Chris Lilley was the comedy find of 2005. Nicole Brady finds out what makes him tick.

BENEATH a baseball cap Chris Lilley is just another guy on a sultry St Kilda morning. Delicately framed and on the smallish side, the star and writer of this year's ABC sleeper hit We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year is nice looking without being a hottie, as Ja'mie might say.

His features come together as a sort of malleable package: together they are the unassuming demeanour Lilley presents to the world; in isolation they are the perfect starting points for the five monstrously comic creations of his mockumentary series.

The striking green eyes are all Ja'mie, his olive skin the natural base for theatrical physicist Ricky Wong, the rounded nose reminds of the time rolling champion Pat Mullins got a gumnut stuck up hers, his gestures occasionally recall the tragic Phil Olivetti. While his teeth are too neat and white to be those of Daniel and Nathan Sims, the lips remind of the sneers the farm twins specialised in.

Having shot to fame in the wigs and masks of these characters it is surprising to see the recognition Lilley has. While blase St Kilda diners fail to give a second glance as he enters his local cafe, it does not take long before a breathless waiter arrives.

"You don't sound like a manager you sound like a stupid fat bitch," the waiter blurts, quoting Ja'mie, then rushes on: "You are my hero - I'm sure you get it all the time."

Lilley smiles and thanks him, then looks vaguely puzzled as the guy departs with a line that sounds something like "sometimes I forget I'm Asian".

After wondering out loud "Did you hear what he said?" Lilley suddenly clicks and realises the waiter is quoting a Ricky Wong line from the show.

"That happens all the time, and they get the lines wrong. It's 'Sometimes I forget I'm Chinese'," he says, half to himself.

The exchange signals how much Lilley's series touched a chord - "My friends and I think he's a genius," the waiter says later. "He comes in here and all the customers ask me about him and if I can get his autograph for them; he just seems so humble". Yet this is also a clue to his perfectionism.

As he lives in the uncomfortable space between acclaimed first comedy and writing a second, Lilley is wrestling with a perfectionist's demons. Sifting through ideas from ABC enterprises for spin-off Heroes merchandise takes time, as does the Heroes book he is writing and one-off performances such as Ja'mie's gig as an Aria presenter.

For him, everything must be in sync with the show's credibility. But time away from his new project creates fear and frustration.

Despite himself, Lilley is occasionally drawn to internet commentary on Heroes, then feels stung by the odd jibe. One of the most irritating, he says, has been comparisons between his show and Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's The Office. "Apart from being a mockumentary I didn't think there was any similarity," he says.

Lilley, 30, emerged seemingly from nowhere this year to take television viewers and critics by surprise. Heroes grew by word of mouth over its six week run and since being released been the ABC's top-selling DVD. Sales to the US Sundance cable television channel and a UK cable station have further strengthened his reputation.

While he had been on the comedy scene for a few years performing on sketch comedy shows such as the Big Bite and the short-lived Hamish and Andy, most had never heard of Chris Lilley before the ABC matched him with producer Laura Waters and gave the pair money, time and freedom to make Heroes.

Looking back, Lilley marvels now at the space afforded him by the ABC.

"Weirdly, I was left alone. I think it was something to do with being down in Melbourne; maybe it was part of the plan that they wanted to just leave me alone. I'm not sure whether they decided to do that or whether it evolved that way out of neglect, but I got to do my own thing."

Lilley is now deep in the process of writing a new eight-part series structured around a drama teacher Mr G and a group of high school students staging their annual musical. It will be another mockumentary but beyond that broad term Lilley cannot say because, he says, he does not know.

"I haven't fully locked in all the characters, I'm still keeping it pretty open-ended. It's going to be anchored by Mr G and his journey and there will be other characters who are off in their own little worlds."

Fans of Big Bite and Hamish and Andy might remember the annoying drama teacher Mr G, who was one of the standout regular characters. Expect him to be quite different this time around.

"I never really got to do him the way that I completely wanted to," Lilley says. "It had to be done to suit a sketch show so it had to be quite short, it had to have a laugh track, had to have joke points. I went off into a much more dramatic style with We Can Be Heroes and I think this new series of Mr G will do that and maybe even more."

In crafting the show, he and Waters recently spent several months observing an outer suburban Melbourne high school production of Oliver!. They watched the rehearsals, were backstage during the performances, interviewed students, their teachers and parents.

Much has been documented on video, which Lilley is now poring over in order to make his characters as grounded in reality as possible.

"It's just so important that it's accurate because if you're parodying something the people who are from that environment are going to be watching it and going 'This isn't real,'" he says.

In discussing his television work, Lilley is a contradiction. On one hand, he is so certain of his comic vision he micro-managed the production crew of We Can Be Heroes. On the other, the success of that program brings doubts. It sounds like second-album nerves.

"It definitely is, which I wasn't expecting," Lilley says. "I don't want to do We Can Be Heroes part two, I don't want to use the same tricks. I want it to be something completely new and have its own feel and style. I don't want to be ripping myself off because then you slowly just get worn out and tire of it."

And then there is the naked fear and self doubt many creative people wrestle with.

"I'm scared," he says flatly. "I am a little bit scared that that was a oneoff, like it was because I came out of nowhere and because of that, it can never happen again. That's pressure that I'm putting on myself that I think maybe it was just this one little special thing that can't be done again."

In writing new characters Lilley is also aware of the limitations his success has built around him.

"It is hard to invent characters that have to be completely different to the five that I have already done and there's only so much I can do. I don't want to do characters that are way out of my range. I think Pat was about as old as I can go and Daniel probably about as young as I can go and I've covered so many types there. And also Ricky, with the sort of shocking 'Oh no, he's doing an Asian' thing. It's sort of hard because I can't do that again now."

Though much of his pressure seems to come from within, Lilley occasionally feels overwhelmed by people around him.

Success has brought advice and offers from everywhere. Some useful, many bizarre, some downright bad. There was the film person who the day after We Can Be Heroes finished rang to pitch a movie, Ja'mie goes to New York City.

"People forget that the reason they like Ja'mie and those characters is because of the context that they're in. That they're a small part of this bigger thing and that it's this cult show and it's this word-of-mouth thing. You take that out and put her up on a billboard and go 'Jamie in New York City' and you've killed it. That's obvious."

Lilley, who grew up in the northern suburbs Sydney suburb of Turramurra (think Ivanhoe), has long been a close observer of Australian comedy. As a kid he adored sketch shows such as The Comedy Company and Full Frontal and seems to have drawn lessons from their demise."

I've seen other comedy characters come and go and I've seen that point where you go 'You've crossed the line. You shouldn't be doing those ads for Telstra in character,'," he says.

"If I was an audience member who'd watched We Can Be Heroes I would not want to see Ja'mie doing a Toyota commercial. I say that now and then when Toyota offers me a million bucks I'll probably go 'yes'."

I sound like a wanker saying 'It's not about the money it's about the art' but it kind of is. I'd much rather be known for making these shows that I'm really proud of.

People like that waiter are excited to see me. He came over and quoted the show and he still keeps glancing at me - he got a thrill out of seeing the show and that's really much more important than me sitting back with money and doing corporate gigs and being happy that I've got a shiny new car. I'd think I'd wait until I was desperate before I did that."

Though he seems to have sprung from nowhere, in a way Chris Lilley has been working towards We Can Be Heroes for most of his life.

As a primary student he and a friend started a lifelong game of crafting and play-acting television programs. Between them they built up several soap opera sagas, some of which "ran" for 10 years.

The boys would make up the premise for a soap - one was set in a wealthy rural community and called Barry Fields - then divide the cast into two sets of characters, each playing and writing a half. Somehow Lilley often ended up doing the women, a useful precursor he says for the characters Ja'mie and Pat.

From planning scenes and drawing set designs, the projects evolved into behind-the-scenes dramas, as well. Having made up stories for the fictitious actors who played the fictitious characters, one of the pair would yell "cut" and they would segue into play-acting the lives of the actors and television executives.

The boys would write letters in character and make cassette tapes featuring answering machine messages for one another.

The dramas were so intense and real that at one point when a character who had been the star of a soap for many years suddenly died of a brain tumour Lilley recalls he and his friend (then living in Norway with his family) had to telephone to check the other was all right.

And what happened to the make-believe actor who played the character? "She went on to do a cooking show afterwards, so she was good," Lilley says.

Looking beyond the Mr G series, which is likely to go into production early in the new year and screen in the second half of the year, Lilley says he has tossed around the idea of a sequel search for the Australian of the Year."

There might be a time when that would be a really cool thing to do, maybe after this or after a couple more things, to go back and go 'Hey, We Can Be Heroes can be back.'

"But I think that's definitely something for the future. I'd rather be challenged and I think it's more exciting for the audience to get something very new - and more exciting for me, too."