The show’s success, for one. To have your weird little brainchild, thought up in a mad moment of longing for bachelorhood and intended just to embarrass one’s mates a bit and make a room of thirty or so people laugh, blow up into a worldwide phenomenon is something he has made peace with never being able to get his head around.

The kids, another. Watching those funny-looking, miniature versions of himself go from sticky-handed cherubs to gangly boys with scabby knees to young men seemingly overnight (Alex is quietly preparing to begin his full-on midlife crisis on Thomas’s eighteenth) has been an honour, a privilege, and a mind trip.

Directing a football club, however small. Writing books. Supporting one of his best friends through not one, but two go-arounds with fucking cancer. He’s never felt prepared for any of this.

So to be standing in front of a full length mirror, approaching fifty at a startling rate yet poking and prodding at his own body like a teenage girl, shouldn’t seem all that strange.

Next week will be the filming of the studio segments for series twenty-two. Alex has been busy—but when isn’t he?—scripting the intros, workshopping banter on Key and Watto over FaceTime, checking in with the Andys, responding to email after email after email until his eyes hurt from squinting at his screens. So costuming had felt largely unimportant, way down the ever growing list of jobs always scrolling through his head on mental ticker tape.