I used to work with a guy who couldn’t stop posturing. If he asked you a question, his left eyebrow would rise like a caterpillar impersonating a tent. If he was thinking about something you’d said, his forehead would turn into a badly ploughed field, and his head would incline to one side earnestly. If he was in a pub chatting up a woman, he really would lean on one elbow against the bar and nod encouragingly like a man who is deeply in touch with his feminine side. He was great fun, too. Sometimes, he and I would spend the whole day conversing in rap, or hillbilly or stupid toff. Which of course is another kind of posturing.

He was also naturally creative. Once, he turned up at work on April 1st saying, “I heard you on Radio 4 last night. I didn’t realise you were a professor of Arthurian studies.” Noting the date, I suspected a wind up but decided to play along. “Yes,” I said, “it’s not something I’ve told many people.” So, if he was making it up, I’d neutralised the trick because he wouldn’t know for sure if it was actually true. However, he nodded thoughtfully then said, “I recorded it. Would you like to hear it?”

Now, this was interesting. It looked as if there might actually be a Professor Terry Edge. Even so, I expected him to declare that the tape was stuck or something, so was surprised when typical BBC music swelled out of the machine, followed by a well-intoned voice introducing first the programme, then Professor Terry Edge. This was great! – a total coincidence of names but I could just carry on pretending I was the professor and he’d believe it. It was credible, too, since he knew I was into the Arthur myths.

When the professor spoke, he actually did sound a bit like me, so I nodded along and said, “Thanks. I hadn’t actually heard this yet.” For the next five minutes or so the interviewer and the professor continued their somewhat erudite conversation until abruptly my colleague switched it off, grinning. “Thought I’d appeal to your ego and love of Arthur.”

I laughed. “You did that? It sounded totally genuine.” And it did. He could actually have been a BBC interviewer if he really wanted to be.

But here’s the thing: he wanted to be a writer. And he wrote lots of stuff. Well, lots of bits of stuff: hilarious one-liners, promising scenes, starts of stories . . . What he didn’t do was ever finish anything. He loved the moment, and the performance; loved being reactive. But all of that required a straight man: me, the world, the workshop.

A writer has be his own straight man. At various points in the creative process, he has to stop posturing and deliver the sceptical, cold, dull, boring inner Ernie Wise to his inner Eric Morecambe. For every, “This dialogue is great!” idea he has, he needs to challenge it with, “But it doesn’t work for that character in this story.” For every, “I’m brilliant!” he has to counter with, “Only if you make it believable, and that means cutting out that joke, that comment, that wonderful description that makes you cry every time you read it.”

The contradiction of being both one’s inner frying pan swinger and the face that gets panned can be too much for many naturally creative people like my work mate.

And actually, it’s worse than even being able to occupy both Party and Pooper roles within oneself: because Party has to win. Ultimately, Wise has to be fatally frying panned by Morecambe. The reader needs your creative side to prevail. Which is harder than it sounds because frankly the straight man gets all the best arguments. Not the best lines, but he’s the one who’s got the easier role, whatever Ernie supporters might tell you to the contrary. The creative has to counter-argue logic, rationality and scepticism, and come out the other side with the truth and beauty which will always be beyond the reach of the straight man, who will hate you forever when you do.