I was always a sports nut but I've lost interest now in whether one bunch of mercenaries in north London is going to beat another bunch of mercenaries from west London.

All humour is critical, you know? You make stupid jokes. I mean, stupidity is an infirmity, isn't it?

My mum died about three years ago at the age of 101, and just towards the end, as she began to run out of energy, she did actually stop trying to tell me what to do most of the time.

You go in and meet the head of BBC One and get an assurance about not dumbing down. And then, of course a few months later, he's been replaced by someone you haven't met.

Either people walk round dressed as chickens or they listen to Beethoven.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it's funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed.