Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.

Museums are good things, places to look and absorb and learn.

I won't eat in a place that has suits of armor.

When I was a kid, I used to send away for those ventriloquist kits on the back of comic books.

People ask what my influences are, and for me, it's not always obvious. One of my biggest inspirations was Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders. That's based on how she just does whatever she wants to do, and I love her attitude about everything. It bleeds over into my way of thinking and comedy.

Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.

It's important to remember that life is a joke, and that outlook grants a lot of perspective, but I don't think comedy should change and become political due to other things. It should just laugh at that cosmic joke that life is all the time.

I was so keen to become a comedian that actually doing the comedy itself almost came second.