Television is where you earn regular money so you can plan a little bit but even then only when you have a regular gig. If you're just doing the odd appearance, you don't know if it will carry on.

Live comedy's a very reckless, foolhardy profession. You're only as good as your last gig so earnings fluctuate.

"God save our gracious Queen": Why would we invoke a non-specific deity to bail out these unelected spongers?

Orchestras have often been used to conjure up the natural world: Swans, sharks, trout, but not, as far as I know, the often maligned jellyfish.

The way we live in the West we live like kings. People moan about this and that in Britain but we have running water, electricity, security and a rule of law and so many people in the world don't have these.

Not so great in England at the moment; in an online poll we came last, we actually came bottom of European countries for quality of life, because of things like the weather, obviously, late retirement, poor holiday, poor public services, poor health service; it's basically just a kind of grey, godless wilderness, full of cold pies and broken dreams.

There's more evil in the charts than an Al-Qaeda suggestion box.