This is Exeter --PHINEAS and Ferb has attracted more than 289 million viewers worldwide, with a star-studded list of both British and international guest stars such as David Beckham, Lorraine Kelly, Simon Pegg, Richard Hammond, Ben Stiller, Selena Gomez, Jamie Oliver, David Mitchell, Gary Lineker and Jonathan Ross.
In the UK, it is the number one show on Disney XD, with 5.2 million viewers and more than a quarter of youngsters in the country tuning in between January and March 2013.
Emmy- and Bafta-nominated Jeff "Swampy" Marsh is the show's creator and executive producer. It's his dream job and one he never dared hope he would have when he was working in Exeter in the late 1970s.
Born in 1960 in Santa Monica, he came to the city with his friend. It was supposed to be the start of a tour round Europe – but he never went. And it was while working in a local bar that he got his now famous Swampy nickname.
"My intent was to go to travel around Europe, and a buddy of mine, Pete, said: 'Let's start in Exeter; we can stay with my mum,'" he said. "So I got to Exeter, and I didn't leave. I just fell in love with it. I ended up getting a job detailing cars at the Marsh Barton trading estate.
"I got a flat on St David's Hill, next to the iron bridge and then I got a job in the evenings working at the Timepiece wine bar on Castle Street.
"I still have a great friend of mine in Pinhoe, and some really great people who I remember from Exeter.
"I'd happily go back, if they ever opened an animations studio. It's such a wonderful place to be, the history and everything is spectacular.
"And it is the place where I first got my nickname Swampy – so thank you Exeter for that one.
"I remember I was working at the nightclub, and somebody thought it would be a funny nickname – 'swampy' or 'boggy', and then I found out that 'bog' was a slang word for toilet, and I thought, 'yeh, nobody is calling me boggy'. I think I made probably just enough stink about it that after that everybody really made an effort to go out of their way to call me Swampy.
"Either way, by the time my friend from America came over to visit me there he got wind of it, so when I got back home, everybody called me Swampy. I fought it for about two years and finally embraced it.
"It wasn't a great name to have in the computer industry where I use to work, but once I got into animation it was good."
Over the past 20 years, he has worked for many of the top names in animation – including more than six seasons on the critically-acclaimed series The Simpsons including three episodes which won Emmy Awards.
He also worked as a storyboard artist and designer for the Emmy Award-winning series, King of the Hill, and for four seasons as a writer and director on Rocko's Modern Life.
He may be a legend in TV animation now, but he did not get started in the industry until he was 28.
"I quit a really great job as the vice president of sales and marketing for a computer accessories company, because it bored me," he said. "I guess that's the best way to describe it. I didn't care about it deeply and I felt that whatever I was doing I should care about deeply.
"A buddy of mine, after I quit, said: 'I've seen your work, you could get a job in animation,' so he helped me get a portfolio together. Within about three months, I ended up with a job on The Simpsons.
"It was spectacular. It was the best thing that ever happened to me."
And when he started working on Phineas and Ferb did he expect that to become as popular as it is?
"I've always said Dan (Povenmire, co-creator and executive producer) and I have really good imaginations. We're also fairly confident about the work we do. We always expected that it would find an audience and be a hit. But we in no way ever dreamed it would be this successful. We thought 'hey, this will be great, we'll get a couple seasons out of this', but wow the response has just been overwhelming, so I could not be happier."
The show attracts a lot of celebrity guests but who has been his favourite so far, and who would he like to work with in the future?
"My favourite, just recently, was being able to get all three of the Top Gear guys, just because I am a huge fan of what they do," he laughed. "I think in some ways they really do embody what Phineas and Ferb do, they just go out and do mad stuff, and I love that, so that's been great.
"I'd love to get Helen Mirren, that would be a huge get. I think she's awesome. Also Rowan Atkinson as I'm a big, massive fan of his. Both Dan and I are, we bonded over the Black Adder series. So he'd be very cool."
Swampy is currently working on a new project – a Mission Marvel Special – something he was very excited about, if a little scared.
"Marvel became part of the Disney family and it wasn't long after that, the executives came to us and said: 'Would you be interested in doing a crossover?'. We were all big Marvel fans, so as excited as we were, we were also a little bit scared that if we didn't do something really great the fans would hate us and we would be unhappy with the project.
"You can't just make a crossover like that, that's only good. It can't be OK, it can't be adequate in any way. It has to be really spectacular, otherwise there's no point in doing it. We had huge support, tons of extra resources and lots of guys who came on board to make sure we had everything we needed to make this thing really great."
And he said the script was created by the team sitting in a room and coming up with the best story they could.
"We needed something that took advantage of Phineas and Ferb's humour and of all of those Marvel characters. We needed to do it in a way that wasn't mocking them or making fun of them," he said. "That was kind of our crucial criteria, it had to preserve those characters.
"It just kept turning out better and better than we could have ever hoped for."
When he is not working, Swampy lives and surfs in Venice, CA and has two children and four grandchildren. A big fan of surfing he says it has always been his regret that he didn't get the chance to get on his board while living in Devon – and he would love to do it now.
"I'm sad that I didn't get the chance," he said. "I'm desperate to go surfing in North Devon. I really, really want to go and do that. I so need to do that.
"I'd like to rent a little camper or something, take my son and cruise along the coast up there, until we find some cool surfing places.
"I do remember back when I was living in Exeter, there was a cool surf shop there. So if I ever get back to Exeter, that's definitely one of the places I'll go to. I'd walk into the surf shop, say hi and see if I can rent a board."
Swampy said while he was living in Exeter he was a big fan of the E&E.
"I was a regular reader when I was there. I'm sad to say I haven't kept up with the news since I left," he added. "But when I was told I was doing an interview for the paper, I was really pleased. It is personally very, very cool to me.
"What I do keep up on, because it's available through a Twitter feed, is Exeter Football Club. And whenever anybody asks me who my favourite football team is, it's Exeter.
"British people look at me like 'really?', but they are my favourite team. I remember when one of my buddies said 'you have to come see a match', and took me down to St James's Park. I just thought it was one of the nicest places, and so yes, I still follow that."
The Mission Marvel special, which premieres on Disney XD this autumn, will assemble characters from Phineas and Ferb and Marvel's iconic Super Heroes: Spider-Man and The Avengers (Iron Man, Thor and Hulk). The television event marks the first crossover animated television special for Marvel and Disney properties. Reported by This is 3 hours ago.