The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

As soon as I see period costume, I turn off. It's like hearing drama on Radio 4.

Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do.

When I see friends from school I think they've all grown old and I've stayed the same.

I don't think there's anything outside what comedy can address.

But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

I do like to make people cringe. That discomfort, tension, embarrassment, pain - all of those things interest me, and not through some sort of masochistic or sadistic impulse. It illuminates what being a human being is. It taps into what it is to be human more incisively than stuff that's just very pedestrian.