The main thing is to believe writers know what their voices are, and if they are left alone, they will come through with something. There are a load of brilliant U.S. comedies: at the moment, I'm loving 'Girls.' People say the U.S. is more conservative; I think, actually, it is a bit looser here, but trends change.
— Julia Davis
People who know my track record know when I've got a vision in mind, I'll see it through. But sometimes it's hard to convey what you're trying to achieve.
All the time, I'm watching relationships.
My dad was a civil servant, and my mum was a secretary.
You have to be enough of a parent - you have to be there. If I'm feeling bad, I really do just have to get on with it and try and channel it back into my work somehow, do something positive with it.
I still think of things for 'Jill' all the time. It's annoying, because I want to be able to find another character who I could write for indefinitely.
I watch a lot of U.S. comedy, shows such as 'Eastbound & Down' and 'Veep.' I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her character in that show.
People say the comedy is so shocking, but if you read newspapers or look around generally - I mean, obviously I'm not writing about all the lovely things that there are, which I do see as well - but there is a lot of outrageousness around, slightly covered up. And obviously, it's fun to take that a little bit further.
To me, if something makes you laugh, that's heart-warming. It doesn't necessarily have to be friendly; it might just be the weirdest thing ever. Laughing makes me feel better.
I just find it funny and terrible: someone being very rude and overbearing over somebody who doesn't know how to deal with it. Maybe it's because I've experienced that sort of thing and I don't know how to say, 'You can't do that. You can't say that to me.'
I'm quite tactful, actually. I worry about whether people are all right. With my friends, obviously, conversations are quite free and uncensored, but I would never enjoy making someone feel uncomfortable at all.
That is one thing I really hate about working in TV - you have to shape episodes to exact time-lengths, do like 22 minutes, and it is just so against what you are making.
I think, in comedy, you only hit about one or two great characters in your career. Sometimes my character will be just a sketch... what is the funniest situation to put this person in?
I do think, with people in comedy, you can have your time, as it were, and then you don't realise that it might have gone. I hope it hasn't for me. I think what I do is, I just... I just try to plough my own furrow, in a way.
People could write stuff that's really offensive, but if it's written within a believable world that has a tone to it, then it can be funny. But if it's just shock-value stuff, then it's not going to work, because it's not coming from a true place.
I actually think I'm still quite childishly optimistic in a certain way, which is maybe why I find life quite shocking.
I would never say, 'Ooh, let's do something really dark.'
I love all Daphne du Maurier's stuff. And just enjoying period dramas, really... wanting to do something drastically different from 'Nighty Night', the chance to write very different language.
I sometimes write in a cafe down the road from my house now because I feel guilty trying to work if I can hear them playing. I invariably end up sat in a corner, depressed, retreating into my own world.
I'm sure all parents think their kids are funny, and I'm sure a lot of kids are, whether their parents are comics or not.
I think I am generally prone to exaggerating characters, taking them to a ridiculous extent. But you do also meet those people in real life who are just really awful.
I love the spiritual side of religion, but the church, for me, is a place where I feel very repressed.
I'd love to do more 'Nighty Night,' but that's always down to commissions, really. It's weird as well because everyone's moved on. I don't know if I could get all those people back.
If I claim I'm the opposite of my characters, then it'll just sound awful. But I tend to write the sort of things I'd never say because I'm not a very forceful person.
I think most people, including me, like to read gossipy things about others: revealing things that I love to read but I don't really want known about me.
I'd love to find a lifelong female film editor as Scorsese has with Thelma Schoonmaker. I think women are probably, without generalising, sensitive to subtle things as an editor.
I love watching programmes about food. I always think, 'When I'm old, I'll take up baking.' There's something calming about watching the recipe and thinking, 'I'm going to make that' - and it's never going to happen.
My desktop is really chaotic, and I'm always trying to work out where I am going to put all these ideas.
I think my dad has a similar black sense of humour to mine, so perhaps it's just an inherited thing. I've got two little boys now, and I can see it with them as well. I don't know if you learn it off your parents - but my dad used to take me to see certain plays when I was quite young, so maybe that had an effect as well.
As a child, I just found a lot of things quite difficult. I found school quite overwhelming. There were just too many people. I wish I could have gone to a school with about five people. And if I saw someone bullying someone else, for example - I don't mean because I'm a perfect person, because I'm really not - but I'd always be, 'Well, why?'
I was brought up in Guildford, and I think I used to absorb all the suburban things - seeing coffee mornings, women talking... that stuff, really. I was watching Alan Ayckbourn on some documentary, and he was talking about how he was around a lot of women as a child, listening to all that stuff.
I always imagine people give succinct answers. I have no prepared thoughts on what I do.
I can't just lie in bed and be self-obsessed if there are two children running about who could easily fall down the stairs.
With 'Nighty Night' series one, Oprah Winfrey's channel took it on, so she must have liked it.
A lot of my comedy is to do with being angry, then finding a way to channel that.
My grandfather was a vicar, and there was quite a lot of churchgoing when I was growing up. It's a world that I spent a lot of time around.
I worked in a supermarket for a year; I worked in a finance department at a university, a pub, busking and singing. I tried to be a nanny for about three weeks.
If I can laugh with people, it makes me feel safe with them. If I feel someone has no sense of humour, I find it really scary. I do it with the kids as well: put on stupid voices to lighten up the spirit or gee them along to do something.
I just try to put myself in the minds of all the characters.
'Robin's Test' is more contemporary than what I normally do. It's about couples going on a camping holiday for a 50th birthday. Two couples go, and then this other couple were going to come, but they've broken up, and so the man from that couple turns up, but with a new girlfriend that nobody likes - and I'm playing that character.
I do use a laptop, but I'm very technophobic. I've never downloaded anything. I've never bought anything on Amazon. I'm really ridiculous. I don't know what it is.
