Stephen Merchant loves playing online chess.

The 'Outlaws’ star and creator finds partaking in the online version of the ancient board game “fun” and it is one of his favourite ways to unwind.

The 47-year-old comedian said: “You can play five-minute games, you can play three-day games with complete strangers. It’s anonymous, so that’s fun.”

Stephen shared how “odd” it is when he gets “insulted” for bad moves against people who are clearly fans of ‘The Office’, the classic workplace comedy he co-created with Ricky Gervais.

Speaking on the ‘Plot Twist’ podcast, he said: “There’s quite a lot of sledging, so quite often I’ll be insulted by someone after a game if I’ve lost, or made a poor move, and you’ll get the emoji of Nelson Muntz from ‘The Simpsons’. The ‘ha ha’ version of that.

“What’s really odd is when I get those insults from people who have ‘The Office’ images as avatars. I always think it’s quite funny that they don’t know who I am and they’re like, ‘ha ha’.

“Yet, they’ve got Dwight Schrute, from the American version, as their little picture.”

Stephen also admitted to being “ready to go” if the BBC wants a third season of his new sitcom, which stars Rhianne Barreto, Eleanor Tomlinson and Christopher Walken.

What's more, the star recently admitted he had to write most of the insults in 'The Outlaws' about his character, lawyer Greg, because the writers were "too scared" to do so.

He said: “Well, most of the insults would be written by me because the writers are too scared, obviously, to insult me to my face, but that’s all born out of that John Cleese inspiration, of making fun of the physical attributes that you have.

"I have no vanity when it comes to comedy. I’m happy to embarrass myself, I find that funny. It’s not self-loathing. It’s just … why wouldn’t you make fun of that stuff?”