Who better to stick up for cavemen than the man who was Neighbours’ Joe Mangel? David Whetstone enjoys a chat with Mark Little.

TALKING to Mark Little on an overcast English day is equivalent to a nose-scorching ray of sunshine with accompanying whiff of something tasty on the barbie – a blast of scratch ’n’ sniff Aussie culture, even on the telephone.

As blokes go, I’ve always found him pretty life-enhancing. Having been suckered into watching Neighbours some 20 years ago – my one and only brief flirtation with soap addiction – his hapless and hopeless Joe Mangel livened things up considerably.

I even once had breakfast with his wife – the screen version. We chortle at the memory and his, I have to say, seems hazier than mine.

Poor Kerry was an environmentalist and got shot dead for her pains by some duck hunters, if memory serves. In Gateshead, she talked of following Jason and Kylie into Brit music stardom. What happened next? No idea. Nor has Mark.

Mark, who established himself here as presenter of The Big Breakfast, has lived in Britain for 18 years now. The way he tells it, he came here to escape Neighbours – only to find it was bigger here than it was there. “It was a bit hardcore,” he declares ambiguously.

He explains that he sort of fell into the show and then wondered what the heck he’d done. He’d been a stand-up comedian “with my own unorthodox style”.

“People said, ‘What’s he doing on Neighbours?’ I decided I had to make Joe as funny and as Australian as I could.”