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The 71-year-old lives on his nerves. “I feel that unless I feel a bit nervous it’s not going to work. It’s a theatrical thing and I think actors and politicians have the same thing,’’ he says.

‘‘With Question Time, during the afternoon of the day, I get this slight feeling of ‘I wish I was somewhere else’.’’ He calms his nerves away from work by going for long walks near his £1.5m Sussex farm, which he shares with his wife, Belinda Giles, and their 11-year-old son, Fred. He has three other children with his first wife, the cookery writer Josceline Dimbleby.

Life on the farm isn’t always as tranquil as it might be. Last year, he missed Question Time for the first time in 15 years because he was charged by his wife’s bullock, which knocked him out.

‘‘It charged me while I was holding a fence trying to get it into a gateway. I just fell back on my head and was knocked out, so I know very little about it,’’ he says.

He had stitches in his skull and was in hospital for three days with concussion, which forced him off Question Time that week. ‘‘It was a shock lying in bed and watching without me being on it,’’ he reflects.

John Humphrys filled in, for which Dimbleby remains grateful. ‘‘I rang him up afterwards to thank him. He’d been up all night and then done the Today programme, so I was really grateful and I thought he did very well,’’ he says.

ASIDE from live debates, Dimbleby has also fronted documentaries on the landscape of Britain and will be looking at history through art in his new BBC1 seven-part series, The Seven Ages Of Britain, and accompanying book.

Towards the end of the book, he describes the “artistic chaos” of the 20th Century, which reflects Britain as a society uncertain about its goals.

“We’re not necessarily a more unhappy nation now, just more chaotic,” he says. “There’s deep disillusionment about politicians and a general disengagement and a feeling that the political world is unrepresentative of what the country thinks and is going its own way.”

That feeling makes for a better Question Time, he agrees. “It beautifully reflects the state of mind of the country as a whole.”

Last year, Question Time celebrated its 30th anniversary. Dimbleby’s style of chairmanship of Question Time is far different from that of his predecessor, the outspoken, bow tie-wearing Sir Robin Day (and interim chairman Peter Sissons).

“I’m a kind of ringmaster, but I don’t see myself as the focal point of the programme at all – the audience is the focal point,” he insists.

“We now quite often get a bigger audience than Jonathan Ross on Friday nights. Mind you, I don’t get £6m. You’d never have thought that a political programme could be as popular as a chat show, yet it is. It’s very exciting.”

CRITICS have said that Question Time has become increasingly adversarial and inviting controversial guests to chase ratings. Dimbleby doesn’t see it like that. ‘‘We try to interest our audience, which is way different from chasing ratings. I don’t think it’s any more adversarial than it used to be, except when the audience gets angry, but there’s a wider range of panelists,” he says.

“It’s always had a tradition of robust argument.

It’s not a chat show, it’s an argumentative place for debate and very often the argument between the politicians and the public gets heated.”

At 71, he shows no sign of retiring. This year looks like it’s going to be a particularly riveting one, he reflects.

He’ll be hosting the third of three televised election debates featuring the leaders of the three main political parties in the run-up to the election, as well as anchoring the BBC election coverage.

‘‘Sometimes elections are foregone conclusions, but this one’s going to be very interesting.”

■ The Seven Ages Of Britain by David Dimbleby is published by Hodder and Stoughton, £25.