I think that my ideas of the world are that it's random and cruel but kind of quite comical really, and therefore the humour, in a sense, springs from that.

Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, may have had his charms, but he really couldn't be considered hip.

People used to think I was just a shouty comic but I was doing stuff about Sartre.

I don't think people were that interested in what I was doing for the most of the 1990s.

I exist as an annexe of the BBC. I'm down the road a bit from the main building, in a little hut.

My name is Alexei Yuri Gagarin Siege of Stalingrad Glorious Five Year Plan Sputnik Tractor Moscow Dynamo Back Four Balowski. Me Dad was a bit of a Communist, know what I mean?

I've been going to Granada for many years and 12 years ago bought a house a few miles outside the city.