Men are fantastic - as a concept.

I tried to eat better too, but when you're on tour you literally just eat some hideous pork pie on the motorway on the way to a show. It's a really unhealthy lifestyle: you're up late, drinking loads of coffee to stay awake, drinking loads of alcohol because you're socialising with people.

It's got too much hard work slapping them and telling them to shut up.

You don't really see ugly people that are old, or a bit grotty and smelly, in the media. If a Martian came down, they would think we were all tall, thin, attractive and wealthy.

I made a supreme effort not to do that thing that parents do, which is to bore people without children to death by going on and on about how funny their children are, so there's none of that hopefully.

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.

I think actors go along a continuum from Simon Callow down to kind of Ross Kemp, and I like to think of myself as the Ross Kemp of comedy. He's very good in 'East Enders' because he plays a version of himself. I think I can play a version of myself - that's about all I can do.