When I was a kid I didn't watch TV that was targeted specifically at me. I watched 'The Day Today,' 'Shooting Stars,' 'Father Ted.'
I really didn't think anything would come out of doing stand-up.
I enjoy writing but I wouldn't want to do it all the time because generally you are not writing about things you want to write about.
I get annoyed a lot with things.
Looking back at that now I shudder at my naivety: while 'Men Behaving Badly' remains a brilliant sitcom, how did I ever aspire to Gary and Tony's eternal adolescence?
Everyone likes doing impressions of me. I'm easy.
Can I do an impression of me? I don't think I can. It would be the most self-confronting thing you could ever do.
The way people do an impression of me is they use the phrase, 'Who are these people who do this... ?' Then they do some not-quite-good-enough observational humour, which is the most offensive thing.
Write about what you know, that's what I say.
Even in something surreal like 'Father Ted,' everything has to logically follow, everything has to lead one to another. The moment the logic of a situation doesn't work then you might as well not bother because people have signed out.
I grew up watching 'The Office' and 'Father Ted' and all the British things at that time - 'The Royle Family' - and the American ones like 'Friends,' 'Frasier' and 'The Simpsons.'
I'll tell you what 'The Simpsons' is really good at. They'll describe something, you don't see it, and it's funnier when you describe it.
What I've learnt from 'Friends' is don't let the characters get together because then it won't be as good afterwards.
Having a child brings with it greater responsibility. It makes you want to work more because you worry for the future.
I don't buy into the phrase 'comedy genius.' It's like football; you can have the talent, but 90 per cent is hard work, the other ten per cent is trying to make it all look as natural as possible.
I think when you start comedy there are some real advantages to being single and in a low-paid job. You have nothing to lose. It's not like I was a well-paid lawyer when I began. I was earning so little I was able to sell myself to it.
I wasn't into making classmates laugh - or any of the comedy cliches. I wanted to disappear. I was a nonentity. I wasn't too clever but I wasn't in the bottom group. I wasn't loud but I wasn't quiet. I wasn't a bully and I wasn't bullied.
It's rare in satirical comedy not just to be cynical.
I'd had a variety of jobs - shop assistant, writer of children's magazines - but had found myself, funnily enough, as quite an uninformed sports journalist so I might have stuck with that, but I would never have been very good at it.
Stand-up wasn't a calling. It was more like, 'What can I do that isn't going to make me really depressed?'
