I really don't take any interest at all in contemporary comedy.

In fact, I don't watch a lot of contemporary comedy for fear of being influenced by it.

I remember being fascinated by the very nature of comedy from the age of 10; why is this funny, and that isn't?

I was trying to organise my DVDs into a sort of chronological order, and I am afraid that it all trailed off after the Sixties.

It was a bizarre existence I led in my early twenties - that cliche of the comedian who goes out and entertains a roomful of people and then goes home to a lonely bedsit was unbelievably poignant for me because that was exactly what I was doing. I had periods of real loneliness.

My favourite riposte to a heckle is to say, 'Excuse me, I'm trying to work here. How would you like it if I stood yelling down the alley while you're giving blow jobs to transsexuals?'

I looked at longevity in show business when I was about 13, and the people who seemed to have longevity were the ones who'd spent quite a bit of time learning about what they were doing before they made it.