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.

Three blind mice walk into a pub. But they are unaware of their surroundings, so to derive humour from it would be exploitative.

That ideology was never going to work, was it? It was just cobbled together from different beliefs: The anti-intellectualism of the Khmer Rouge, the religious persecution of the Nazis, the enforced beard-wearing from the world of folk music, and the segregation and humiliation of women from the world of golf.

I am Zebedee, lord of the woods! Bow down snail, I have dominion!

I never really thought comedy was a career option, just something I did for fun. Suddenly I realised I was getting paid which was a bonus. I studied for a diploma with the London College of Music, and teaching was something I thought I might do but comedy intervened.

People say 'Bill, are you an optimist?' And I say, 'I hope so.'

Aldous Huxley took the drug mescaline and then chronicled his experience in the book The Doors of Perception. Now, I don't actually think that's the first thing he wrote: he probably wrote 'my brain is melting' ten thousand times, but it was the book that the critics latched on to.