Sara Pascoe

Extensive analysis was conducted before deciding whether consumers would respond better to a male or female imprisoned in their phone. Almost every country in the world had a female Siri programmed - but not, initially, in the UK and France.

Bodies have a sex, but gender is a thing we made up, like your star sign or nationality. It doesn't really say anything about who you are. The destruction of gender binary would free everybody.

A show that I loved as a kid was 'Maid Marian And Her Merry Men'. It was a really strong female character making fun of the boys, an inversion of gender politics. But it was very funny, too. I always wanted to be one of the village people messing about in the mud and being stinky.

Utilitarianism is a philosophy from the olden days exploring the idea that whatever is best for the majority is the fairest.

Many of my memories of my mum are of her in the bath with a book, utilising her limited spare time by simultaneously washing and studying. She left school with no qualifications and now has a PhD. If I seem like I am bragging about this, I am.

When you meet a new woman who does stand-up, it is instantly like, 'Yes! In the gang'. Because you know the logistics of the job: they travel a lot, it's lonely in dressing rooms, you know that they have bad gigs. That means they don't have to prove themselves to me.

I don't feel like a very feminine woman sometimes. I feel manly. When I was in my twenties I would say I was a masculine girl and now I realise the whole idea of femaleness is a construct. I'm a boyish girl, who talks over people and I do a boyish job.

But with 'Newsrevue' I started doing some characters, and I just loved how you were in control. You could write something that day and go and do it that night, rather than waiting for a job that involves other people. So I did character stand-up, and then proper stand-up, and I loved it; I got addicted.

When I was 18, I moved out of home. I decided to try to be an actor, so took myself off to slum it with nine humans and a million mice in a red Leytonstone house.

Backstage at the Apollo isn't a fun place to be. It's a bit like a prison: small rooms filled with warm Diet Coke.

When I go back to Essex, where I grew up, I'm still appalled by the homophobia and casual racism and aggression. I live in Lewisham, in south London, and though it might look a bit rough, it's a diverse, friendly neighbourhood.

I used to steal from the library, which is a crime and it's bad, but I just couldn't get enough books, and I also didn't like to give them back once I'd read them. I just read everything.