He's well known as one half a celebrity couple. So ask Ade Edmondson how wife Jennifer Saunders is doing and he knows what's coming next. "She's very well..." he begins. There's a pause, then he asks: "You're going to ask about cancer, aren't you?"
Back in 2009 Jennifer was diagnosed with breast cancer, a blow she chronicles in her autobiography Bonkers: My Life in Laughs, a bestseller last Christmas. But it's a topic Ade, 57, no longer likes to discuss.
"We don't really talk about cancer," he says. "It's kind of a while ago now. Loads of people have cancer and they get through it and it's part of life. But it's almost like having a bloody cold these days.
"Some people sadly don't get through and a lot of people do. But it's boring to treat people who have had cancer and survived as 'cancer survivors' for the rest of their lives. They're just people still."
Jennifer has a similar view and she has criticised people who continue to identify themselves by their illness.
"It's the job you don't have to work for," she said. "You suddenly get so much attention and if you're not used to that I bet it can sway you a little bit. I'm used to it!"
So, concludes Ade, we should be talking about Jennifer Saunders, comedian, actress, writer and mother.
"She's more related to everything else she's ever done than to cancer."
And just in case I've not got the message, he adds: "And that's it on cancer."
Jennifer, 55, and Ade have been together for 28 years after meeting through The Comic Strip comedy gang which included their long-term sidekicks Rik Mayall and Dawn French. But it wasn't love at first sight - for Jennifer at least - and they were just friends for five years.
"I was in love with her from when she first appeared," Ade admits. "It just so happened I was married to someone else. By the time I got unmarried she was with someone else or I was with someone else... but who cares? We are where we are."
With two comedians in the family, surely life must be fun.
"We do make each other laugh a lot," he says. "Our house is a barrel of laughs. It is, quite genuinely."
He and Jennifer have three grown-up daughters, Ella, Beattie and Freya. Singers-ongwriter Ella and husband Dan have two sons: Fred, 18-months, and month-old Burt.
Ade and Jennifer will be seeing much more of them soon because the young family are moving closer to their home in London.
"I never wanted boy children but now I've got a couple of grandsons I'm rather pleased," he says.
This gives him a chance to pass on his passions. For example, his next project is building a tree-house for the boys.
"Me and my son-in-law are looking at a book of tree houses," he says. "I enjoy playing around in them and on dangerous zip wires - things like that."
He also has a love of boats that he indulges to the full in his new six-part ITV series Ade at Sea, where the focus is on Britain's maritime history and people who still work on the sea. He's had his own boat for three decades. So will he be taking the boys out on the water when they're a bit older?
By way of reply, he says: "We went on a walk recently, Jennifer and I, to the pub down by the river and I said, 'Wouldn't it be great to get the boat out now?'
"And she said, 'Hmmm...probably not' and then said, 'Go with the boys.' "
Lack of "facilities" may have a lot to do with this. Ade explains: "My youngest daughter quite liked sailing but no one else did because there's never any proper toilets. I often do my sailing single-handed."
Ade first burst into the public consciousness in 1982 as Vyvyan Basterd, a psychopathic punk student in anarchic sitcom The Young Ones alongside his university mate Mayall. More violent slapstick with the same duo followed in Filthy, Rich and Catflap and (a much bigger hit) Bottom.
After playing several non-comedy roles on TV and on stage, Ade began the 21st with the focus firmly on his folk band The Bad Shepherds. They are still going strong, now gearing up for a short tour of Australia next month then a summer of gigs and festivals.
He says: "I love the band. It's my favourite thing. We're a folk band but we get our inspiration from the punk era - the era of really good songwriting.
"Everyone thinks punk is about shouting and swearing and spitting but if you listen to the lyrics they're just amazing - sublime, so adult in their themes, so socially relevant."
But acting is still part of his life too. And in a forthcoming ITV drama called Prey he plays a very unfamilar role as a senior policeman.
"I play the Assistant Chief Constable," he says. "I enjoyed that. It's nice wearing a uniform. It's a funny thing being a figure of authority."
All the same, he doesn't have any time for the people who run the country. "Politics has become boring because they're all so much the same," he moans. "Everyone says this - but it's just true.
"You have the same class of people but at the same time none of them care.
"None of them seem to have a grip on the real world at all. They all seem to have been to Oxbridge and done politics, philosophy and economics.
"They're just all so dull and keep treating us like children.
"That's why we're so disenchanted with politics - though people in their late teens at the minute seem to be slightly more politicised, which is rather encourcentury aging. I've got a feeling people are slightly more in touch and slightly more disappointed in what's going on and slightly more kind of ready to stand up and shout about it. So I think there is some righteous anger brewing."
Would he ever think of entering politics?
"Absolutely not," he says. "To be a politician these days you have to be completely clean. It's not that I have a lot of skeletons. It's just that I've lived. They'll find something I've said in the paper at some point. You can't say anything these days."
New series Ade At Sea follows his successful Ade In Britain series, which was a culinary road trip. This love of food helped him win Celebrity MasterChef last year too.
With so many strings to his bow - actor, musician, presenter, chef, seafarer - I start to say he strikes me as someone who is... "Bored," he interjects with a laugh.
Actually, I meant someone useful after a shipwreck, but it was this self-confessed low boredom threshold which saw him kill off a planned spin-off series from Bottom with Rik Mayall last year.
"I like doing stuff," he explains. "I like seeing stuff. Working with one man and just doing one thing all the time is a bit too limiting. I loved Bottom and I'm very proud of it but I didn't just want to do that for my life."
Ade's also been vocal about comedy he doesn't approve of. In 2009 he said alternative comedy was born in the 80s TIME during treatment because TV jokers at the time were "mainly men in dickie bows telling racist and homophobic gags. They were all like Jim Davidson. It was kind of dull".
This sparked an angry tirade from Davidson, who hit back that Ade was a "self-satisfied lefty" and "the unfunniest man in the world".
"To be honest I'd thought at the time he was dead," says Ade. "Otherwise I wouldn't have said it because those slanging matches are no fun."
So how did he feel about Jim winning this year's Celebrity Big Brother? "Did he?" asks Ade. "I didn't know he had. I wasn't watching."
And he adds with a laugh: "Well... well done, Jim."
Ade At Sea starts on ITV next Thursday (March 20) at 8.30pm.