BEN ELTON knows how long you'd need to immerse a human body in bleach before it turns white.
He also knows that if you tie someone to a bed and pierce their eyeballs with something like a compass, they're as likely to die of shock as anything else.
And he knows how long it takes for a man to starve to death in an empty room.
All this from a comedian. Not exactly the stuff of belly laughs, yet interesting all the same.
But then everyone knows that Ben Elton's creative interests span beyond a stand-up comedy routine rich in sharp political viewpoints and smutty toilet humour.
He became a cult figure in the early '80s, responsible for penning era-defining TV shows such as The Young Ones, Spitting Image and Blackadder.
Those early credentials went some way to ensuring live comedy success and for a while in the late '80s and early '90s, he was one of the country's most popular stand-up acts.
Subsequent writing credits for Mr Bean, The Thin Blue Line and even his own comedy show The Man From Auntie, propelled Ben Elton into the upper echelons of the comedy fraternity.
The result? Well, he has a nice, easy life. Financial security, lovely wife, three kids and a back catalogue of work which he could probably ride out the rest of his days on.
But with his ninth novel in the shops, his stage shows running on three continents and Hollywood politely chapping on his door, Ben Elton needn't rely on his past to have a future.
Somehow, in between co-ordinating his hit West End stage show, We Will Rock You, in Cologne, Sydney and Las Vegas this year alone, as well as his latest theatre venture,Tonight's The Night, the 45 year old has knocked out novel number nine - Past Mortem.
By chapter 17 - just under half way - I've sat through surprisingly gruesome murder scenes and a sex session so unexpectedly graphic and bizarre, I felt dirty just reading it.
'Yes,' says Ben. 'I don't quite know what my mother's going to make of that one. My wife Sophie was like 'What are people going to bloody think once they read this?
'But I've done nine novels now, so it was time to ring in the changes somehow. And so I decided that my sex scenes had to change.
'This is the most extreme sex scene I've ever written. The ones in the past have been considerably less so.'
The unconventional nature of the alarming encounter between the novel's leading man, a small, lonely, ginger detective called Ed, and his old school chum Helen, just isn't fit for publication. Not in these pages anyway.
While we're on the subject, Ben's keen to point out that the gob-smacking scene isn't drawn from experience.
'I just imagined it. I just worked it out,' he says, although he does confess that comedy pal Rhona Cameron's musings on sex gave him insight into some 'more extreme female sexual practices.'
Enough said.
Past Mortem's body count grows quickly. The victims die excruciating, lingering deaths. The images the author paints create the same edginess as the Brad Pitt movie Se7en.
It gave me nasty dreams about dung beetles, for one thing. Not that it features dung beetles - more just that it takes your mind places it doesn't normally go.
Ben's sister-in-law is a pathologist, which came in handy when researching the deaths of his characters. But he confesses to not letting the facts get in the way of a man 'oozing to death' or a glamorous Tory MP's broken body being scorched in a bath of bleach.
'Really, what I'm writing is nonsense, but she kept it from being completely implausible,' he says. 'She actually gave me too much detail.'
As it happens, you'd need to leave a human body in bleach for longer than two hours to have it turn white.
'And she told me that the big fat bloke with the 347 puncture wounds might have oozed to death, as happens in the book,' says Ben.
'Yet she also mentioned that if you puncture someone's eyeballs, the shock might kill them very easily.
'But I reserve the right for quite a lot of artistic licence.'
The book also deals with the Friends Reunited phenomenon, with Ed taking an interest in the personal development of his old flames.
It's a website which Ben believes can create problems.
'I think it's great for most people, but it can cause quite a lot of trouble,' he says. ' I'm not on it myself, but I've had a quick wander around it, to see how it works.
'I imagine it would be very easy if you were alone to sit and wonder how Cindy or whoever is getting on and try to recreate your past because your present's unfulfilling.
'That's not what everyone does, but there's a real element of that.'
Past novels Stark and Inconceivable (Maybe Baby) were adapted for TV and cinema respectively, with Ben starring in Stark and Joanna Lumley, Joely Richardson and Hugh Laurie popping up in Maybe Baby.
Already, he admits, there have been 'a few nibbles from independent companies about Past Mortem and I'd like to think there might be more.
'The problem is, of course, that my hero isn't very sexy.
'But someone like Tom Hollander (Cambridge Spies and Gosford Park) would be brilliant for it. I like the idea of a short hero. No good at fighting, but with a good brain.'
Regardless, there's still the off-chance that another of his novels, Popcorn, might be given the Hollywood touch.
'Ridley Scott wanted to make it,' he says, casually dropping in the name of the man behind cinema monsters Alien, Thelma & Louise and Gladiator.
'He still has the option on it. I don't think it will ever happen. I'm not holding my breath, mate, I've got more than enough to do.'
And that, it would appear, includes knocking back lucrative offers from some other big hitters in Tinseltown.
'But there have been any number of opportunities. Many years ago I was offered Police Academy 6 with Richard Curtis (Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill).
He adds: 'Only the other day I turned down an offer to make a feature for Dreamworks. I did some script editing for Shrek 2 - they call it gag doctoring - and I was courted to do my own film.
'I said no, because I would have had to go back and forth to America. But I have children, a wife and a life and life's too short. I've turned down lots of things like that.'
Surely it's an indication of how little he actually needs work of that magnitude?
'Listen,' he says. 'If I needed it, I wouldn't have been offered it. Some people don't feel as if they can walk away from those things, but I can and I do.
'I think in the long run you're much more likely to do good work consistently over a long period if you do it for yourself and that's what I do.'
A return to live comedy is very much on the cards, spelling the reprisal of his profile as a politically-motivated gag man.
'You'd hear all about my politics if I was on stage tonight,' he says, when it's suggested he's not had an outlet for the kind of rant for which he became known - raging about Maggie Thatcher and the miners in the '80s.
'I'd have a f**k of a lot to say about the Iraq war and the Kyoto agreement and the absence of any WMDs in Iraq,' he says. 'But I'd also be doing the other stuff. I'd be talking about my fridge and my kn*b just as much.'
In stand-up terms, he still reckons that our Mr Connolly is at the front of the pack - even after his ill-judged comments on murdered Liverpudlian hostage Ken Bigley.
'It's a pretty heavy thing to say,' agrees Ben, 'but then no government can give into that kind of demand, I agree with that.
'The end game was being drawn out by b****rds who were deliberately toying with the man, deliberatly toying with the world.
'Maybe what Billy meant was 'Get on with it, you b****rds, because you know what you're going to do in the end anyway.' 'But I think he maybe should have said sorry. I believe he was unfortunately and foolishly expressing a frustration that we all felt about the way we were being manipulated by terrorists and the Press, who, I believe, shed false tears of people's grief.'
He's still a member of the Labour Party, although has problems with some of their approaches, and points out that if he wasn't already a member, he wouldn't join today.
'But I also think that Blair is deeply committed to environmental concerns and I think the UK is leading the world on its efforts to bring African debt to the forefront. They're still the best hope of a socially-committed government we have.'
You get the feeling Ben Elton could still talk until the cows come home on this score.
No doubt he will when he hits the road again, a venture pencilled in for this time next year.
Until then, we'll have to make do with his take on risky sex, brutal murder and Friends Reunited.
It's just about enough of a distraction. # Past Mortem, by Ben Elton, published by Bantam Press, is out now, priced pounds 17.99.
