Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
On his teenage son: To be honest, I'm not sure the same kid comes home each night.
Being an England supporter is like being the over-optimistic parents of the fat kid on sports day.
I can only develop a stand-up show by being on stage. I can't write it. Whenever I see comedy written down, it very rarely makes me laugh.
I don't think interviewing people is any different than normal communication. The only thing is that it has these boundaries set upon it as to what the conversation is about.
For me, a tour show should have a narrative; it should have an arc. It shouldn't just be, "Here's one joke, here's another joke." That's not my style. They all have to somehow link together.
When you start doing television, you want a transcript of what you're going to say, and every time I've had to do that, I've looked at it and gone, "That's just not funny." It only comes alive when you speak it.
You have to have that emotional investment in the jokes that you're saying otherwise they actually don't work. You can say exactly the same thing, but if you don't believe it's funny at the time that you're saying it, it won't be.
I refuse, whenever possible, to do shows on a Monday. I don't do gigs on a Monday, because nobody laughs on Mondays. Everybody wants Monday to be over. I just won't do 'em. But the rest of the time, in all honesty, it doesn't matter where you are: if something's funny, people laugh.
What you have to do as a comedian, that I suppose is quite difficult, is you have to end it. All the stuff that I've ever done in the past - all the tours - no matter how good it was last year or the year before, that's gone. What exists this year only exists in this time, and then it will be gone.
What you have to remember, when you get to the level of seeing 10,000 people a night, is that they've all paid to have a performance. I need to make sure that they get their money's worth. I don't want to be going on stage and saying, "I'm just going to try some stuff and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter," because it does matter.
If you're a musician, you create what you love and hope other people love it as well. Amongst musicians, the starting point is what they love, and then they bring people to them. As a comedian, you have to say something that people relate to, or nobody laughs. As an actor, you have to perform the character in the way that people relate to.