As a comic and as a nurse, it's important to look calm on the surface when you're absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it's important to make that person feel that you're in control.

It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.

I thought I was funny as a kid. I used to play tricks on my brothers - I'd tie a two-shilling piece to a bit of cotton, then pull it away as they went to grab it.

And I also felt that no one in an audience could abuse me worse than the sort of abuse I had had at work as a psychiatric nurse.

Inside every fat person there's a thin person looking to get out - They've just eaten them.

There are two types of people in this world: one who opens a packet of biscuits, has one and puts the rest back in the cupboard, and one who eats the whole packet in one go.

My mum is bright, ambitious, well read, political and very bolshie: when my dad was conscripted into the Army and posted to Libya, she convinced some general to let her go with him. I don't know how she managed it.