Richard Greenaway (RG) and the BBC weatherman for Bristol (a big fan of The Simpsons!), Richard Angwin (RA) spoke to Matt from his home in California.

You can listen to the interview by clicking the link on the left, or read the transcript below.

RG: Can you explain to me first of all how your trip to Bristol came about?

MG: I get invitations to attend festivals and give speeches all over the world but this one sounded really, really fun because I was invited not to talk about the Simpsons, but to pick my favourite cartoons that I was going to take to a desert island. It seemed quite enticing to me, although to be honest, if I were on a desert island cartoons would probably be low on my list of island needs.

RG: Will this be your first visit to the city or England?

MG: It's certainly not my first visit to England, it'll be my first visit to Bristol but I've been to England a number of times starting when I was 19 years old in 1973. I had a great trip hauling my backpack everywhere I went.

RG: You're coming for the Animated Encounters Festival so I guess you get a chance to see lots of other animation. Do you get a chance to do that very often?

MG: I like to watch animation whenever I get a chance. I watch it on television late at night and I go on the net and search for animation. In fact one of my all time favourite new cartoons that I just discovered is by a Bristol animator named Hazel Grian. I discovered it online. It's animated dolls in a kind very surrealistic landscape and it blew me away. I hope we can track that film down and show it on the big screen.

RG: So really your success with animation comes with your love of animation as well?

MG: I love animation and the sneaky, secret truth about me is - I'm not really animator, I'm a cartoonist, I draw. I draw little creatures that don't move and then I hand them to people who actually have much more talent than I do and they're the ones who pull the strings.

RG: I know people across Bristol are very much looking forward to your visit because the Simpsons is so popular in England. We've been asking people on the web site for the last couple of weeks if they had one question for you - what would they ask you? The first one I have is from Alex and he asks how do you keep the Simpsons fresh after so long and come up with a new funny story lines and funny ideas?

MG: It's really difficult after all these episodes to keep surprising both the audiences and ourselves. We rack our brains. It does not get any easier after a decade and we're coming up now by the way on our 300th episode. This Thursday we have the table read of a script. I think it's episode number 297 so we have in about three or four weeks we will be starting on our 300th episode. All I can say is we have lots of really talented writers. We're digging back into the far recesses of their memories in order to come up with new stories.

>> Find out how a Simpsons episode is put together. Matt reveals all...