Turns out, nerds are on the up.

Even before interviewing debutant filmmaker Richard Ayoade, it was apparent from the urban-ironic eyewear and top-buttoned shirts that he has hardly broken ground on Oxbridge preconceptions; indeed, he is super-smart, super-edgy, and, frankly, a bit of a geek.

Fortunately, in casting the lead for his directorial debut, Submarine, he seems to have found something of a social doppelganger in the newcomer Craig Roberts, who is shy and awkwardly cerebral in line with the current wave of teen angst gurus, the likes of Jesse Eisenberg et al.

The film, which upon release smacked of over-hyped offbeatery, is in truth a touch more charming, and a touch less brutishly intellectual than the usual big-hitting indie. Roberts’ persistent self-awareness differentiates Submarine from the rabble, envisioned as ‘a character with knowledge of coming-of-age films who is deliberately trying to reference them in his behaviour’. Running against Tyrannosaur and Black Pond for the Outstanding Debut BAFTA, evidently Richard Ayoade is a filmmaker to be taken seriously.

Heavily influenced by the French New Wave, his take on youth and its flawed idealism is reminiscent of The Graduate, which Ayoade refers to as ‘inescapable and unsurpassable’. Citing Badlands and Taxi Driver as influences ‘for their interiority’, clearly he is shooting higher than would be suggested by his lukewarm self-appraisal.

Another on the roll call of boringly successful Footlights alumni, in Ayoade it is evident once again that comic backgrounds engender shit-hot filmmaking. A reluctant star, already renowned and beloved for The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh, (along with the standard job on the side directing music videos, apparently a prerequisite for all next-big-thing directors), he insists that the move into films was a case of do-or-die: ‘most things I’ve been involved with on TV have been cancelled’.

At Cambridge, despite a degree of disdain for all but the theatre technicians – ‘I never met one I didn’t like’ – Ayoade was clearly more of a big deal than he likes to let on. He is succinct in his evaluation of the Cambridge experience, describing it as, ‘Pretentious. Self-conscious. Windy. Angry. Unforgivable’. Winning the Martin Steele Prize for play production, and with a year’s stint as President of the Footlights, one could be forgiven a little scepticism when he feigns chance success: ‘I don’t know if I’ll be allowed [to continue making films in ten years]’.

Whether his self-deprecation is sincere or for show, one can’t help feeling that the time for modesty has been and gone. I ask if life has changed since releasing such a successful debut: ‘I don’t think so. I’m still going to die’.