joly And The Black Island sees this lifelong Tintin fan don the clothes – and hair! – of his childhood hero in an adventure around Europe in a bid to emulate the Belgian sleuth. It airs on Channel 4 on March 19th.

By Ben Falk

This sounds like it was a childhood fantasy come true?

It definitely was. I was a Tintin fan since I was about two years old. All my brothers and sisters had Tintin books, so I was the first thing I read. I do loads of travelling and I think it gave me my love of that.

What do you think is the reason behind Tintin's enduring appeal?

I think he's quite anonymous. If you look at his face there's not much too it, you can project yourself onto him. He was certainly cooler in the Fifties. Now, he looks quite dated and it's a bit odd that he lives with an alcoholic elderly gentleman and there's no women about and he doesn't seem to do a proper job. He's probably a bit clean-cut for nowadays.

You follow the Black Island story, right?

We tried to recreate certain frames from the book, which was the one where Tintin visited England. I wanted to go round the world and do all the Tintins, but our budget restricted us. We took a ferry, went on a train up to Scotland. We ended up landing in this tiny plane on a beach in Barra, which is an island in the far east of Scotland. It was a big pointless adventure, which frankly all of Tintin's are too.

And you dressed up as him, complete with ginger quiff?!

I was trying to be funny as well. Tintin seems to wear the same clothes all the time, so he'd be a bit stinky. He never seems to file an actual story and has an unlimited expense account, but doesn't carry cash. He's a very odd character. I dyed my hair ginger. I never knew how much abuse gingers got. When I was in the Tintin costume it was fine, because people get what you're doing, but in between shoots there was a week and I was wandering round in normal clothes and I got some funny looks. People thought I was having some weird midlife crisis.

Do Captain Haddock and Snowy the dog join you on your travels?

When I was in Brussels, I trawled a lot of gay bars dressed as Tintin looking for men with beards and saying 'would you be willing to come and share an adventure with me?' It went a bit wrong. Then I tried to steal a dog that looked like Snowy outside a doughnut shop and got arrested. [The police] were slightly confused, because Tintin's such a hero in Belgium. Even my badly-dressed version of him made them confused and they let me go.

Have you given up being a straightforward comedian, then?

I fell into being a comedian and didn't want to be stuck doing comedy. It's taken quite a long time to get people to stop thinking of me as the guy with the big mobile. I'm hoping to do a series for Channel 4 called Take Me To Your Leader which is where I go and meet various dictators round the world and see what they do in their time off. I've got a book coming out this year in which I go to places like North Korea, Chernobyl and Cambodia and hopefully it'll show people I don't just dress up as a squirrel. But it doesn't really bother me.

So will we ever see Trigger Happy TV again?
I'm hoping to do a Trigger Happy movie next year. It's basically taking the ethos of Trigger Happy but incorporating it with flashmobs. It's called War Of The Flea and we're hopefully filming that in the States next year. It's a proper movie.