'Critics have their right to write, but at the end of the first show it got a standing ovation,' says Elton, who admits he had to deal with a lot of 'crap' over the musical. He believes he answered the detractors on stage. 'I'm very proud of it,' he says defiantly.

Audiences have given standing ovations at the show every night for six years, with six million people seeing it from Germany to Russia, Australia to Las Vegas, as the original play went global. This month it arrives in Hong Kong.

The critics, in retrospect, got it horribly wrong. If some observers were surprised by the show's runaway success, Elton wasn't. He's been a consistent overachiever since he left Manchester University and landed a job with the BBC as its youngest scriptwriter. He co-wrote 1980s cult television comedies The Young Ones and Blackadder, the latter starring Rowan Atkinson which won four Bafta awards - Britain's equivalent of the Golden Globes - and an Emmy.

Elton's early humour was clever, occasionally shocking and, in the case of The Young Ones, tested the limits of the BBC's censors. Emboldened, he began to write for himself, forging a stand-up routine that was a biting commentary on modern life. He earned his own prime-time slots with Saturday Live and The Man From Auntie. 'It's Blackadder that people know me for most,' he says cheerfully, even though it's only a fragment of his varied career.

There was more material in him than he could perform live, so Elton took to writing novels, naturally laced with his intelligent humour and also with strong narratives that could hold their own. Gridlock, a cutting indictment of the car industry, which was published in 1991, is widely acclaimed as his best, though 1996's look at Tinseltown, Popcorn, was long-listed for the Booker Prize.

In the mid-90s Elton turned Popcorn into a stage play, his third West End hit after Gasping in 1990 and Silly Cow a year later. Typically, it won him another prize, the Olivier Award. All the time he was diversifying, starring in an Australian television adaptation of his novel, Stark, and appearing alongside Michael Keaton in director Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing. Elton wrote and directed the film Maybe Baby, based on his book Inconceivable.

By 2000 it seemed natural for him to team up with Andrew Lloyd Webber, credited with revitalising the West End with a string of stage musicals such as Evita and Cats, to write the lyrics for a musical about football called The Beautiful Game.

The project excited Elton, who loved music almost as much as he loved writing, but it also sparked a backlash. The comic has long been seen as brash, verging on the arrogant, an image created partly by his stand-up persona and partly because he was politically outspoken, never shy to air his left-wing views and obvious disdain for Margaret Thatcher - Britain's Conservative prime minister between 1979 and 1990, who was nicknamed the 'Iron Lady' for her unswerving right-wing stance.

Lloyd Webber, by contrast, was a Conservative voter who was reported to have threatened to leave Britain for good if Labour ever got elected. (They did, and he didn't.)

Elton still bristles at the suggestion the partnership of two of Britain's most populist talents meant he'd sacrificed his principles. 'If I were to choose my colleagues on how they voted it would be very narrow-minded,' he says. 'It was an opportunity to work with one of the great theatrical artists.'

The episode was a warning shot, thickening the skin for his next project - We Will Rock You. A musical about Queen - led by outrageous showman Freddie Mercury, who died of Aids in 1991 - had been touted for years, before the groundbreaking success of another so-called 'jukebox musical' about Abba, Mamma Mia.

The idea, first conjured by Queen's manager Jim Beach in the mid-90s and considered by Robert De Niro's production company Tribeca, was for a biographical story of Mercury. Nothing had changed when Elton was approached by original Queen members, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor to write it.

Elton was interested, partly because Queen had been an influence in his teen years, alongside David Bowie and T-Rex. He was 13 when Killer Queen was released and 16 when the epic Bohemian Rhapsody occupied the No 1 slot in the British singles charts for nine weeks, a record at the time.

'Queen did such a great body of work. I was a huge fan,' he says. 'They're this colossal, iconic band. Their music is uniquely theatrical, beautifully bombastic and human.' Elton didn't want the story to be a simple biopic of Mercury. 'Queen's music is not just about Freddie, it's far bigger. It was fun and I thought the show should reflect that.'

Eventually, an idea fell into place. May and Taylor responded well to it and began to work on the show, giving Elton the chance to work in the studio with two of his heroes.

Elton's idea was deliberately silly. We Will Rock You is set more than 300 years in the future when the world has become one giant mall and a homogenised society run by Globalsoft, a tyrannical regime that bans individuality and rock music, instead feeding children a diet of bland synthesised pop and conformist fashion.

This new order is challenged by Galileo, a free-thinking rebel, and his band of Bohemians intent on unearthing the fabled rock'n'roll music that once reverberated around the planet. It's a sci-fi send-up that lends itself well to Queen's over-the-top music and Mercury's showmanship, as well as fantastic stage sets and costumes.

The score works 26 Queen songs into the plot - in a way only jukebox musicals can - including the anthemic We are the Champions, 80s comeback hit Radio GaGa, and other singalong hits, from Another One Bites the Dust to Crazy Little Thing Called Love. The simple device worked, getting audiences on their feet, singing and dancing with the cast. 'It's all about having fun. That's what the music was about and the show is, too,' says Elton. 'It's not a biography of Freddie. The show is about his life, not his death.'

May and Taylor helped produce the show, working with Elton on every aspect. Their backing was crucial to him, and his respect for the pair is immense. 'We've spent two months in each of the last six years together,' he says. 'It's been great.'

The script was eventually completed midway through 2001 and began its historic run at the Dominion. Although one theatre reviewer dismissed it as 'sixth form', equating it to a high school production, and others labelled it 'manufactured' and 'overly commercial', it went on to become the longest-running musical at the 2,000-seat venue, surpassing a stage production of Grease. That milestone was reached in August 2005 and its run has been extended to October this year.

The multimillion-dollar musical, featuring elaborate costumes, sets and lighting, has been spun-off into touring versions that have, so far, shown in more than a dozen countries, including Russia, Spain and Japan.

The version which comes to Hong Kong is part of the Australasian tour that was launched at the end of last year in New Zealand. It stars Kiwi singer Annie Crummer as the Killer Queen and MiG Ayesa - a finalist in the reality TV show to find a rock star to front Australian band INXS - as Galileo. He's already proved a critical hit in the role on London's West End. Also in the lineup are Neels Clasen and Malcolm Terry, who were members of the original South African cast.

The show has sold well in Seoul and Singapore and heads to Thailand after its six-week run in Hong Kong.

Elton regularly tinkers with the script to keep jokes up to date and allow the show to evolve with each new cast and production. 'There will be some Hong Kong jokes in there,' says the comedian, who was awarded the Special Golden Rose D'Or at the International Television Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, last year for his lifetime contribution to the Television Arts.

Once a leading anti-establishment figure, Elton, who has also written the musical Tonight's the Night, based on Rod Stewart's songs, has inevitably become a member of the old guard himself. His politics are not so overtly radical, he's extremely wealthy and a new generation of comics has emerged for whom Elton and his contemporaries are fair game.

Ricky Gervais made him the butt of a joke on his show Extras.

Closing in fast on his half-century, Elton isn't perturbed at no longer being the Young Turk of comedy. 'I'm not hip any more,' he concedes. 'The phone doesn't ring with TV jobs as often as it used to.'

He in turn has moved on. Elton, whose father fled Nazi Germany as a child and became a university lecturer in Britain, now has his own family to whom he devotes whatever free time he can manage. He splits his time between his home outside London and Fremantle, Australia, having taken out dual citizenship. It's where his wife, musician Sophie Gare, was born. Remarkably, they have three children together.

It's remarkable because Elton's novel Inconceivable, about a couple's struggles to have kids, is partly autobiographical. He and Gare had tried unsuccessfully for children before having twins, Bert and Lottie, in 1999 through IVF treatment. Two years later they had another child, Fred, naturally. It seems Elton can succeed at anything.

Inured to the gripes of the media, Elton is even mulling a sequel to We Will Rock You, hoping to bring in some of Queen's hits that didn't make the first show, including Don't Stop Me Now, The Show Must Go On and You're My Best Friend. 'There are 20 more top 10 hits to use,' says Elton. 'So why not?'

We Will Rock You, Tue-Sat, 8pm; Sat, 2pm; Sun, 1pm and 7pm, Lyric Theatre, Academy for Performing Arts, Wan Chai, HK$350-HK$795. Tel: 3128 8288. From May 16