Hill has presented a variety of TV programmes since leaving medicine, including Harry Hill’s Tea Time, Harry Hill’s Alien Fun Capsule, Harry Hill’s World of TV and a revival of Stars in Their Eyes.

Since 2019, he has hosted the Great British Bake Off children’s spin-off, Junior Bake Off, on Channel 4.

But his best known programme was Harry Hill’s TV Burp, a satirical review of the previous week’s television. It ran on ITV for 11 series, airing its final episode in 2012.

Hill has previously indicated he would not revive TV Burp, external because of the intensive workload, a position he reiterated to Laverne.

“I made a lot of TV shows, and most of them have been a lot less successful than TV Burp, but I don’t look back at those years particularly fondly because of that stress,” he said.

“I would start the week with no show, knowing that on Saturday morning I’d have to sit down and write a show. We’d work one week in advance, off preview tapes, so I’d sit down with a blank page on a Saturday, and at the end of that day I’d have to email it to the producer.”

While the episode was being pulled together, Hill said he and his team “would watch TV all day long, there were no shortcuts, you did actually have to watch the full two-and-a-half hours of Emmerdale”.

“The best day was the recording day,” he said, “but if you ask my wife, every time I came back from a recording, I’d go upstairs, she’d be in bed, and I’d say ‘I’ve got to get out of this’. It was bad.

“But then I’d watch it on the Saturday and think it was great, I did really enjoy watching it.”

Hill also co-wrote 2021’s Tony! (A Tony Blair Rock Opera), and the X Factor musical I Can’t Sing, which closed in 2014 after six weeks at the London Palladium.

Reflecting on its failure, Hill said: “It became clear to me, that people who like the X Factor don’t really go to musicals, and people who go to musicals don’t really like the X Factor. It was just a really bad idea.”

But he added: “You can’t be heartbroken, you’d be a complete baby if you got upset about a professional failure.”

Desert Island Discs is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 10:00 BST on Sunday, and is then available on BBC Sounds.