Being left alone to work out how to make television is part of the secret to Guz Khan’s success, he has revealed. The multiple RTS award-winner was talking at the Birmingham premiere of the fourth and final series of the hit BBC comedy Man Like Mobeen.

RTS Midlands co-hosted a drinks reception before a screening and Q&A for fans.

Khan said: “I wrote the first few versions of Mobeen in the Notes app on my iPhone. And on the first day we walked on set knowing nothing about how acting works. But nobody said: ‘You can’t say that.’ People can get caught up in: ‘This is the way things should be done’.

“We were pretty much left alone, though one day our producer, Gill Isles, told me not to mess around because the BBC were visiting. But I got hungry and was in Dixy getting a chicken burger when they arrived.

“Everyone says they want comedy from outside the industry, from people like us, but there’s this gap. How do you start? There’s too much lip service paid; you have to actually create opportunities.”

Khan and Isles set up their own company, Dice Roll Productions, to do just that, by helping people from working-class backgrounds to make content. They also created six jobs for Birmingham production trainees on Man Like Mobeen.

Khan has won three Writer awards from RTS Midlands with his Mobeen co-writer Andy Milligan, an Outstanding New Talent award and has twice won in the Male Actor category.

"Too much lip service is paid; you have to actually create opportunities"

A former teacher who still lives in Coventry, Khan says his family aren’t in the least impressed by his success, even in Hollywood productions such as Army of Thieves and Our Flag Means Death.

He said: “I find it so weird to walk the red carpet at these events because, when I get back to Coventry, everyone there thinks I’m a dickhead. Mum says: ‘Are you going to do more of that TV? And people are paying you? They are stupid, then!’”

Viewers first met reformed drug-dealer Mobeen Deen as he tried to escape his troubled past and look after his little sister. But in the series 3 cliffhanger in 2020, he found himself in prison after a shocking scene in which his friend Eight was shot dead.

Khan explained: “There are very funny moments, but we have to reflect real life. Too many of our young men and women are dying at the hands of each other in Birmingham.”

The first three series of Man Like Mobeen were filmed on location in Small Heath, the inner-city area also frequented by Peaky Blinders gangsters. Kahn said he loves the show, but added: I don’t know where their accents were from – some of them sounded Swedish!”

In series 4, all filming was at the disused Shrewsbury prison – no doubt to the relief of the man who rented out his house as Mobeen’s residence. “He still had people knocking on his door a year later, asking for Mobeen,” said Khan.

Man Like Mobeen is on BBC Three and iPlayer from 8 June.