Jon Holmes. 11 o'clock show. Slightly smug looking. Nice hair. Think you know all about him? Think again. Comedy Lounge is proud to present our guide to a huge star of the future, now.

The day before we are due to meet, Jon Holmes rings, and leaves a message on the answering machine. In cool, debonair tones, he leaves his name and number, as instructed. He has the kind of voice that tempts you to ring him back and ask him to play a request for all the girls in the office and everyone who knows us. Indeed, we did half expect him to announce 'Wouldn't it be good' by Nik Kershaw and then take an ad-break. In short, the consummate disc jockey. Combining this with the decidedly frisky emails we had received from him in the weeks preceding our interview, we were slightly apprehensive as to what to expect from the man Sarah Alexander has described as a "fun-sized mini-man".

Slightly famed across the nation for being "the bloke from the 11 o'clock show that isn't Iain Lee", Jon Holmes certainly has one of the least recognisable faces of minor telly celebrities. That's why, as we walk with him through Soho the following night, people tend to double take and stare in our general direction, wondering where they know him from. On the cusp of being a minor telly celebrity, Jon is already fairly well known in commercial radio circles. But for all the wrong reasons. "I've been sacked from three or four radio stations," he announces proudly. Oh Good.

Jon began writing and performing comedy at school. Happily, he fits in with all the usual stereotypes, being the class clown at school - "On account of me not being tall. And therefore swearing in a funny way would be the classic cliché of insisting that people take some notice of me. Or I'd get trampled on the back." He met his comedy writing partner, Andy Hurst, at Kent University. Jon was writing and directing the college review show and "had no one to be in it. So I made him be in it. Because he just happened to be around the house." After college, Andy moved to London to start his rock career, and Jon began writing for Spitting Image "as it was dying on its arse. I killed it, in fact, I think." Andy moved back to Kent, and Jon roped him in to co-writing the new radio comedy show he was working on "because it was lonely. And I thought it would be more fun with two of us."

That programme was Grievous Bodily Radio, which has reached near-legendary status since it's broadcast on Radio Four in 1997. The show was a fast-moving, hard-edged programme, which featured pastiches of (then) current television and radio programmes, along with what James Sumner describes as 'a kind of studied, deliberate crassness'. The original intention had been to run the programme simultaneously on BBC Radio One as well as Four, but weeks before the series aired, Radio 1 dropped all comedy programming. The BBC also pulled the last episode in the series at the last moment because, at that time, it was just too darned rude for a Radio Four audience. "Radio Four took that off air because it was far too much for them," Jon explains smugly. "They were far too frightened of it."

Following this, Jon and Andy began writing on a number of different shows for the BBC, including The Way It Is, The Very World Of Milton Jones and Dead Ringers. Jon is still heavily involved with Dead Ringers, and with changing attitudes at Radio Four, has managed to get some fairly risqué material aired. "I got really told off by our head of department," he proudly declares, "because Helen Bowden [Controller of Radio Four] had sent out a stroppy email complaining about the very rude joke 'Brian Perkins' did to do with Libby Purves's snatch."

Are we beginning to sense a pattern? Jon seems to have built his career around startling old people and frightening radio listeners into complaining. The Daily Mail has described him as 'most offensive' - "I'm quite proud of that, yeah" - something he has listed on his CV. Jon and Andy briefly tried stand up comedy "together," explains Jon, "because neither of us were brave enough to do it on our own. We found very quickly that if we got into radio, we'd have to stand in less places having people shout things at us. doing shows on commercial radio was just like doing stand up comedy, but without a drunk audience. You have far more control over the situation." But apparently not a strong enough grip on just how far you can push things.

His list of ex-employers is already quite impressive, and he is pleased to provide us with the gory details: "I was sacked from CTFM in Kent, Power FM in Hampshire and X FM here. After only one show." How did he get sacked after one show? "I said that next year, XFM should have a Party in the park like Capital FM's, but it should be at Capital's. As listeners, we'll all go down to their thing. When Billie goes on stage, we'll all rush the stage, stab her to death with her own sharpened CDs and then chase Dr. Fox across the fields as though he were a real fox and tear him apart with hounds. For some reason he didn't like that." Right. Was that all? "Oh, and then I went and pissed in Dermot O'Leary's desk drawer, taking the microphone with me. They didn't like that either."

But don't be misled. That kind of crassness, although quite prominent in everything Jon has a hand in, is not the predominant theme of his fairly impressive body of work to date. Working on programmes like Dead Ringers and Milton Jones, Jon - with a new generation of comedy writers - has helped to change the nature of Radio Four programming. Where previously, Radio Four comedy had consisted mainly of panel game shows and Roy Hudd based programming, the inclusion of new talent such as The League Of Gentlemen seems to have opened the way for more experimental, cutting edge programming. And it's for exactly this kind of thing that Jon and Andy this year won the Sony Gold award for Best Entertainment programme for 'The Jon and Andy Show' on Power FM. Which, of course, they subsequently got sacked from. "I think this is going to follow me around forever. I'm going to keep going somewhere and then getting sacked. But I like that. I'm quite proud. Ask me that again when I'm living the life of a tramp, unemployable. See if I'm so cocky then, eh."

Which brings us nicely on to the cockiest of subjects, the 11 O'Clock Show - or the I've Got A Cock Show, as some of the bitchier sections of the internet are calling it. Jon admits to initial misgivings when he was offered a screen test for Iain's job. "I thought 'What?! No, I don't think I do actually, how horrible'" Given the reaction that the name Iain Lee evokes from many comedy fans, Jon did have apprehensions about associating himself with a programme that was, rightly or wrongly, famed for it's misogyny and homophobia. "I didn't know whether it was a good idea or not for a long time, and then thought, oh what the fuck. I'd rather go on and do that then go in and do SMTV. Imagine the horror! Everyone loves that. Ant and Dec go, two new people come in, that'd be hell. Whereas if you're going to go in where everyone hated Ian and Daisy for whatever reason, even if they hate you as well they might not hate you as much. That was my theory. Of course, they do."

Actually, both Jon and Sarah Alexander have been received well by the viewing public, with the new series gaining audience figures close to those received in the heady days of Ali G. The new series brought in an all-new writing team, and a new producer in the shape of Phil Clarke, who had previously worked on Comedy Nation for BBC2 and an insane amount of Punt and Dennis related work on Radio Four. This change of team naturally helped Jon with his decision on whether or not to become involved. "Phil Clarke has got a tremendous amount of respect, because he's fucking good. we thought if Phil's doing it then they might start getting rid of that sort of offensive-for-it's-own-sake misogyny and there might even be some satire in it - you never know."

None the less, this series of the 11 O'Clock Show received the same kind of criticism the old series got. But, Jon reasons, it could just be the nature of the beast. "The trouble with the 11 O'Clock Show audience is that they turn on expecting swearing, knob jokes and insults about famous people. That's what the show is famous for. The moment you try and put in some quite clever jokes, a couple of satire pieces about train crashes, one about William Hague's bandwagon rally - Silence. Everyone was just going, 'Where's the cock joke in that?' But you'd leave it in because you knew people at home might actually appreciate the fact that there was a bit of satire in there. But," he laughs, "it would just get swallowed up in all the cock jokes that were around it. We did try."

Running through his CV, the recurring theme tends to be topical comedy shows. Obviously, topical comedy shows - particularly radio shows like Dead Ringers, The Huddlines and the News Quiz - welcome submissions from new writers all the time, and they are recognised therefore as the best way in to writing professionally. "You think if you connect that to that, in the news, that's hilarious. I must tell someone. And then you think, oh, if I wrote it down and sent it, they might give me ten pounds. And that's kind of how it starts."

A programme like the 11 O'Clock Show, with the scheduling it had - three nights a week - means that a lot of writers have to work together in a very short space of time. At one point during the series there were about twenty writers working on the programme, with Channel 4 lawyers checking the material on the day of broadcast, and often cutting up to fifty percent of the material just hours before the show was due to air. Over the run, some weeks were obviously more difficult than others, "like those difficult weeks when there are two news stories, one of which is a plan crash or something. So you're going, right, we've to come up with three shows - an hour and a half of material - based on one news story. This will be fun. And then people are going 'It was a bit patchy'. well, yes! Obviously!"

That series of the show was originally intended to be the last of the series, but Channel Four are talking of resurrecting the programme again, if Jon and Sarah are interested in staying on as anchors. Jon is unsure at the moment if he wants to stick with the show. "I'm surprised Ian and Daisy stayed with it so long. It's about finding new talent, and training them up on television when no one really cares. Stick them on the 11 o'clock show, it'll be alright." Instead, he is more interested in pursuing his own line of comedy. "That show was great that they let me do bits of that like the gig guide, but obviously I was just simply sitting in on somebody's fag end. Picking up somebody's butt out of an ashtray and smoking it." He sits back. "Weird analogy. Don't know where that came from. Whereas it would be nice to have my own cigarette. What the fuck am I saying?!" Can't help you there.

So, right now Jon finds himself in the middle of pitching ideas left, right and centre. Ideas abound and a number of production companies and telly stations are currently courting him with promises of chocolate and loose women. He remains philosophical about his own particular style of humour. "My theory is, as satirists, our job is to find an angle on anything at all. I get quite annoyed at producers who are doing a topical show and a story comes up like a train crash and they go 'we're not touching that'. And you go, hang on, that's the biggest story of the week. Surely we could find a way to do it, not about the crash particularly, but about the media's perception, how the papers have covered it. And they go, no - you can't say the words. The trouble is no one listens to satire properly. They just hear the words 'train crash' and get all cross without actually listening. And that's what the duty log complaints book is full of - people who haven't listened to the sketch, or haven't listened to what you actually said."

Jon sits back and sighs. "I like being disrespectful, I think that's where it's all comes from. Rather than going around and throwing rocks at police stations, I kind of channel that into writing rude jokes with swearing in them."

Perhaps a toning down of material is called for? "Yeah, but I know I couldn't. You might tell them you would, then you'd open your mouth. Have you seen Private Parts? The Howard Stern. Not in general, have you seen anyone's private parts, obviously. That wasn't the question I was asking. We'll get there later. Yeah, anyway. have you seen anyone's? Not counting your own. In a mirror. Shall I start again?! See what I mean?! See? I can't stop!"

Bless.

Why not visit Jon and Andy's own website, www.poorquality.co.uk

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