To chat with JD — which stands for Jake David — is to enjoy his rambunctious personality.

He discusses everything and anything, from how he became Stan Lee’s protégé to being dubbed one of the great comic minds by Mel Brooks — an epithet which has regularly been bestowed on Brooks himself.

This is a man who has sold more than a dozen screenplays to major Hollywood studios, has created television shows for such companies as Fox and Spelling Entertainment, and wrote the Brooks-directed 1993 comedy classic Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

So the question has to be asked — should he not be better known than he is?

“I’ve a history of self-sabotage,” JD told me from Madrid, where he has lived for the past five years.

His bête noire is Battlefield Earth, a critically-panned film from which he was fired for refusing to alter the script.

Released to critical and commercial failure, it has been regularly described as the worst film of all time.

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