This job certainly doesn't win you a huge amount of friends, I accept that, but it is very enjoyable, and deep down I think it's probably quite a worthwhile job.

I've got a very peculiar sort of fame, based on being on the telly. It doesn't mean you have the lifestyle people expect.

I get paid to do what I enjoy, not that common a condition.

You have a huge amount of confidence when you're younger, which slowly ebbs away for the rest of your life. You think: 'No problem. I can do that. Why shouldn't I do it?'

Together with script writers Sid Green and Dick Hills, we worked on the comedy ideas for this series.

My parents are really funny. Laughter was a big part of my childhood. Of course, they tell a lot of bad jokes - but so do I. I tell a lot of bad jokes.

People have been known to joke that my lifelong love of portal fantasies was born, at least in part, from the fact that stepping into my private spaces is a little like stepping through a portal into another world.

Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.