Ben Elton is a man on the move. He’s just spent ten minutes wandering the halls of  Brisbane’s cultural precinct in an effort to find the QTC Playhouse. Publicist in tow: Elton is in town for the opening night of his play Gasp! and to talk about his latest novel, the time travel tale that goes back to the dawn of World War I, Time And Time Again. Sean Sennett asks the questions, deciding to kick off with a query about one of Elton’s comic heroes, Eric Morecombe.

Did you ever meet Eric Morecambe?

No, Eric died in ’84 and I wasn’t famous then. I met Ernie a number of times, and Ernie [Wise] was nice enough to mention me in his biography as somebody who had surprised him. It was hard for Ernie. They were a genius double act, and I know that they were the sum of the two parts, as Eric knew. But a lot of people, as always, are like “You don’t want to be Ernie Wise.” It’s almost like the Ringo thing, which is also horrible. He was very pleased because I was very respectful of his greatness, which I believe very strongly in.

The new book, Time And Time Again, where did the germ of the idea come from?

We’ve all been talking about the approach of the First World War, as the centenary there’s so many books. I read so much history. All these wonderful books on 1913. I’ve read them all, the year before all hell broke loose. I love all that. I devour it.

Recently I’ve read a brilliant one, since writing the book, called Three Emperors. It’s just a fantastic family history of George V, Kaiser Wilhelm, and the Czar Nicholas who were all cousins. [There’s been] a lot of talk about the cause of the First World War over the last couple of years.

There was actually a rather intense political debate about 18 months ago in Britain where an idiot called Michael Gove ‑‑ he’s not an idiot all the time, but he made a very stupid statement where he was bemoaning the fact that people weren’t respectful enough or something. As if we’re not all respectful. He kind of disclaimed the left-wing Blackadder view of World War I, as this disaster ineptly led, which of course it was.

It was a very silly. There’s one thing for sure, Blackadder is not remotely party political. Blackadder goes forth as deeply respectful of the sacrifices made, and very legitimate satire. We’ve all had many letters from service men and women, some who’ve served in action, all appreciating it hugely. It was very foolish.

But it got me thinking more and more about the cause of the First World War and what an insanely insane exercise the whole thing was. Not only was it a disaster within itself, but it was an unmitigated disaster for human history because it perverted the course of European civilization, and bequeathed us the genocidal century. It’s the century in which industrial murder became commonplace. Unthinkable in 1913, commonplace by the 1940s. Not just in Nazi Germany but also in Soviet Russia.

I started playing with God … “what if ” and came up with this thriller. I’ve enjoyed writing it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing anything. As much as I enjoyed writing We Will Rock You. It appealed to every sense. We Will Rock You had great rock music. With this I had a wonderful period of history to take the reader through the summer of 1914 Istanbul, Berlin, Sarajevo, with a thriller. Of course, our spy from the future, he’s working ‑‑ the first day he arrives he has all the hindsight in the world. He knows everything that’s going to happen, but from the moment he draws breath, he’s changing history. The more he does, the less he knows, so he’s on a race against time to try and fix things up. Partly it’s a pretty well researched historical novel, which the reader hopefully will enjoy and partly it’s a time-travel fantasy.

Are there other time-travel things you’ve appreciated in the past?

I enjoy it as much as anyone. When it works, it’s good. When it doesn’t, it’s deeply frustrating. My wife said, “Don’t do it. Mostly it doesn’t work.” I saw Looper and it was so nearly a good idea, but just didn’t work. He hadn’t thought it through logically but if you do that, then why would he know, and why is he fading now, and why didn’t he just never appear at all?

I knew the pitfalls. There have been great time-travel ideas. I worked really hard on it. I remember my wife saying, “If you’re going to do time travel, you’ve got to make it convincing. You’ve got to not have us going but he would not have said that. He wouldn’t have known that.”

I think I’ve come up with something pretty good. I was researching it and reading in a very layman’s way about quantum mechanics and the quantum leap, and how things can exist in two places at one time, and disappear from one side of the electron and appear on the other side of the electron. Which is effectively time travel or instantaneous travel.

Then I was reading about Newton and I found this fascinating fact of Newton’s breakdown followed by his complete and utter resignation from science. In the first historical note of the book, it notes that he spent 25 years as a civil servant. It started me thinking about what if he’d discovered relativity. What if the leap that Einstein made: Newton had made and there was this potential for gravitational loops in time, which kind of has been posited since Einstein’s theory of relativity. That gave me a pretty good time loop that was vaguely convincing, and I think readers have embraced it.

I was curious about your writing process. Are you a guy that knocks off ‘X thousand’ words per day or does it depend on what you’re working on?

It’s not how many words but certainly how many hours. I do try to focus when I’m working. I don’t focus 24/7, not some dysfunctional in his garret. I’m not like those scene of Amadeus sort of dying over work. I’m not comparing myself to a genius, by the way. There are popular images of tortured artists, and I’m not one.

I enjoy my life. I have a lovely family and many friends. I do a lot of the family cooking. I do the sandwiches in the morning for the kids, and if I’m working on stuff, I’ll try and sit down and work until mid-afternoon. The kids come home, I start thinking about supper. But you can do an awful lot in five or six hours if you concentrate. The problem with most writers is they don’t concentrate, they kind of give up.

Do you work on one project at a time?

Mainly, almost exclusively. On a few occasions, but even then i won’t do it on an afternoon-by-afternoon basis. Certainly I could. I’ve worked on  Time And Time Again over the last two years and I’ve certainly worked on other things during that two years. But during the month or two-month period when I’m working on the novel I’m not working on other stuff.

What about things like social media, is that healthy for you or a distraction?

Of course it’s a total distraction. Every writer, everyone wants to be distracted. When I was a kid, Sunday afternoon still haven’t done your essay, I’d watch fucking songs of praise on the TV rather than ‑‑ now my kids have to try and fight the distraction of the entire world, everything that’s ever been fucking put on the Net. It’s really hard.

I’m at my desk. My desk of course is linked to the Internet. I can look at The Guardian online anytime I want. I can read the UK Press, I can YouTube up, anything I want. And so yeah, it’s a real distraction.

As for social media, the reason I’m not on Twitter is quite simply I would live in a permanent essay crisis. I’ve no objection to Twitter. I’m very happy that other people do it. And me not being on it is not some Luddite rejection. It is simply that I think about what I write and what I say, and I’d worry about it all fucking day. I don’t care how few many words it is. I’d want to put up the brilliant sentence. I just can’t face that kind of pressure. I have enough pressure writing my novels, let alone trying to write tweets.

You wrote Gasping in 1990. [A satirical comedy that starred Hugh Laurie first performed in London]. You’ve revisited it and remained it for ‘a new century and a new country (Australia)’.  Was that fun to go back and revisit, rework?

It’s been the greatest privilege. What can I tell you? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to rewrite everything I’ve ever written but this play is so right for now. When QTC and the West Australian Theatre said to me what about an Australian play, which is deeply flattering in itself, I thought about it, and I thought the one issue that has dominated the five years I’ve lived permanently in Australia has been resources. From the mining tax to the so-called carbon tax, and everything in between, it’s all we’ve talked about.

Gina and Clive are these fucking huge figures in the culture. They shouldn’t be but they are. And the more I thought about it, the more I’d written this play. I wrote it 25 years ago, but this would be an opportunity to make it better. When I was younger I didn’t write as well. I didn’t know as much about storytelling and I thought Gasping was it was very much an agit-problem. It’s like Dario Fo sub-Brechtian kind of  pantomime. I think I’ve made a fuller and rounder satire by setting it in a real world as opposed to a fantasy world, which is how it was set before.

Did you feel that you were collaborating with your younger self, in a way?

Yeah, what an interesting thought. I didn’t feel like it was my younger self. It was like  yesterday. I remembered every line like yesterday. I can hear Hugh Laurie’s voice in every line. I didn’t it was my younger self. Time moves very quickly as you grow up. I still feel very connected with my 21-year-old self. I can still do routines I was delivering 25 years ago. I don’t, but I could. No, I thought I was collaborating with myself, which is what I was doing.

Queensland Theatre Company’s Gasp! runs at the Playhouse until December 7. Time And Time Again is out now