When we asked the general public who they would most like to read about, from a choice of the entire comedy world, you cried as with one voice: "Please, tell us about Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson!" And who are we to argue? Simon and Jess are currently - perhaps literally, as you read this - writing the greatly anticipated second series of Spaced, which is due to be broadcast in Spring 2001. Armed with questions from you - the comedy-loving public - we travelled to the Spaced offices in Kilburn to talk to Simon about Spaced, the nature of fame, the boundaries of comedy, and his socks.

The first thing you notice on entering the Spaced office is the giant, life-size poster of Tim Bisley and Daisy Steiner. The office is covered in Spaced memorabilia - the walls are host to a lot of the original artwork from the programme. The Bear growls down from one wall, the 'Gods' Third Leg' album cover from another. As we look around, Simon points out the poster designed for Daisy's performance piece 'Rabbit', which didn't make the final edit. At the top of the office, two desks sit facing each other, each with a lap top computer. Beside the desk stands a flip chart with plot lines and suggestions for the fifth episode of the second series. Colin, Daisy's dog, features prominently in this episode, as does Tyres, the clubbing king. But we are sworn to secrecy.

Jess is away today, filming a small part in the new British film being made by 'This Year's Love' director, and she will send her answers to us via email. We leave the Spaced office behind and follow Simon through an extended tour around Kilburn to find a pub that isn't closed.

Simon and Jess have been working on the new series for two months, and have completed four episodes out of seven so far. Simon is fairly confident about the new series. "It's going rather well at the moment. We've written four very good episodes, and we've just come up with this cracking storyline for an episode involving Mike which I won't say, but is going to be very funny." Simon and Jess first worked together on the Paramount sketch show Six Pairs of Pants. Jess turned up to the audition with her friend Katy Carmicheal (who plays Twist in Spaced), who coincidentally Simon went to university with. "Me and Katy had a stand up act called the Liz Hurleys", explains Jess. "We dressed up as transvestites from Manchester who in turn were dressed up as Liz Hurley. We had socks down our pants and nobody got the joke apart from us. We did a few open spots and got told to fuck off the stage during the first one." Jess hadn't been invited to audition, but she auditioned anyway, and got the part. "When I met her, there was a real kind of thing between us," says Simon. "We just got on really really well. Jess really really makes me laugh, I mean she has me in fits, and I kind of just recognised that in her. And of course you want to work with people you work well with and you can bounce off, and when we did Asylum together a year later, I just realised that we should work together." They were approached by Paramount, who said they wanted to make a TV show for them. "We said okay, but we want to write it - if you're going to do that then let us write it. And that's how Spaced was born." The show became a co-production between LWT and Paramount. "It happened very organically. It was one of those things where you just think, I wanna work with you. And she had to."

The last two years have been incredibly eventful for both Simon and Jess. Quite apart from the huge success of Spaced, they have been busy working on some of the most successful British comedy programmes of the last few years. Jess played Cheryl, next door neighbour to the Royle Family, on what must be the most successful BBC sitcom since Fawlty Towers. "I love Cheryl, it is an honour and a pleasure to play her." In 1999, she won the British Comedy Award for best female comedy performance. "I love Cheryl, it is an honour and a pleasure to play her."

Simon appeared alongside the cream of British comedy performers, including Kevin Eldon and Mark Heap, on Big Train, the BBC2 sketch show from the writers of Fr. Ted. "Big Train was a brilliant experience. Short of Spaced, it was probably the happiest thing. It was all written by Graham [Linehan] and Arthur [Matthews]. They did the ideas, but a lot of it was improvised so they'd say, 'OK, your friend's a cat, he doesn't get on with this mouse and there is a fight that you have to break up' and we'd go from there." Will there be another series of Big Train? "I'd love to do another one but I don't think we're gonna. All five of us, we're all doing different things at different times. You know, Kevin and the rest of the gang are doing a show with Chris Morris and I'm doing Spaced and Mark is doing Spaced with me and Julia's doing a show that is being produced by Steve Coogan's production company. So I doubt we'll do another Big Train. Which I'm a bit upset about but you know. What can you do?"

Simon went on to work with Arthur Matthews on the 60s sitcom 'Hippies'. As Ray, the editor of an anarchic underground magazine, Simon was the principle character of the show, something he didn't initially know. "I didn't realise until I got the scripts on the first read-through, that I was carrying the show. I was quite surprised and it didn't dawn on me until about three episodes in, that I was having to do a lot of the work. It's tiring at times, like when you're always on the rehearsal room floor and Sally [Phillips] and Darren [Boyd] are sat reading magazines and playing in the green room and I want to be in there playing with them. But I just did what I had to do and I think I did all right. It is nerve racking though." Despite some very fine performances from a very fine cast, Hippies received a very lukewarm reception from the press. "They were very funny about it," says Simon, with some disappointment. "So when people actually come up and say 'I really enjoyed Hippies' to you, you think, oh thank fuck for that!"

Simon does confess to paying a lot of attention to reviews and press coverage. "You're a slave to it really. I would hesitate to believe anyone that said they didn't pay it any attention. At least a bit. When Spaced came out, you know, we'd be at the newsagents in the mornings to pick up the papers and magazines like Time Out. Every Tuesday morning, I'd get up and go to the newsagents and read it in the shop, before I got back into my car, just to make sure everything was okay, and of course it was, which was great." The press coverage for Spaced on the whole was very positive - with one reviewer going as far as to proclaim it the saviour of British comedy. Even so, it did receive its fair share of negative coverage. "You just want to be liked," says Simon. "When you do TV, coming from stand up, the reaction isn't immediate. With stand up, you get a laugh, you're there, and you know that what you've done is funny, whereas with TV you get it down on video and then that's it. All you get is the press, and they're so unreliable in some respects, because they're not real people. I hate some reviewers. We had one review for Spaced in the Guardian which was really negative, but it almost felt like they hadn't seen it. It seemed to me that kind of attitude that says well, if we can't discover you, we'll be the first one to knock you, and that kind of thing makes me see red and I wanted to find that person and hit them."

Feedback from the public therefore is very important to both Simon and Jess. "I'll never tire of people coming up to me on the street," says Simon, "that's always nice, it makes your day if someone just takes the trouble to. I was in the pub yesterday and somebody just came up and shook my hand and said Thanks very much, and just went, and that's all really nice." Any down sides? "I don't like being stared at, that's the worst thing. I can't get on the tube now at peak times without somebody going 'urrrgh!' and staring. I don't mind - come up and say hello, but don't... point. . But I can't lie, I think it's great. I really enjoy it." They both receive fan mail, which they try to personally answer. "I get letters from autograph collectors," says Jess, "which I always reply to as I've got a drawer full of photos which I can't wait to get rid of. I like 'doing correspondence' though and I still get excited when I get a letter which isn't a bill." "Everyone's very nice, you know, just very sort of, um... not mad at all" says Simon. "Now and again you get like a scrap of paper. When I did Faith in the Future, I got a letter that was just like scrawled on a torn off piece of A4 that said 'Dear Jools, can I have your autograph?' and that was it so I didn't know who to send it to!"

One reason why both Simon and Jess seek this kind of feedback could be to do with the fact that Spaced is such a personal project. "There's something of us both in the characters, definitely. I think Jess is more like Daisy than she would care to admit to be honest. She's more grounded and slightly less flaky than Daisy I suppose." They have both drawn on personal experiences to flesh out the characters in the programme. "That whole storyline about Tim and his girlfriend came out of real life" says Simon. "I'd split up with a girlfriend of five years and I wanted to kind of work through it. so I wrote a sitcom. And I feel better now as well! So yeah, there's a hell of a lot of us in there. I mean, obviously, we're not playing ourselves. There are aspects of the characters which we've invented but there is nothing more effective in writing or performing than the truth I think. In comedy particularly, the funniest comedy comes out of reality even if it is taken off in a bizarre tangent you know, it's the truth that's the funniest because you can deliver it with the most honesty."

"I like writing Daisy," says Jess, "as she doesn't question her motives and I like playing her because she's happy most of the time. Writing and performing is an advantage. I sometimes do the voices for other characters to see if a scene is working." Simon agrees. "The good thing about writing, not only for yourself, but for people that you know, is that you can write entirely for their strengths. When I write for Tim it's like I'm writing knowing that I'll be able to do this, or with a bit of work I'll be able to do this." He grins. "And also you can write stuff like, the whole paintball episode in the first series of Spaced, which was written because I wanted to go and do that." He laughs. "And we had a brilliant two days filming that sequence with Pete [Serafinowicz], Nick, Paul [Putner] and me in the woods just running around and firing off. We just had a really really good laugh. So you can write wish fulfilment things. As I've done in the new series, there's adventures which I fancied doing, so they're in the series." For the first series, says Jess, "Simon wrote a scene featuring Gillian Anderson in the hope that she might do it."

Drawing out the reader questions, the one most commonly asked by the readers of KRFS was "Who is your favourite character in Spaced?". So, who is their most favourite character in Spaced? "Brian," says Jess. "I would like never being expected to make any sense." And Simon? ""I think, it's a toss up I think between Mike and Brian. I really love writing the character of Mike. My best friend Nick who plays him, had never acted before in his life." Nick is also responsible for the original idea of the character of Mike. "He had this character that he used to do to make me laugh called Mike, who was a lot older than the character he eventually played but it was a similar thing. A sort of army guy who was obsessed and rather patronising. I said 'Look, if I write this character for my show will you play him?' and he said 'Okay then' and that's how he became that character so it's quite a special thing for me."

A lesser-known fact of the origins of the character of Brian is that he was originally to be played by The Boosh's Julian Barratt. Simon explains. "Me and Julian and Jess did a show together called Asylum and Brian was a version of the character he played in that. But because his agency, Avalon, were quite intent on him doing certain things and not other things, they wanted him to work on his own show, they wouldn't free him up for us, so Mark took over. But Mark then changed the character slightly and made it his own, made it much more sympathetic and less arrogant and it became something that was really rather nice in itself so I really like Brian too for what Mark made it."

Another reader question: 'Tell us some behind the scenes gossip from Spaced.' Jess? "I wore a bra which had previously been worn by Ulrika Johnson." Simon? "Gossip?" he laughs, and thinks. "Em... we eat buns at 11 o'clock. Bun Time was for me the great point in the day. Cos we'd shoot for twelve hours. We'd go on camera at 8 o'clock in the morning, and we'd wrap at 8 o'clock in the evening, and so it was always really tiring. We were up at 5am, and we were in make up at 7am, and we'd start shooting, so 11 o'clock Bun Time was the time that we all really were 'Mmm'. That was my favourite time of day." He pauses again. "And then sandwich time in the afternoon as well."

The next we shall see of Simon and Jess on our TV screens will be their cameo appearances in the new Reeves and Mortimer remake of the 50s TV show, Randall and Hopkirk Deceased. Appearing in separate episodes, Jess plays a Czechoslovakian pregnant woman and Simon appears as the leader of a right wing fascist organisation "which is trying to bump off this guy that Bob and Vic are trying to protect." Were Vic and Bob easy to work with? "I didn't see Vic / Jim that much, but I worked with Bob a bit, and he's a really really nice guy. Really mad, but very fun to work with. So I'm looking forward to seeing that. It's going to be amazing, I think. Certainly the cast and the production was enormous, so short of them not being very good, I think it will be great. Good fun."

And finally to the winner of the Best Reader Question, and now proud owner of a genuine piece of Spaced memorabilia, as signed by Simon Pegg, Edel Roycraft of Dublin asks 'Does Simon wear matching socks? 'Cause he doesn't look the type.' "Yes I do. Unfortunately today I am wearing a terrible pair of socks because they are the last socks I've got that are clean which are Lara Croft socks. I never, ever wear novelty underwear because I think that is just a ridiculous thing. But I do have a pair that my mum bought me which I have on now - but they do match! So yes I do."

Pictures (c) Channel 4