Trigger Happy TV's Dom Joly reveals why he is more at war with modern life than ever

Hidden camera TV is not exactly considered to be the highest art form in comedy. The overwhelming majority of it tends to either be contrived or simply unfunny. But when done well, it has a brazen-faced charm to it. As is the case with Trigger Happy TV.

When it came to a halt in the early noughties, it was one of the most famous hidden camera television shows around. Set in an altogether simpler time when YouTube was just a twinkle in some prepubescent tech guy's eye and polyphonic ringtones were all the rage, the show saw its star Dom Joly run around ambushing unsuspecting members of the great British public.

Fifteen years later, Trigger Happy TV is back and Joly is as at war with the modern world as ever. The only difference being the enemy has gone from being stuffy bureaucrats to smart phones.

“I have always been at war with modern life,” Joly tells The Independent. “The first Trigger Happy TV was at war with bureaucracy and traffic wardens. Basically anyone in a uniform - park wardens irritated me. This time those symbols of bureaucracy and control have gone online and gone a bit automated."

Joly is wholly aware of the dangers and risks resurrecting a popular show can pose. Fortunately for him, the series, which came out in September, has been a hit, becoming the most viewed original commission for All Four, Channel 4’s online video on demand service. They have even wrangled their way off the world wide web and on to the real TV for the Christmas period.

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He has been careful to ensure the show reflects the fact it is no longer the noughties and is 2016. “I hate shows that come back and rehash old characters and do the same stuff. My one rule was that everything had to be new,” he explains. “The only thing I did bring back was the phone. The phone is the thing if you haven’t seen Trigger Happy you know about.”

Although he confesses that he himself is not a fan of the phone, he also says he couldn't resist because phones have changed so drastically since it first aired.

“Fifteen years on, he has got a smart phone and he’s also got all these apps and is on Tinder.”

Joly says the show is essentially everything which irritates him now - even more than it did when it came off air. Tinder is not the only emblem of the modern epoch. Hipsters and vapes also feature on the new show. “We have a huge three and a half foot vape which is plugged into a smoke machine and fills a room within ten seconds with some hipster claiming it is his human right to vape.”

But who are the people lapping up the new series? Joly insists it is not overly nostalgic folk reliving their wild telly watching youth. Instead, he says it is a 50 per cent split between 30-45 year olds taking a trip down memory lane and the 18-24 bracket.

According to him, the feedback for the show has been incredible. ”I didn’t know how people will take it but the response was unbelievable. Seeing as I get trolled every day on twitter, it was extraordinary how nice people were about it online.”

Hidden camera might not be the most exalted genre in TV, but Joly remains dedicated to it and believes in the need for it to be taken seriously.

“It is seen by a lot of people as the lowest rung in comedy,” he reflects. “If you're supposed to be brainy you go off and do scripted [shows] and so I think the people that are left doing hidden camera a) think it’s easy b) think that it’s just basically about shouting and just doing stupid stuff. I think hidden camera is an art form and it has to be done properly.”

What about Joly himself - how has he filled the last decade and a half? After all, it’s a rather unusual career to follow on from. Well, he did a couple more, less successful, TV shows, and then embarked on a journalistic career, travelling to the Syrian Desert, and then on a worldwide tour investigating attitudes to alcohol around the world for a travel series called Dom Joly's Happy Hour. He even found his way into everywhere from I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here and the hermit kingdom that is North Korea in 2010.

It has taken all that for him to realise Trigger Happy TV is where his heart lies. “I tried to escape it for 13 years. I’ve written three serious travel books, travelled around the world doing journalism, but what really came to me at the end was the thought I’m lucky enough to be good at one thing.”

But while he is positive about the future of the series, unsurprisingly, he is less effusive about the shock victory of President-elect Donald Trump. “I want to shoot myself I think it's the most depressing that has ever happened in the history of the world,” he says. “But I think you’ve got to let him f**k up now rather than people to trying to take him out or get him impeached.”

Dom Joly will be back on our screens on Christmas Eve on Channel 4 at 11pm with an all-new Trigger Happy Christmas Special. The entire all new 2016 Trigger Happy mini-series is also available on Channel 4's All4.