I tried four times to get into the Central School of Speech and Drama before I got accepted. I started when I was 17, which was too young, in retrospect, and finally went when I...

I’ve realised I need a gnawing, nagging, anxious doubt when I wake at 4 A.M.

My mum left my dad when I was six months old, so I don’t know him at all. I had no male figures in my life, really. I had my godfather, but he’s more like...

I went from an unemployed actor’s life to doing stand-up comedy, and that was fortuitous. It’s not the usual way the crow flies, going from being in a TV sketch show to playing one of...

Putting TV stars in plays just to get people in is wrong. You have to have the right people in the right parts. Stunt casting and being gimmicky does the theatre a great disservice. You...

There’s no game plan when it comes to thinking up new characters; inspiration can come from anything – from a wig I’ve seen to an expression I’ve heard someone use.

I will absolutely say that whatever job I was asked to do, whatever schedule I was asked to work, it is never going to be as hard as looking after a child.

I’m naturally quite lazy, and I actually think I’m lax about my career. None of my work defines who I am.

Don’t take criticism personally; take from it what’s useful. Apply it and move on to something better.

I’ve never really thought I’d get married. It’s not that I’m suspicious of it or anything like that, it’s just that I don’t have a reference for it because my mum wasn’t.

I’m not frightened of a bit of silence.

Few things focus the mind like fear.

If I hadn’t had a baby, a part of me thinks I might have turned up on the red carpets all the time and gone, ‘Hi, it’s me!’ Maybe other people do it because they...

I used to go red when anybody spoke to me. It’s awful because you absolutely cannot control it. If you are a child that blushes, or is shy, the one thing you want in the...

I don’t like tea! Never have, never drunk it.

It’s never been a point of reference to look to a man. It’s not always a good thing, I suppose, but I think independence is always preferable to dependence.

Although I was a shy child, I was also a bit flamboyant.

I like doing both TV and live stuff, though it’s nice to mix it up.

If you want more people to come to the theatre, don’t put the prices at £50. You have to make theatre inclusive, and at the moment the prices are exclusive. Putting TV stars in plays...

Nothing is ever going to be as important or as exciting as a baby. Everyone has their highs and lows, but if you’ve got that one constant in your life – in my case, a...

I’m an incredibly negative person, so any form of success is only ever going to be a relief to me and set my default position back to neutral.

I was not a ‘Doctor Who’ fan. As a kid, I thought it was scary and for boys.

I realised that if you get yourself labeled as the funny one, people don’t look any further. I’ve used that as I’ve got older. It’s controlling: I decide what part of my personality you’re seeing....

Writing comedy is an exposing thing because you’re putting yourself on the line with every joke you write, and although you can’t second-guess an audience, if you want to be successful, you have to write...

No one got anywhere by being too scared to open their mouth in case nobody laughed.

Nothing prompts creativity like poverty, a feeling of hopelessness, and a bit of panic.

At my core, the glass isn’t half-empty – it’s not even what I ordered in the first place.

‘Writing’ always means ‘not writing’ to me because I will do anything to put it off. I think this is mainly because writing anything down and then handing it over to a third party –...

That’s the poisoned chalice: when you’re shy, people assume you’re arrogant.

Any degree of success or achievement for me is only ever a relief. My version of getting carried away is: ‘Mmm, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.’

By a lot of people’s standards, I lived a very privileged life. I never wanted for attention, I never wanted for material things. In some ways, I was probably spoiled because I never had to...

Because I was a shy and awkward child, I used humour to deflect attention. It was a controlling mechanism. Because I could use it to control my image.

I don’t know why, but people tend to look at stand-ups and think they can act, which actually isn’t the case. But never mind. I thought: if that’s the area where they’re looking, then that’s...

When I realised I had a facility for humour, I latched on to it, and it gave me confidence and I built my personality around it. So I subconsciously made myself become the funny one...

How nice it would be to breeze through life and just brush things off. I never read reviews because I hate to lose more than I like to win; I experience negative emotions far greater...