People are obsessed by how I look.
— Bill Bailey
I think that generally there's a pressure to live the best life you can.
I don't think any comic could say there isn't a bit of them that doesn't want to show off.
A lot of the time, you need to find the right home for ideas. You know, sometimes you think 'oh this'd be a sitcom, oh, no it wouldn't, it'd be a drama, or an educational thing, or a doco or something.' I've got loads of ideas and you just have to keep sending them and pitching them.
Paddle boarding: it's the closest you get to walking on water.
I realised that the 'future' is different to how I imagined it. When I was a kid I thought it would be a bright, shiny Tomorrow's World. It isn't.
If I'm a national treasure, does that mean I'm like the Elgin Marbles and will get repatriated at some point?
Comedy should be fluid. It should be both Left and Right wing.
In my twenties, I floated around for years, doing the odd theatre job but mainly leading a hedonistic lifestyle, getting intoxicated in plenty of different ways in plenty of different places.
I have sold stuff door-to-door, but not doors.
Somehow the Tories have deflected the righteous anger at the bankers who we bailed out. The Tories manage to take that outrage and direct it at benefit claimants. It's genius. Evil genius.
I get a lot of nutters in my audiences.
The two worst enemies of comedy are lack of sleep and not having had a decent meal.
Having a break from comedy is quite good.
Fatherhood made everything more straightforward. I was relieved that no longer did I have to agonise over what meaning I had in my life.
My earliest memory is feeling soil between my fingers when I was around three years old.
I used to live on a houseboat near Hammersmith Bridge.
I think happiness really happens when you least expect it: it's when you're not really thinking about it, when you're not trying to achieve it, when you're not trying to get the perfect holiday, the perfect life, the perfect body, the perfect existence.
I quite like confounding people's expectations.
At school, I was bored with the teachers, and there were moments where I felt they were singling me out.
For me, audio books was about when you can't actually physically get hold of a book, like when you're driving. It's a fantastic companion on a long journey.
My grandparents lived with us. And I remember watching 'Doctor Who' with my granddad on his new telly. These were the days before remote controls but my granddad, being quite a resourceful sort of chap, had fashioned his own remote control - which was a length of bamboo pole with a bit of cork that he'd glued on the end.
All kinds of things have gone into my shows - cajun and rock bands, Bollywood, Kraftwerk tributes, effects and so on. As long as it services the comedy, everything is up for grabs.
One of the things I do really appreciate is that my audiences tend to be a wide range of ages and backgrounds, and I ascribe that to putting in the hours.
At yoga you get some sense of spiritual space so that people don't intrude. You can go there and close your eyes and no one will talk to you. People are too worried about not fainting to bother with some bloke who was on the telly.
When I was 15, I went to see the Stranglers at Bath Pavilion. I saw Jean-Jacques Burnel take off his bass and whack a skinhead over the head with it because he gave a Nazi salute. I thought: 'This is brilliant!'
I think people are quite refreshed with politicians who aren't concerned with what Arctic Monkeys track they like, but with the day-to-day, dull business of politics.
As a comedian and satirist you have to be neutral, because everyone's fair game. Once you show bias, you lose that.
I love to watch birds and wildlife.
I'm an omnivore, although I am trying to eat less meat. I went vegetarian for about two years, then I suddenly got a craving one morning and that was it.
Comedy can be quite all consuming at times, and if you're not careful you end up doing a tour, then a DVD, then another tour then a DVD. Suddenly the years have just flown by.
People perceive me as this kind of hippy intellectual, reflecting and communing with nature or in a pyramid somewhere chanting. Really, no. I love speed, fast things, quad and road bikes, and bombing down a mountain.
I discovered I'm 60 per cent Viking. Well, more Danish, I suppose. I'm also two-and-a-half per cent Neanderthal.
London is a great place to be over Christmas.
I'm one for new things: I like new technology, I like new music, I'm not entrenched in some view of what culture should be. I like the fact that it's constantly changing and that language is changing, that behaviour changes.
You have to have a thick skin, yes. If you're going to do something as foolhardy as standup, you've got to be able to take it on the chin if someone has a go at you.
You spend a lot more time on your own as an only child. And there's space to allow your imagination to take flight.
Normally, with stand-up, it's quite solitary, you write the material on your own, you perform it on your own, it's all very much on you. Your own thoughts. You have to sort of modulate your own performance.
In a way, I wish none of it had ever happened - Facebook, Twitter - if it had never happened the world would have just carried on serenely. It's utterly redundant and yet we all have to be involved in it somehow.
The worst thing is when people try and take pictures surreptitiously. I always say, 'Look, you can ask me for a photograph. You will get a much better one than just the side of my face.' Sometimes they just run off. They can't cope.
Comedy is an indoors thing, so I take every opportunity to go outside. A lot of that involves finding places that are remote, or places where you can look at birds, or do mountain biking or paddle boarding or walking.
As I get older, I have a very strong urge to know about stuff. I want to learn the names of trees and birds; that's the sort of knowledge I want to pass on to my son.
There is something very poignant about plastic bags. These lonely plastic bags that gradually disintegrate.
My comedy comes from the actual music itself - they're observational musical gags. I could take the music away and it would just be some words.
The Lib Dems are such terrible ditherers.
I am pretty laid-back as a parent, but I do like a lot of activity. So I am constantly suggesting things to do that involve some physical activity: cycling, mountain biking and paddleboarding.
The point with me is that it's always been, even with the stand-up, that the music has to be right. You have to take it seriously. You have to try and play it as faithfully as possible. That way it helps the comedy. Rather than just playing it in a silly way.
If you really push yourself you can perhaps achieve something you didn't think you could.
I grew up in a little town between Bath and Bristol with my parents and grandparents in the same house. It was rural and idyllic.
As a young man, the temptation was to drink the minibar dry. I did all that - now I prefer to get outdoors.
