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PROFILE GRAHAM LINEHAN:THREE YEARS AGO, Graham Linehan was working on a new sitcom about a group of people who work in a travel agency. It was going well - one of the scenes had a character on the phone to a customer saying: "No, I wouldn't go to France. France is very rude at this time of year." 

Linehan's computer crashed and he got an IT worker in to have a look at it. He listened to the IT guy for two hours - not understanding a single work he said. That same day he put the travel agency idea on the back burner and began writing a sitcom about two IT workers in a large company who, because of their lack of social skills, are banished to a dingy basement office. Whenever anybody rings them up with a problem, their advice amounts to: "Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again?"