Stewart Lee has had something of a tumultuous relationship with television. Widely regarded as one of this country’s riskiest and most insightful stand-up comedians, the last time Lee fronted a TV show of any kind was ten years ago, when he appeared with Richard Herring in BBC2 show This Morning With Richard Not Judy.

Four years had passed since Lee first appeared on the channel in cult hit Fist Of Fun and the comic was already at breaking point, having had to deal with the frustrations of making comedy by committee. And then came the final straw.

‘No one was interested in that show so it got shunted around the schedules,’ explains Lee. ‘It got to the point where even I couldn’t find out when it was on. I remember one week I had to ring up the producer and tell him: “It’s on tonight at six!”

And he went: “Oh my God, we haven’t even edited the show yet!” That was the extent to which we were valued; the show was scheduled for broadcast and it hadn’t even been made.’

After that debacle, Lee finally gave up on television and returned to his first love of stand-up, something at which he never fails to excel.

He did the odd TV project in the following decade but they ended up in either death threats (Jerry Springer: The Opera) or what Lee terms ‘the worst professional experience of my life’ (a never-to-be-repeated appearance on 8 Out Of 10 Cats).

And then Lee suddenly realised something. ‘Over the years you finally recognise what it is you want to do and I started to feel like stand-up was the one thing I’d done really well all my life. I felt I should get some kind of televisual record of it.’

Which neatly brings us to Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, an attempt to combine Lee’s talent for live stand-up with the constrictions of television.

Naturally enough, it wasn’t an easy journey – the show was first commissioned in early 2005 then dropped a year later – but Lee is finally 100 per cent happy with a TV project, one that’s mostly footage of a fantastic stand-up comic performing live, with a few quick sketches thrown in between.

‘The whole thing’s been great,’ he enthuses. ‘For the first time with anything I’ve worked on, everyone from the executives at the top down to the cameramen were pulling in the same direction.’

Still, it’s interesting to note that Chris Morris is script editor for the series – another of Lee’s traumatic TV experiences saw him and Herring absent from Morris’s seminal 1990s show The Day Today when it graduated from Radio 4.

‘My manager at the time was just trying to get me and Rich a share of the ownership of some characters. I still think it’s slightly unfair that Patrick Marber ended up with a share of Alan Partridge when we’d done all the initial writing on it but I never bore anyone involved in the show any personal malice.’

It seems Lee has finally produced a TV show that’s been made completely on his terms and you start to understand why it took this long to get here. He’s not afraid of failure any more. In fact, he practically welcomes it. ‘Some of the material will make people uncomfortable and confused,’ admits Lee.

‘I don’t think many comics would put things on TV that don’t show them at their best. But the thing that makes stand-up so exciting is the possibility of failure. I want that possibility.’

Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle starts March 16 on BBC2 at 10pm.