My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I've endured over the past twenty-five years.

I'm always amazed to hear of air crash victims so badly mutilated that they have to be identified by their dental records. What I can't understand is, if they don't know who you are, how do they know who your dentist is?

When I turned about 12 or 13, I realised that being funny wasn't about remembering jokes. It was about creating them.

When I wake up on a Monday morning and I realise I don't have to go and work at the civil service, I really think I've won.

Am I allowed to call myself working-class now? Because obviously I'm now very rich.

And like the old stereotype, I overcame my shyness by making my friends laugh.

I don't always vote in general elections, but I think I've always voted Labour.

I really don't take any interest at all in contemporary comedy.

I remember being fascinated by the very nature of comedy from the age of 10; why is this funny, and that isn't?

I think having an outsider's viewpoint is interesting and good, especially for a comedian.

I was trying to organise my DVDs into a sort of chronological order, and I am afraid that it all trailed off after the Sixties.

I've never been disappointed by politicians. I've never invested that much in them in the first place.

In fact, I don't watch a lot of contemporary comedy for fear of being influenced by it.

On my first day in New York a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When I told him I didn't he said, 'Do you mind if I mug you here?'.

The thing about improvisation is that it's not about what you say. It's listening to what other people say. It's about what you hear.

Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way.

I looked at longevity in show business when I was about 13, and the people who seemed to have longevity were the ones who'd spent quite a bit of time learning about what they were doing before they made it.

When I was nine I spent a lot of my time reading books about the history of comedy, or listening to the Goons or Hancock, humour from previous generations.