It’s safe to say Never Mind the Buzzcocks can get a bit chaotic at the best of times, but series four promises to be the most wild yet.

Thankfully we have Greg Davies at the helm to keep the show on course… most of the time at least.

This year, with a new team captain in the shape of Sophie Willan, and guests including Courtney Love, Beth Ditto and Perrie Edwards ready to take on special episodes, all bets are off.

Ahead of the series return, Greg Davies teases what to expect, how the show has helped him revisit memories of being a drunk teacher, and who his personal dream guest on the show would be.

Oh yeah, I’m delighted. It’s a very full-on ship to try and help steer and I like to think I do it in a uniquely incompetent way.

It’s just one of those unholy combinations that seems to work. And also the production team is just so brilliant at making it fun for us. They allow us total freedom in terms of what gets said and have a knack of choosing just the right guests.

It might look like four idiots messing around, but the work that goes into it from actual adults is incredible.

Yeah I think there’s a real shorthand there now. A group of people who would normally only be thrown together in a natural disaster have become a surprisingly tight knit team. I really love hanging out with them but will deny that violently to their faces.

Well, I’ve found there really is a warmth. It really did feel like quite a heavy burden taking on a show that’s been so beloved for so many years.

A lot of people who are far too disgustingly young come up to me and say they enjoy it but also, long-term fans of the show have been universally kind. I think we all feared that die-hard fans would think it had been tampered with too much. But I don’t think they do.

She is just very natural and very silly and, like Daisy, is just capable of rolling with the punches. She’s very naturally funny. She’s also the first from Bolton to befriend Nelly Furtado. I think that’s a fair statement.

I don’t think either of them are even remotely competitive, but I think they occasionally pretend.

Yeah, that was really good fun to do some specials. The team did a great job of selecting fairly key people from certain periods of musical history. Lovely for someone like me who’s well over a hundred years of age to remember periods in my life.

When we zoomed in on the ‘90s, when I was essentially a drunk teacher, it was fun to remember a lot of those tunes and some of the memories they stirred up. I wonder how many people associate Blur with hating children.

Perrie Edwards is the most competitive Little Mix I’ve met so far and you can quote me on that. And I approve. I want people to want to win at any cost. If it was up to me the show would have Hunger Games consequences.

How would I describe Courtney and Beth Ditto? Two hand grenades lobbed into a TV format? They were fun. I think. I think they were fun.

Yeah, I think he was a bit nervous, I think maybe they were heavily editing that period in their lives, but there was enough to make the giant gothic crow slightly uncomfortable, for sure. He was pecking away at the desk.

Oh God, so many of them. The Libertines boys, that’s a good example of me thinking I’m not in charge of this show. They did a song and dance this time, and I just sat behind the desk going, “I don’t know what the f**k’s going on” We had Glen Matlock from the Sex Pistols and he had take charge at one point. He actually said to someone on the show, “Hey, it’s my turn to speak. Be quiet.” It’s a pretty good indication that you’ve lost control of a show if a sex pistol has to try and restore order.

Mel B surprised me too. She was delightfully competitive. She was absolutely fuming if it seemed like the rules weren’t being adhered to. Mel B, a stickler for rules: you heard it here first.

You’d be forgiven for thinking a lot of the time that this show isn’t about music, but we do keep tracking it back.

I do keep trying to drag it back to what the show’s about. And so we see another side of them. I’m always amazed by how many boy band fans live amongst comics.

Well, I think I’m generally thrown in this show because the only other entertainment show I’m involved in is Taskmaster, where I’m given ultimate power. And I just feel like Noel, Jamali, Daisy and Sophie just do a wonderful job of reminding me that I’m not in charge of anything in my life, not really.

It just feels like absolute chaos and that my own team is working against me. Noel’s eyes light in particular, light up in a haunting way when he knows I’ve lost control.

There’s been countless times where I’ve lost the plot in this series, but that’s part of the joy of it. It’s not manufactured chaos. It is chaos. There’s a moment in the Christmas special that is literal insanity, I think. Insanity. I won’t spoil it, but that Christmas special made me laugh so many times. I’ve got a running joke with Jamali this series that really made me laugh and for the record it’s true; he does.

I would just say this, if it seems like things are not in my control on screen, it’s because they’re not. And if it seems like someone said something that I don’t think they should have said, then it’s probably because they have said something they shouldn’t have said. There are so many times where I think, “Oh no, we’re going to get in trouble.” The teacher in me finds it all very stressful.

Jamali’s beefs are very strange. Last season, it was Dave Benson Phillips, and this time he revealed that he’s had a problem with Rod Stewart. And I don’t think he’s making it up either.

I think we’ve asked him every series! And again, if a Rod Stewart/Jamali Maddix beef can play out on telly, then I’ll probably retire because I’ll just know that life’s not going to get any better.

It was lovely. I’d never tell her to her face, but I think we’d all missed her. But, I don’t think it’s good for her to know that. If she ever says, “I hear you were thrilled to have me back,” I’ll flat deny it. So my answer is no, it was s**t.

Well, that’s one of the things where you think, I cannot believe I’m being paid for this. I didn’t think I’d get to be a festive angel. I didn’t think that I would be part of the final nativity image that people are going to see which is both heart-warming and disturbing.

It’s all so manic that we don’t really have time during the series to socialise. We’re all so exhausted by the end of an episode, because it is such genuine madness that we didn’t have a chance to go out during filming, but we made up for it at the wrap party. I couldn’t walk for five days.

Mick Hucknall’s my personal dream guest. I don’t even know why. I think it might be spiritual? We featured Steven Tyler’s strange feet a lot this series, so I’d like to have his feet as a guest. Seriously, look them up, they’re unholy.

I bumped into Bonnie Tyler backstage because she was doing Loose Women, and I think I convinced her to come on next time. Welsh lung busting singers would be right up there for me. It’s part of my heritage. I’d love Tom Jones to come on the show and confirm whether some of the rumours about him are true or not. Listerine is all I’m going to say.

Andy Samberg was over in the UK filming something recently and we almost made the dates work for him to come on but ultimately didn’t. So my showbiz mates influence has been fairly unimpressive.