David Mitchell, the man behind That Mitchell and Webb Look, Peep Show and multiple panel shows, is hitting the road with his new book, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse.

The witty comedian, actor and author studied History at Cambridge where he joined Footlights, the world famous comedy troupe with alumni the likes of Stephen Fry, John Cleese and Emma Thompson.

Mitchell admits his enthusiasm for Footlights meant he spent more time in the theatre than in lecture halls - and when he met fellow student Robert Webb, the two became fast friends as well as comedy partners.

Following university came the comedy circuit, a grimy London flat, and finally the cult success Peep Show. The pair also starred in the radio show That Mitchell and Webb Sound, and Mitchell's climb up the comedy ladder has made him a recognisable face and household name.

Aside from his TV commitments, Mitchell also regularly contributes opinion pieces in national newspapers. Now his columns in The Guardian and The Observer have been turned into a book of musings, aptly named Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse.

While Mitchell might shrug off the academic side of Cambridge, the new book shows clear signs of a historian's touch.

"I suppose I tend to see things as part of a broader historical direction of travel…" says the history graduate.

"Most of the sort of things I try and write jokes about, whether its sketches or on panel shows, they tend to be about things now that you think are absurd, or dangerous, or laughable, the kind of direction that things are going in…"

Thinking About It only Makes It Worse follows Mitchell's popular Soap Box series, where he voiced his qualms about global warming, Richard III, Downton Abbey and the like. This time round, as Mitchell takes his readers on a literary tour of the absurdities of modern life, his targets include Ryanair, sports day, UKIP… oh, and hotdogs made of cats.

"There's the issue of if the planet is going to remain habitable," he sighs, before reeling off a list of modern day dilemmas. "But then," he says, "how much does thinking about this help?"

The trials of everyday British life and government gripe the comedian. But that doesn't mean he'd prefer to be anywhere else. In fact, as he writes, "Some of us are fundamentally dissatisfied. If you move abroad to address that, you risk shattering the comforting illusion that you'd be happy if only you lived somewhere sunny."

And so, when we ask this historian if there was a place or a time period he would prefer to live in, it isn't a decision he comes to easily.

"You've got to think about comfort and medicine," the perennially sensible Mitchell advises. "I'd love to visit almost every time period for a quick twenty minutes, but then I'd have an antibiotic jab!"

Given a 20 minute visitation allowance, suddenly he's spoilt for choice. "I'd go everywhere - ancient Rome, ancient Greece, medieval times, the Holy Roman Empire, lots of places."

And a time period in which he'd actually to settle down? It's slim pickings. Aside from ready access to antibiotics, he requires, "not too much fighting in the streets".

Time machines aside, modern day Mitchell is happily settled in London's Belsize Park with his journalist and celebrity poker star wife, Victoria Coren Mitchell.

With two books, a feature film and a menagerie of TV shows behind him, he's still busy writing his columns. It's clear that an ever-exasperated Mitchell still has questions to ask: but does he need the answers?

If so, he won't look to the comments sections of his online pieces for support - he prefers to leave the trolls alone. "Somehow a jibe has more rhetorical impact than a compliment. Human nature is such that even if there are nice things as well you sort of need to see nice things at a greater rate than none to come out psychologically even," he says, drily.

After all, Mitchell doesn't view his opinions as particularly extreme - "On good days, I reckon I come across as pretty reasonable."

Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse is out on November 6th from Faber & Faber.