The terror of failure can make you feel like a failure. So a bunch of people think you're not very good at your thing. How much do you invest in what they say? How much do you care? Failure is not putting yourself on the line.

I think of myself as a theatre comic instead of club comic because I tend to talk for a bit before I start being funny. I don't really do the one-liners and five second bits or whatever. But it's good to work stuff out sometimes.

In the same way, there is some creature gnawing away inside of me, urging me to do things in different ways.

I don't see teenagers anymore. I see... I see youths. Slumped S shapes in their hoodies, all huddled round a bin of burning grannies. All texting eachother because they've given up on speech.

Don't do it! Stay away from your potential. You'll mess it up, it's potential, leave it. Anyway, it's like your bank balance - you always have a lot less than you think.

A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

I think I still get something from the original broadcaster but I'm certainly not aware of any Netflix van driving to my house and unloading a load of cash into my front yard.