If I could travel through time, I wouldn't go back and change anything in my life, because I'm delighted with the way it's turned out.
The me you see on stage is largely a construct, based on me at my worst, my most annoying, my most petty, and my most patronizing.
The only reason I look back is to check if I've been doing something wrong. I look at things from even three years ago and think, 'I wouldn't do that now.' Your life changes.
I'm in this for the long haul, I want to be doing this until I die. I am a standup comedian. I know a lot of people say I'm not, but I am.
Nothing is too controversial, but you have to think about how to do it with sensitivity. I don't try to be insensitive. I think really, really carefully about exactly what things mean and how they will affect people.
I think Russell Brand's books should be criticised for being rubbish - but it is true that there's a professional class of opinion-former who has a financial interest in their job not being taken away.
Controversy seems to be a by-product of what I do, rather like offence is the by-product of a dog urinating on the pavement. It just happens.
In places like Glasgow and Newcastle, audiences have a tradition of being amusingly combative. But they're not trying to ruin the act, they're trying to give you a challenge. It's like a cat playing with a mouse - the cat doesn't want the mouse to die, it wants to keep it alive for its own amusement and to be entertained by its struggle.
The idea of what's acceptable and what's shocking, that's where I investigate. I mean, you can't be on 'Top Gear,' where your only argument is that it's all just a joke and anyone who takes offence is an example of political correctness gone mad, and then not accept the counterbalance to that.
Now I've got kids, you wouldn't want them to suffer because of a perception of you. I try to be very careful where I do things and make sure I know why I've done them. I wouldn't want them to be stigmatized.
Anyone in the arts has had an experience of seeing someone who they related to doing something and thinking, 'I could do that.' If you have one generation where you force its hand a bit, then the next one fills in the gaps, because it's seen an example of what can be done.
I went to a hypnotist to learn how not to use drinking a pint before you go on as a way of giving you the confidence to just fly at it, irrespective of the fear. That's not a long-term strategy, when you do as many gigs as I do.
For other comics, it's about full-spectrum dominance, being on panel shows and having one-liners and being a good chat show guest and having a good seven minutes you can do on 'Live At The Apollo.' But I really think about these subsequent finished pieces, you know? And they don't always chop up well into one-liners and routines.
I suppose we are what we are, and we use the evidence to confirm what we believe.
It's interesting to me that apparently distasteful comments from the Right against weak targets tend to draw a lot less media fire than apparently distasteful comments from the Left against hard targets. That's one of the threads that runs through the show and that people hopefully pick up on.
If I had grown up in London, I wouldn't have been as keen to become a comedian or a writer. I'd have been able to see a lot of good films and music and comedy. I'd have been distracted. As it was, I had to make it.
I read in the 'Daily Mail' that I'm one of these 'foul-mouthed comedians.' But I'm much cleaner than the people they like. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to think that a 70-year-old - particularly someone like Alan Bennett - would like it, because they've seen a lot of stuff.
Lots of stand-up showcases on TV are made by production companies that also represent acts as clients, so there tends to be a demonstrable bias towards a certain group of people.
I thought it would be a funny concept to publish a book about stand-up comedy with Faber, the poetry publisher, and to apply to stand-up the same sort of weight of annotation that you would to a classic work of literature, an epic poem. I thought that would be funny.
I don't know where the ideas come from, and it's terrifying. They seem to be absolute flukes. When I was in my 20s, I'd walk around with a notebook all the time and make sure I wrote down anything that occurred to me. Now I'm just hoping that some sort of event will descend on me.
