Most comedians probably don’t fear offending anyone except their mum.

Seth MacFarlane, the creative force behind Family Guy, is no exception – but he discovered it’s impossible to make her blush.

“There was nothing I could say to my mother that would shock her. No joke I could make that was too offensive,” says 38-year-old Seth, who has been drawing since he was two and had a comic strip in the local paper at nine.

With three successful animated series – including Family Guy spin off The Cleveland Show and American Dad! – airing on the small screen and satirising everything from pop culture to politics, he has now written, directed and produced his first feature film.

True to MacFarlane form, Ted is a skewed take on an apparently wholesome idea, this time about a talking bear who was wished that way by his lonely young owner, John.

However, the bundle of fur is now a vulgar, beer-swilling, horny little guy and he doesn’t care who knows it.

Toy Story, this ain’t!

“Ted has a lot of love and enthusiasm and a zest for life but no self-editing mechanism, so what he says is really the first thing that pops to mind,” says Seth.

At first talking Ted becomes a worldwide sensation. He and John promise to be best friends forever, share go-karting trips, make snow angels, watch endless episodes of Flash Gordon, and call themselves Thunder Buddies whenever a storm hits.

Nearly 30 years later though, and the fairytale is very much over. The adult John (Mark Wahlberg) is starting to feel the effects of spending most of his time with a bear behaving badly. Ted’s constant presence is also affecting his relationship with his girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis).

“There’s no obligation for Ted to grow up, or force himself out of this juvenile place, but John has to,” Seth explains.

A big part of the comedy emerges from the fact that years after the bear came to life, people are used to him and, frankly, nobody cares anymore. He is like a washed up child star.”

The story was originally conceived as an animated series but Seth realised it would lend itself to a motion picture, particularly in light of the huge advances in special effects. Instead of drawing the characters he actually got to play Ted, wearing a motion capture suit so his movements, as well as his voice, could be used for the foul-mouthed fur ball.

Seth’s skill as a cartoonist was discovered early. Born in 1973 in Kent, Connecticut, he was only two years old when he picked up a crayon and started drawing to a level beyond his years.

By five, he knew he wanted a career in animation and recalls his parents finally tracking down a “how to” book from a library two towns away.

“I did these flip books, trying to work out what movement to movement was needed to make these drawings move,” he says.

At the age of nine, the child prodigy was creating a comic strip for his local paper.

After high school he studied film animation at the Rhode Island School of Design where he created a short called The Life Of Larry for his final year thesis.

“It’s a very crude, very early version of what Family Guy eventually became,” says Seth, for whom The Simpsons show was a huge inspiration.

“That’s the first sitcom that I can really remember where pop culture references were made on a daily basis,” he says.

His talent was soon noticed by executives at Fox, who asked him to create a pilot for the network. Over the next six months, he honed Family Guy, about a dysfunctional Rhode Island family.

In it he voices the undependable dad Peter Griffin, the family’s martini quaffing, talking dog Brian, and Stewie, the pompous baby with a British accent, who’s hell bent on killing his mother.

The show’s won five Emmys and in 2009, MacFarlane became history’s highest paid TV producer in a reported $100 million three-year deal for Family Guy, The Cleveland Show and American Dad!.

He insists he doesn’t set out to shock audiences, but only cares whether a situation will raise a laugh.

“If it’s funny and something that would be passed by the Hays Code then great,” he says, referring to America’s archaic censorship code of ethics.

“And if it happens to be edgy then that’s great too. We try and be fearless about both ends of the spectrum.”

He is now using his clout to revive Cosmos, the late physicist Carl Sagan’s landmark series about the universe.

“I’m at the point in my career where I can maybe do something good and worthwhile. I’m big on the importance of science.”

He’s also producing a 21st-century version of the classic cartoon The Flintstones.

Nothing short of a workaholic, the currently single Seth describes his side-line in singing (he’s a Grammy nominee with a big band album called Music Is Better Than Words out on August 20) as “vacation” time.

“What makes me happy is just keeping my brain challenged, stimulated and on its toes.”