Standup is tough; if you are going through a hard period in your life, it is very hard to get up in front of people and be the happy guy in the room.

I don't have the desire to be the best standup in the UK but I do have the desire to be the best at everything else I do in terms of writing and acting.

I never gave up rapping - it gave up on me. There was no industry and no appetite for UK rap back then and I had a daughter to feed. I couldn't keep doing something full time that didn't pay the bills.

With this kind of camera-phone madness we have got, moments are diluted into self-contained edited experiences.

I'd always written rhymes but I was scared to share them. They stayed on paper or in my head, until I started going to watch battles and eventually thought to myself, "I'm definitely as good as some of these guys, and maybe even better than them".

I think I'll always be linked to comedy. There is something about it that's such a beautiful thing. The world of drama sneers at it because people assume that it's easy but it's not at all; it's incredibly difficult.

Standup is tough; if you are going through a hard period in your life, it is very hard to get up in front of people and be the happy guy in the room.