I dont watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something gets you when youre alone and someones voice is coming through their work. Theres a different quality to it that stays with you a bit more.

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 have no qualifications to do anything else and there weren't any formal application forms you had to fill in for stand-up, so I thought I'd give that a twist.

You’re not an adult at all - you're just a tall child holding a beer, having conversations you don't understand...

Showing off seemed to me to be a highly valuable and necessary activity when I was 20.

I dont watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something gets you when youre alone and someones voice is coming through their work. Theres a different quality to it that stays with you a bit more.

Stand-up came naturally to me because people in Ireland talk. But that's not talking on panel shows; it is structured fun. It reminds me of some tragic aunt clapping her hands and bouncing into a room and announcing we should all play games... and if we don't we are all a rotten spoilsport.