Radio 1 presenter Greg James has written and stars in a new sitcom pilot set in a radio station. He introduces the show to BCG below...

Hi Greg. What is Dead Air about?

Dead Air follows a late night DJ on a commercial radio station, called Jake Cross. The station's breakfast show host dies very tragically, very suddenly... also very funnily!

The dilemma for Jake is he's offered a chance to host the breakfast show full time... something he'd never thought about, what with being quite cool and credible. He doesn't want to sell out and do a mainstream show and interview annoying boybands and do stupid prank calls and stuff...

There's a lot of wonderful moral dilemmas and this bloke is just caught up in the middle and he has no idea what he wants to do. He decides he wants to do it, and then he decides he doesn't, and then some horrible guy comes and gets it, and then he decides he wants it again.

That's essentially a synopsis of the show, so you don't need to watch it now... ha ha.

How did the project come about?

About two years ago I jotted down some ideas. I've always wanted to write a comedy and I wanted to write on a subject I knew a lot about, that I found funny and that I had a wealth of material to draw from. Believe me, there's a lot of stuff still to come in my little book of ideas if we get a series!

So I set about fleshing out characters and coming up with a potential plot and stuff, and I took it to Ben Cavey at Cave Bear Production to see if he liked it. He said "why don't we put you in a room with a couple of guys who have written a lot of scripts, so you can get a feel of it, and they can help you shape it into a 30 minute thing."

That's not something I'd done before... I knew the characters, I know how to write jokes and stuff but I didn't know how to shape it necessarily into a succinct story with a beginning, middle and end.

Two years later after a million emails with the BBC - them saying 'come and do a read through'; 'yeah, that's great, give us a second draft'; 'come and do another read through'; 'get a cast list to us', and all the rest of it - here we are!

In all honesty, it's been the most enjoyable thing I've ever done. I have found it difficult at times, but largely it's been really enjoyable and so rewarding to get this pilot on to telly.

This is your first TV acting role.

Yeah. It was very challenging. I didn't find it easy, because I don't think you should find stuff like that easy. I don't find my Radio 1 show particularly easy for example - you feel like you can do it, but it doesn't feel easy.

But it's not a surprise I'm doing this because it's something I've always wanted to do, and I've sort of been doing this sort of thing since a kid really - getting up on a stage, messing around and doing sketches and plays and all the rest of it.

At university I did drama degree so I've always done this kind of thing. Radio just took over, and rightly so, because Radio 1 were keen to do stuff with me and I've absolutely perused that dream. I think this is the point now to go "well, I'm really happy with how things have gone at Radio 1 so far, and I feel that I have achieved loads of what I wanted to achieve, and now is the time to try something that I'm really passionate about but have had to put on hold for a few years."

Did you have to run this project past your bosses at Radio 1?

Yeah. It was a very interesting discussion because it was a surprise to them. But I showed them the script and they were fine with it. I'm not trying to bring Radio 1 down from the inside - that's not my plan, it's supposed to be an exploration of what people may or may not think radio is like behind-the-scenes and messing with what people think it could be like.

Dead Air is very much fictional, but obviously I am writing about what I know and drawing on experiences that have happened to me and people I have met, interviews that I've done, and the rest of it.

Jake's nemesis is a loud-mouth DJ called Big Shane. Is he based on anyone you know?

No, he's not a specific person, but there are a couple of big brash Australian breakfast show hosts which I have listened to in the past and thought Jake would not understand them. He wouldn't get why they are popular and why anyone would like this person who is just an arsehole.

That was an interesting thought for me. I love is chatting to people who just don't get stuff. I find it fascinating. Everyone has got an opinion on a comedy or something, and you meet some people who go "I just don't get Miranda, I just don't get it." And I find that fascinating that they just can't understand it.

Putting a character, this brash loudmouth, in there like that was a real curveball for Jake, a person he just couldn't possibly understand...

Tom Davis plays your agent in Fresh Air. You've previously appeared on his show, Murder In Successville...

I met Tom when we did the taster tape for Murder In Successville, which was just when I was starting to write Dead Air.

The character of Perry the agent - the world's biggest scumbag basically - I thought Tom would be perfect for. So, after the taster, I sent him a text and said "I've got this thing... I'll send you over a few bits", so he was the first name on the team sheet for me.

He was the one I wanted for Perry because I thought he was so physically imposing. He's taller than me, which is very important for that character, because he needs to be imposing. We needed to have someone who was just a bit grotesque, but someone who you didn't want to hate because he's so fun and so stupid. So he was very much in it from the off!

With the plot focussing around whether Jake wants to do the breakfast show, some might draw parallels with the real world. Greg, do you secretly want to do the Radio 1 Breakfast Show?

I am very happy on Drivetime.

One of the original influences for doing this [sitcom] was based around the time when the Breakfast Show was changed at Radio 1. As soon as it was announced that Chris Moyles was leaving I got a load of texts from all my friends going "are you going to get it?", "you might get this...", etc. But I knew that I wasn't as I had just been given Drivetime and was very happy to be doing it. But when you get those kind of messages and get things written in the paper you kind of go "oh, yeah, maybe I do?". So that's really where it comes from.

Jake's flip-flopping of the whole thing is totally taken out of real life and was the jumping off point for a lot of it.

But, no, to answer your question, I couldn't be happier with my show. I absolutely love it. It's been a success, we got a couple of awards last year and stuff. I'm really happy with how it's gone, and really happy with my lot.

Plus [by doing the drivetime slot] I can go out after my show and have an evening. I also have time in the morning, which is how I've been able to write and hone this show.

Should it be given a series, you've presumably got more ideas?

Yeah, I've absolutely got a whole book. I've been writing stuff down ever since we wrapped on the shoot. I know where this series can go, and I know that I want to see the characters develop.

When I watched the pilot back, to be honest with you, I watched it and went "right, I would change that, that, that and that". And that's OK I think, that's sort of the idea of a pilot... you look at it and say 'that works, that didn't quite work, let's have more of the producer, let's have less of that', or whatever.

So I'm ready to go - raring to go really! I'm waiting for people to watch it, and hopefully like it and want to see more of it. There's a little cliff-hanger at the end, where people will hopefully go "oh, so what happens next?"... so I'm really keen to write more of them. For this to become a series would be a dream.

Since you joined Radio 1 eight years ago you've met countless A-list stars, presented high-profile shows, and more. Now you've got a sitcom. Has this progression gone un-noticed to you, as it's happened in a gradually building way, or do you still pinch yourself in regards to what you're getting up to nowadays?

That's a really good question. It's something I think about a lot, because I do all the time think how fortunate I've been with it all. I love I've got that platform to be creative and stuff and I don't know what I'd do without it really... so I do pinch myself!

The very fact that today I'm talking to you about a BBC comedy pilot I've made is completely mental. This was the whole other dream I thought about when I was a teenager, whilst listening to Ricky Gervais on XFM, watching The Office, reading the Fawlty Towers scriptbook... thinking that seems like a really unobtainable world. The Radio 1 world I thought was pretty difficult to get into, but I thought writing a sitcom was the holy grail really!

So there's moments - and it happens frequently actually - where I go "I can't believe it's happened", but I feel very comfortable doing it and hopefully, with a bit of hard work, I can get this to a series and make it good!

Dead Air is now on BBC iPlayer. It will be shown on BBC Three later in the year.