All hail to the ale! Tim Hughes shares a pint with the Pub Landlord himself, Al Murray

LOUD, opinionated and given over to moments of patriotic fervour, Al Murray's Pub Landlord is an instantly recognisable figure.

We've all met him – propping up bars or driving taxis, holding forth on the good old days, having a dig at the French and offering tap room logic on immigration and foreign affairs.

But while this figure of fun once seemed part of an endangered species of unreconstructed male, 2016 has elevated him and his ilk into the mainstream of politics – much to the amusement of his creator.

"It's a funny one," he tells me. "Ten years ago, people were saying the act was really out of date, but it's actually been prophesy!"

Al is, of course, quite unlike his creator. Fiercely intelligent and with a degree in Modern History from St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he is liberal to the core, which is what makes his act so amusing – and confusing to those who fail to distinguish between ego and alter-ego.

He is related to the writer William Makepeace Thackeray, and his grandfather, Sir Ralph Murray, another Teddy Hall lad, was a diplomat, journalist and broadcaster with an intriguing wartime record. Descended from Scottish nobility, he married into Austrian aristocracy.

His father Lieut-Col. Ingram Bernard Hay Murray, a former Royal Engineer, and also a Teddy Hall graduate, is a trustee of the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock. Al shares his passion for military history.

He couldn't be more different to the character he has created. Does it sometimes feel like a schizophrenic experience? "Not for me, as that side only ever comes out in the show," he says. "It's other people that have a schizophrenic issue with me."

So do people actually mistake him for his plain speaking character? "Yes," he laughs. "It tends to be cab drivers, and I have to stick with it. It's not going to work if I say 'Do you mind!"

He is speaking from his home in London ahead of a tour which next Thursday brings him back to Oxford, for a night at the New Theatre.

"Oxford is my alma mater and I always like coming back and made to feel old and creaky," he says. "I always poke my head around the door of the college, and it's satisfying seeing the quad hasn't changed."

So where does he get his inspiration? "It's as boring as sitting down at a desk and writing the stuff," he says. "I used to listen to phone-ins and talk shows and hear how badly some people are at forming opinions."

Recent events, from Brexit to the election of Trump, have played into his hands as priceless comedy material – the Presidential race giving the Pub Landlord a chance to hold forth on the collective American sense of humour.

"Brexit is an interesting one," he says. "Of course, the Pub Landlord can't be happy about it. He's got to be reserved about it. It's a case of being careful about what you wish for.

"The thing that's interesting is that they don't know what they are going to do. It's something, but what? There are plenty of reasons to be nervous as even the Government doesn't know what it's dealing with."

And as for him? "I'm not a 'remoaner' but this Government hasn't got a clue. Even if they were offering something, it's going to be different.

"There are plenty of reasons to go 'hang on a minute, what's going on here?' If it was that simple they'd have got on with it by now. But doing a comedy show about it is lots of fun."

Perhaps the Landlord's finest hour was standing for election in South Thanet, in a direct challenge to UKIP, under the FKUP ticket, promising voters "a British moon on a British stick". Despite a manifesto that proposed revaluing the pound at 10p, to make British people better off, and putting Boris Johnson on an island, he gathered just 318 votes, but definitely won the last laugh.

"It would have been more believable if I'd won than Trump!" he chuckles.

"The funniest thing was how people took it seriously and couldn't take the joke. A certain group of people claimed to stand up for British values and sense of humour but couldn't laugh at themselves."

For all the Pub Landlord's bluster, Al is convinced no one is seriously taken in by it. "If they don't realise it's a joke, that's hilarious," he says, and pokes fun at those who see him as stoking reactionary sentiment. "If you take that too far you end up with arguments against irony and parody, and shutting down art," he says.

As he has got older, has Al seen his own views fall more into line with the Pub Landlord's? "I do get the idea that as I get older, the world is more difficult to keep up with. But I get more liberal as I go on. And I find it much easier to talk about things in character."

He adds: "I am genuinely uncertain about things, and I find people who are certain about stuff infuriating and pathological.

"It's funny. Comedians aren't supposed to be tidy and containable. Ambivalence in art is interesting. People not knowing what they think are more interesting than those telling you what to think.

"And if people are worried about Brexit and not having 'a pot to p*** in', then make a new pot," he says, lapsing into character, "And this is the clay from which we'll fashion that new pot!"

Al Murray plays the New Theatre Oxford next Thursday. tickets from atgtickets.com