Stu here. Episode 500 is somehow fast approaching. It's already in the cat. I can't wait for you to hear it.

I need your feedback. I want to gather some data on your favourite episodes, your best moments, see if there's any fun anecdotes I can uncover along the way.

Something must have happened in your life in nearly 500 episodes of podcasting.

And as a thanks for taking part, myself and producer Callum will be gifting an Insider's Insider 12-month membership on Patreon to one lucky respondent. You can pay this forward if you're already one. The survey's super short, all the questions are skippable, and this would mean a lot if you could just take five minutes out of your day to go and fill the thing in. Head to Stuartgoldsmith.com slash survey, or the link is in the show notes.

There's going to be a very short break in September before we approach that milestone,

but lots of exciting stuff to the show. I'm Stuart Goldsmith. I believe we are five episodes away from episode 500. And this is Doug Naler, the co-creator of the hugely long-running,

insanely successful sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf, which, as you will hear in depth in this episode,

was a huge part of my comedy, whatever it is, family, no, family tree, antecedency, yes,

something like that. He has written,

he, Doug, has written or co-written every single episode and has directed more than 20 of them himself.

Beyond Red Dwarf, Doug was also head writer and script editor on the original spitting image,

which another thing I grew up with. That would have been a faster sentence earlier I grew up with.

And he's also written a number of award-winning radio shows, and on top of that is a best-selling author. And in the first half of this episode, we're going to discuss Doug's first children's novel, Sinbin Island, which is about four wayward kids banished to an island. And it is absolutely brilliant. This is, it's so rare. This happened in the, um, the Alan Davies Returns episode as well. It's so joyful to be able to interview someone when you have read their entire book, and our family loved it, as you will hear. We will talk about screenwriting Red Dwarf. We'll talk about how that show's rhythm came from language and character, not just gags. It's an extraordinary gag-dense sitcom.

And in the second half of the show, we're going to delve even deeper into all things red dwarf.

So join The Insiders Club on Patreon, of course, from £3 a month. You get access to the full video,

you get rid of all the adverts, and you get exclusive extra content from Doug Naler all about the inside story of spitting image

and what went right and what went wrong. You can find out more about that at patreon.com

slash comcom pod. Here is Doug Naler, who I mean, this is not in my habit to interrupt me introducing

the guest. I found him so lovely and was genuinely thrilled and a bit like a small teenage boy, as you will now hear.

Here's Doug Nader.

Welcome to the show, Doug Nailer.

Oh, Stuart, it's lovely to be here.

...