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

I have never sold my story, done Hello! magazine, any of that stuff. I'm not guilty of exploiting my private life for cash and then saying, 'Oh, I don't want to talk about my private life.' I've never crossed that line.

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.

I'll never forget my first experience of swede. It was at school and I thought I was getting mashed potato. I've never got over it.

Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way.

Am I allowed to call myself working-class now? Because obviously I'm now very rich.

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.