What you have to remember, when you get to the level of seeing 10,000 people a night, is that they've all paid to have a performance. I need to make sure that they get their money's worth. I don't want to be going on stage and saying, "I'm just going to try some stuff and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter," because it does matter.

For me, a tour show should have a narrative; it should have an arc. It shouldn't just be, "Here's one joke, here's another joke." That's not my style. They all have to somehow link together.

You have to have that emotional investment in the jokes that you're saying otherwise they actually don't work. You can say exactly the same thing, but if you don't believe it's funny at the time that you're saying it, it won't be.

When you start doing television, you want a transcript of what you're going to say, and every time I've had to do that, I've looked at it and gone, "That's just not funny." It only comes alive when you speak it.

On his teenage son: To be honest, I'm not sure the same kid comes home each night.

I refuse, whenever possible, to do shows on a Monday. I don't do gigs on a Monday, because nobody laughs on Mondays. Everybody wants Monday to be over. I just won't do 'em. But the rest of the time, in all honesty, it doesn't matter where you are: if something's funny, people laugh.

I don't think interviewing people is any different than normal communication. The only thing is that it has these boundaries set upon it as to what the conversation is about.