Arthur Smith

Someone once described me as the Zelig of comedy, and I think I know what he means.

The history of the relationship between comedy and swimming is short indeed. Of course it is always funny when someone falls into water, but that's about it.

Ninety-eight per cent of laughter is nothing to do with jokes, which do not deserve to bear the weight of all the funny stuff in the world.

Comedy ages quicker than tragedy, to the extent that we can't know if the 10 commandments may originally have been 10 hilarious one-liners.

Because comedy is cheap to put on: if you've got a play or an opera, there's a whole load of people and a set, but comedy is just one man or woman. And because TV has learned to love comics - there's so many more around now than when I started out.

The best way to prepare for a night out with a Shakespearean tragedy is to do a bit of reading up in the afternoon, eat a light supper - perhaps Welsh rarebit - and then arrive early to do some stretching exercises in the foyer before curtain-up.

I've noticed that my resolutions involve me not doing stuff that I wasn't going to do anyway so here's something more positive. I'm going to retrain as a Latin teacher in a provincial public school.

Global warming, the ongoing destruction of the planet, Third World debt, the uselessness of the railways, the takeover by the corporations, the scary George Bush person: all these things are important and should be animating me into outrage. Yet somehow they do not.

The pun exists in a social and political void, caring nothing for the issues of its day, content merely to display itself in its small cleverness.

Every generation of children has its private hero.

My sister-in-law believes that few narratives are so tightly constructed that you can't skip boring bits and still keep abreast of what's going on.

I find it hilarious that there are academics who try to analyse chemical changes in the brains of students while exposing them to gags.