London audiences are tricky, too. They don't laugh as much as the Northern audiences because, and I hate to say this, they are a bit cleverer normally, and they are picking up on all the little details and listening more carefully.

I like comedy, but I like comedy as a device in drama. It's more interesting for me to use comedy to seduce people into thinking about something serious. If you want to hit a beat in a drama, you can distract people with a little comedy, and you can punch them in the gut with some emotion.

Most of all I don't want to be bored. That's why I'd rather do something that has some sort of ambition, that risks failing, rather than make safer, more comfortable choices.

When I play myself, I want to be a slightly better person. It just agrees. Everything I play about myself is kind of true, but it's amplified. We all edit, don't we? If you're self-aware, you stop yourself - you know how to behave properly.

I think we all have a slightly gay gene inside us, don't we? It might be 0.00001 per cent as mine is, or one per cent as yours is.

I'm not elitist. I like to do crowd-pleasing stuff which is a bit smart, but is just about belly laughs.

Two fat ladies, 88! Not that you'd find these ladies at a bingo hall, of course... they're altogether a higher class of fat lady.