My greatest weakness is... food. If it looks like it's going to taste nice, it goes in my face - simple as that.
— Greg Davies
I swam for the county when I was 12. You wouldn't think it to look at me now, but I'm as graceful as a seal.
If you're doing a job, and you secretly want to do a different job, you start to blame the job. I was blaming the teaching for that fact I wasn't performing. I really felt I needed to follow a comedy career.
I am often driven by necessity, rather than actually doing things like an adult.
I frequently meet ex-pupils who seem to think I didn't totally ruin their educations, so that's something.
In standup, the feedback is instantaneous, and if it fails, you know you'll be off-stage and hiding in a short time.
I am most certainly not rich. But I am a man who is intrinsically lazy. And I'm more than happy to put a piece of cheese on a rice cake and call that dinner.
I think the main thing I'd bring to Chewbacca is middle-aged spread. Chewbacca has looked after himself.
I have no system of writing. It's chaos. I could be upside down on my bedroom floor; I'll be scribbling on a pad that I'll then lose. I'll be on the toilet with my laptop on, sitting in the pub with my iPad.
If you want something badly enough, you go for it.
When I've mentioned my screen wife is Helen Baxendale, so many people have burst out laughing. My self-esteem has been crushed by it.
I've never disguised the fact that I wasn't happy in teaching. But the reason was that I wanted to do comedy. I would have been a very unhappy security guard or a very unhappy greengrocer.
Kids are great. They are endlessly fascinating and bizarre. But I also think that if I had left them on their own for long enough, one of them would have been eaten.
Some friends think I'm dull now. But I think it's great that I'm no longer trying to make everyone laugh in the pub.
I was scarred in 1977 by watching Jaws, and I've never got over it.
Anything my dad says about what I say about him, I can remind him of ten examples where he publicly humiliated me. We're really close. The culture of mickey-taking is well established in my family.
I try and make myself or consenting people I am very close to the victims of my comedy. I don't enjoy bullying masquerading as comedy.
The most expensive thing I've ever splashed out on is... a tailor-made suit. It cost £1,400, and it's the best money I ever spent. It's a miracle thing - I put it on, and I don't look overweight.
I rather like finding out instantly whether you've been successful or not. It's a cliche, really, but the fact is that every gig is different: it's a live event, and you're with a different group of individuals every night.
Our family were very quick to laugh at each other.
I got to the stage where I physically couldn't carry on unless I gave comedy a go: it was necessity.
If you're funny and working in education, I think the perception is that you're either inspirational or awful. So which was I? I suppose that depends on who you talk to.
I tend to develop my rambling anecdotes by actually getting up and performing them. That's the joy/horror of stand up - if you have the germ of an idea that you think might be funny, there is a way of finding out if it's funny very quickly.
The truth is, I should have never done teaching. I did teaching because I didn't have the bottle to have a go at comedy. Whether there's any gain to comedy is not for me to say. But certainly it was no loss to teaching.
My dad is the funniest human being I've ever met in my life - for years, I'd watch him hold court in whatever situation he was in; he was the most amazing raconteur. I often feel I've hijacked what should have been his career.
I can't remember the last time I can say I felt truly unwound.
Being a teacher was great, but it wasn't what I wanted to do, so it was ultimately crushing.
It's a strange thing when someone passes away. It's always when you're not expecting it that you're affected by it. When we first started filming, we were filming with existing characters in a location that we'd never been before.
'Man Down' is not a serious study of the human condition: it is a balls-out attempt at making people laugh. So nobody in the show can afford to cling on to any vanity, because we're always going to push the humiliation levels.
Don't say I was an inspirational teacher - my former pupils would laugh their heads off. I was grossly incompetent, but I hope I didn't do the children a disservice.
As a young ma,n I was an absolute idiot. I think my exes would say I was a likeable baby. I had a teenager's bedroom when I was 32.
Love at first sight is probably for stupid people, but maybe I'm just cynical.
It often occurs to me that this is a strange way to make a living. But it's wonderful, too. There are many ways to read maturity, and I'm not fighting the instinct to simply enjoy that kind of nonsense. I love that someone would pay me to draw on somebody else's bottom.
As far as characters are concerned, Alan Partridge makes me wet myself. I'm currently reading the book and have started talking like him as an unfortunate consequence.
My favourite place in Britain is... my home county of Shropshire. I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world.
I was a drama teacher, so I had the opportunity to show off in front of a captive audience. I essentially did 13 years of stand-up. Whether my pupils would agree that I was remotely interesting or not is another question.
In my 20s and early 30s, I was very much a man lost at sea, with very little direction in life, and painfully immature.
'Taskmaster' taps into a universal humour of people making a fool of themselves.
Carla Lane's 'Butterflies' seemed to be on in our house at all times when I was a kid, as did 'The Good Life.' But it was 'Fawlty Towers that made me really sit up for the first time. Basil's incandescent rage made me howl.
People often tell me that they have no idea how I can do standup. The idea of trying to make a large group of strangers laugh is, for many, absolutely petrifying - and it is - but there are ways of gradually developing the material that can ease the fear.
As anyone who's done any acting will tell you, if you haven't got a malicious evil streak, it's such a joy to let one out.
I have a terrible work ethic. The best way for me to do anything in life is for someone to say, 'You need to do this by this time, or you're in trouble'.
One day I woke up, had an early mid-life crisis, and decided it all had to change. I went and did Logan Murray's comedy course for 11 weeks and then started sneakily doing open-spot gigs, and that was it.
I am not a father, and the only children that I get close to are my nieces.
I wasn't a happy teacher, but I also wasn't an absolute psychopath like the teachers I portray on screen.
I had a great time as a teacher, but I was just treading water, as a lot of us do.
My dad, who had spent his life as a lecturer, said, 'That's all very well, but you need to earn a living, so why don't you teach?' I did, and 13 years later, I woke up.
I don't know why comedians moan about touring; you get driven to a town, stay in a hotel, work for an hour and a half with nice people, and eat fatty service station food. There's nothing not to like.
When you're trying to enter something as intimidating as comedy, starting out with a support network of likeminded people is a powerful thing. It was natural we'd end up working together because we went through those first petrifying moments together. We created gigs for each other, slapped each other on the back, and protected each other.
There is nothing bad about this job. Comedians have nothing to complain about. That doesn't mean I'm not constantly moaning and worrying.
