It’s beyond a joke, satire: more concerned with gagging orders than gags, with laughter lines replaced by furrowed brows. John Bird, one-third of Channel 4’s Bremner, Bird and Fortune — which routinely dissects the remnants of Tony Blair’s reputation — has a certificate amid the Baftas and awards in his study declaring: “John Bird and Zebedee have reached the required standard to move into the advanced class.” But otherwise there are not a lorra laughs: humour is a serious business, he says.

Bird is also co-star with Stephen Fry in Absolute Power, a series that starts on BBC2 on Thursday. In both shows, the chief target is spin. I have seen the previews and for me the best episode of Absolute Power sends up the empty spin of modern art, where a sub-Damien Hirst “artist” pretends to bleed himself to death — and walks off with the Turner prize.

The previous series provoked a stink when the BBC censored Fry, who plays a PR maestro, saying: “There is nothing I could teach the prime minister about deception, manipulation and lying — except how to do it properly.” Has there been any censorship of the new series? “Well there was a scene where Stephen went to find a dog for the prime minister as it was thought good for his image and said: ‘It shouldn’t be too lap-doggish — he has Tessa Jowell for that’. Someone then said: ‘Is this a good idea — she is going to decide on the licence fee?’ ” And so it may now be cut.

More good gossip: Gordon Brown approached Bremner, Bird and Fortune, three men whose trade is tearing the prime minister limb from limb, to write gags for his speeches. They said “no”, Bird discloses, and not merely because making Brown humorous was a Herculean task.

“He is meant to be much funnier in private, but then he could hardly be less so,” he says. “It would be interesting to see how he did as prime minister. He would have to stop bulldozing everything.”

An old-style comic might say that of Bremner, Bird and Fortune: do they cross the line from sophisticated humour to polemic? Bird, for instance, talks up a sketch exposing what he sees as the absurdity of city academies — “We put in £25m and you put in £2m, and we will let you run it” — but it could also been seen as old Labour propaganda dressed up as satire.

The opposition has not complained because it will take any criticism of Blair it can, but isn’t this an exclusively left-wing critique? “That is probably true,” admits Bird. “You can only do what you believe. But I am not sure how important labels are any more. On Iraq the government has lied repeatedly: is that left-wing or right-wing?” But opposition to the war was not exclusively left-wing: some Tories objected on the grounds that it didn’t serve Britain’s national interest. Anyway, why all this seriousness? “Because the situation is more serious,” he offers. “We deal with policy rather than politicians.”

And that is what distinguishes Bird and co from, say, old Mike Yarwood: “Our audience really built up in the run-up to the Iraq war and has stayed. People no longer see politics as something that simply happens to them.”

He votes Liberal Democrat and says he will never vote Labour again post-Iraq. “People being killed in the back streets of Mosul as a direct result of our government are not treated in the same way as the poor victims of the London bombings,” he says. “It is considered tasteless to make a connection between Iraq and the London bombings but there is clearly a link.”

But while we revel in the right to hold politicians to account, aren’t clever satirists (often brighter than the politicos they satirise) partly responsible for public cynicism towards politics? “There is a difference between cynicism and scepticism. There are people in government who do try their best. But if you set yourself up as a political better, you place yourself in the firing line. This government has had some success in lifting people out of poverty, but this is not what it boasts about — it only talks about crime crackdowns.”

Bird has been knocking around since That Was the Week That Was four decades back but despite obvious talent has not enjoyed the celebrity of Fry or Bremner. “Half the people who are famous are only famous because they are famous,” he says. “I have managed to avoid that, not out of moral conviction, but out of idleness. I just find it uninteresting.”

Not, it seems, his co-stars. “Rory loves getting up in front of an audience, which I don’t particularly. He, like Stephen, has huge energy.” Bird intends to continue “for as long as I can stand, or at least sit”.

Each day Fortune drives down from London to Bird’s Surrey cottage — where they get down to some serious laughter. “It’s not a bad job,” he reflects, “to be able to sit down with your best friend every day and laugh.”

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