What could be funnier than a fat person trying to run a marathon?
— Jo Brand
I'm too nervous to eat before I go onstage, and I'll usually eat out after the performance or when I get home at midnight.
I've always liked to think I could do anything I wished as well as - if not better than - a man. But I wasn't very good at rally driving.
When I got married, the Sun ran the headline: 'Here comes the bride, all fat and wide.' Luckily, it was a few days after the wedding - but it was still hideous to read at a great romantic moment.
I believe that if your brain has to get to grips with complicated words, then you won't get Alzheimer's. I'm sure it's not true, but I do believe it.
Some men are deeply likable but have attitudes I don't like. Does that mean I should completely dismiss them? It's like saying: if someone votes Tory can you like them? And, yes, I can. I have friends who vote Tory, and I'm appalled, but that's not to say they're not great people in so many other ways. We have a tendency to oversimplify things.
Does anyone really go into nursing intending to be apathetic, cold and removed from suffering? I find that very difficult to believe.
Anybody who has had the pleasure of reading an article about themselves in the press knows that, on the whole, there is a huge amount of inaccuracy, value judgment and the use of a crowbar to insert editorial bias that reflects the current political leaning of that particular paper.
When I was a nurse I never had much money, and I was still happy then.
We women continue to swallow this line that it's unladylike or even proof of being a lesbian if you wear flat shoes like Doc Martens. I'm prepared to put up with that accusation, because at least my feet aren't killing me and I don't look like a bandy ostrich.
One thing lots of Christians do have in common is that they can't help coming across as smug. This winds lots of people up, particularly because famous Christians pronounce on the life of the poor from their very lovely affluent homes filled with their very lovely families and attractive pets.
I have seen good nurses and bad nurses. They existed along a continuum: from hard-working, kind and competent people, to office-hugging, bone-idle types, to apathetic, disengaged automatons.
Punk allowed women to stop looking feminine. Oh, the relief.
Everything becomes magnified at night. Sounds travel in a different way, it's dark, and everything seems far more spooky.
Most of us manage the fateful things that happen in our lives the best we can, certainly not to a Stalin-like 20-year plan.
As a comic and as a nurse, it's important to look calm on the surface when you're absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it's important to make that person feel that you're in control.
The way to a man's heart is through his hanky pocket with a breadknife.
I buy smoked mackerel in a vain attempt at being healthy. I do actually really like it, and you don't have to cook it, which is handy.
Everyone in comedy thinks if you go to the U.S. you become a global star but, unfortunately, I've always been a bit anti-American - so I never did.
No one I know is actually so rude as to tell me I've become duller since having children. But I'm sure they think it.
It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.
I have such admiration for single mothers. I simply don't comprehend how you'd cope with that intensity, the lack of breaks, ever, on your own.
Suffice to say, many women find their first appearance on a comedy panel show to be their last. Second chances seem to be given less often to the female of the species.
Privatisation splits hospital services into increasingly small packages.
I love everything about books. I love the content, the way they look and even the lovely way they smell. I think a book collection says something about you as a person, and certainly my books are something I'd want to pass on for future generations.
My father was an engineer and my mother was a social worker, and they met as young socialists. That probably tells you everything you need to know about my attitude to money - I've never really been bothered about it.
I can honestly say I've never sold any arms to a repressive foreign regime while reassuring everyone at home that the weapons will be used for nice things.
Christians have always been fodder for comedians who have tended to portray them as anoraks - slightly clammy, beatifically smiley dullards with barely a personality between them.
It is unrealistic to expect an entire profession to be completely good. There are bound to be some individuals who are stressed, who are unkind, who are a bit rubbish at their job, who are in the wrong career.
People are so different in reality from the picture created of them on TV. So it's all a creation; everything is made up.
I don't hold any candle for drama versus comedy.
Even nice things don't make you happy when you're tired.
I never ever take into consideration the consequences of my actions until it's too late.
The comedian sticks as religiously to her theme as a dancer sticks to a diet.
I pay a bit more than lip-service to health: I don't eat chips or pre-prepared food, and it might be a comedy sacrilege to admit I do like vegetables, fruit and salad and stuff.
Not many women will go out on a limb to make themselves really unattractive and unfeminine so you can get the laughs, but it's a great thing to do in my book.
I was always being called upon to be an honorary boy alongside my brothers. I don't think I'd be a comic now if it hadn't been for that.
I thought I was funny as a kid. I used to play tricks on my brothers - I'd tie a two-shilling piece to a bit of cotton, then pull it away as they went to grab it.
When I was at school you got an overall general education on many things, even just basic facts.
Regular panelists on shows can be terrifying. They own that space, and many guest comics suspect they are favoured in the edit, while their own hilarious jokes end up being ejected into the ether.
Managers of hospitals over the years have been increasingly recruited from outside the health service, and although their experience of running a supermarket chain might allow them to balance the books, it does not mean they have any insight into how a ward should be managed and patients best served.
I'm a Luddite with computers, and I'm slightly worried about being hacked as well.
As the Tories know, the problem with setting yourself up as a shining example for others to follow is that when you get caught out, that proverbial substance really hits the fan.
Being Christian towards poor people means trying to improve their lives and give them back some self-respect.
A good culture in a hospital can absorb and manage a few bad nurses, but once the culture becomes bad in itself, bad nursing practice is much harder to hide.
In the end, punk inevitably burned itself out and acted as a bridge across which the New Romantics could sashay in their chiffon and glossy hair.
There are so many cliches associated with mental health - such as the 'fine line between lunacy and genius' - which are, on the whole, a load of rubbish.
I often tell audiences at the start of my shows that I'm not gay because I've got petitions from lesbian groups saying 'Can you tell people you're heterosexual because you're giving us a bad name.'
I used to get a lot of people saying 'Oh, you are such a lucky granny.' But the fact of the matter is you can be a grandma at 35 these days.
I've always been criticised for how filthy my material is. Victoria Wood said to me once, 'I wish I was a bit ruder, like you,' and I said, 'Well, I wish I was a bit cleaner, like you.'
