On my first day in New York a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When I told him I didn't he said, 'Do you mind if I mug you here?'.

When I wake up on a Monday morning and I realise I don’t have to go and work at the civil service, I really think I’ve won.

I think having an outsider’s viewpoint is interesting and good, especially for a comedian.

If you became a comedian in the ’80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned laughter is cheating.

Am I allowed to call myself working-class now? Because obviously I’m now very rich.

I looked at longevity in show business when I was about 13, and the people who seemed to have longevity were the ones who’d spent quite a bit of time learning about what they were doing before they made it.

I really don’t take any interest at all in contemporary comedy.

At one point in the mid-Eighties I shared a promoter with the Smiths. One night, we were sitting backstage when Morrissey burst in, utterly distraught, sobbing his heart out. Turns out someone had thrown a sausage at him on stage during ‘Meat Is Murder.’

When I turned about 12 or 13, I realised that being funny wasn’t about remembering jokes. It was about creating them.

I don’t always vote in general elections, but I think I’ve always voted Labour.