You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

You achieve the surreal jokes through the realism by making it elastic.

The truth is that I'm constitutionally incapable of doing an ordinary job.

I thought The Office was good, though I didn't think of it as a sitcom, just as a very good programme.

Yeah, I think Michael has had to deal with that label of being Michael Caine for a long time.

I don't want to do the same thing over and over again.

The trend now is to get away from stage bound sitcoms.

If I hadn't done this I might have ended up digging the roads.

We are both drawn to surreal situations so the writing was a joy.

Showing off seemed to me to be a highly valuable and necessary activity when I was 20.

It's true that I have spoken about doing a book before, but then everyone you speak to is planning to write a book.

I think that women just have a primeval instinct to make soup, which they will try to foist on anybody who looks like a likely candidate.

I have a very low level of recognition, which is fine by me.

I'm actually about as famous as a fourth division footballer from the 70s.

You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

I don't really think of myself as an actor.

In the same way, there is some creature gnawing away inside of me, urging me to do things in different ways.

The characters can't be wittier than people are in real life. They have to be character witty.

I think a lot of the time you just parody yourself.

Black Books adheres to a more old fashioned, traditional sitcom format, which I think works, because in its own way, it's quite theatrical.

One thing that's coming up a lot is: are you as grumpy as you appear from this Black Books thing.

I have no qualifications to do anything else and there weren't any formal application forms you had to fill in for stand-up, so I thought I'd give that a twist.

I never thought I want to do anything, really, except not go to work properly and turn up at the same place every day and eat sandwiches in the same canteen, if I can possibly help it, as I don't think I'd be very good at it.

A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

America is this incredible mosaic of immigrants, so people really want to be anchored in some kind of culture as well as the one they are living in.

America's work ethic is non-stop; it's not even enshrined in law that workers have to get their two weeks holiday money. But Americans work harder than everyone else I can think of.

As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with.

Children are the most honest critics. They will say 'You're funny', but also 'You're pathetic - go away.'

Do your own thing. Speak in your voice.

Have I had therapy? I went to a yoga class once.

Home gigs can be hard because it's an odd collision. More than anything, I feel self-conscious when my family are in the audience. I'm doing this job which is not quite acting - part of it is me, part performance. You're presenting a cartoon of yourself to people who know you as a line-drawing.

I actually very rarely see comedy myself, and although I admire the work of some comics, it does come from all over, so I'll get a charge out of some fiction writers and poets.

I did throw a lot of eggs into one basket, as you do in your teenage years - 'I am buying these records, I am wearing this'. I did quite a bit of that. You have to do it, wear your stupid shoes, wear your stupid hair.

I do not walk around imaging myself to be intimidating or smart.

I do think it's perfectly natural and human to want to invest belief in something. It's just a facet of who we are. What do I believe in? I believe in the obvious things. The people I'm close to and my work - it's not complicated.

I don't know that you're able to measure your aggregate wisdom as you go through life. I can't say that I ever feel that I'm sitting on top of a growing mound of wisdom.

I don't want to do panel games or adverts. I really like challenges. I always get roles as an art teacher or a photographer. In the future I want to play something like a mugger/assassin/pastry chef.

I don't watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something gets you when you're alone and someone's voice is coming through their work. There's a different quality to it that stays with you a bit more.

I draw hundreds and hundreds of pictures of sort of gnarly looking men, so I don't know what that tells you. People who look like... they're waiting for a sandwich that's never going to come. I don't know what's wrong with me.

I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.

I fear we might be losing the basic human facility to be alone - and with that you throw out independent decision-making, what to trust, what not to trust; key stuff - a perilous loss.

I get a phone call once every 18 months from some mad person who wants me to do something for less than no money and they give me about a week's notice. That's my film career, most of the time.

I grew up in a house where there was lots of teasing and language play and laughter; it was very important. When I was a teenager, you wouldn't go to a bar and find lots of televisions everywhere. People were talking. Talk was the mental fire you would gather around in the evening. It occupied a big part of your existence.

I never really had a career, to be honest with you. I never in my life sat down and planned it. I have thought, 'Oh, I'd like to do this,' like anybody would. But I'm not the type that says, 'If I do this, it will lead to that.'

I really can't describe what my stand-up is like - people see it and they say it's like that, or it's like this, and that's really up to them, that's fine, but I don't sit around all day analysing it. I just try and enjoy a show and interest myself because if I don't do that then I won't interest anybody else.

I wanted to show off - a simple impulse or drive; in much the same way as some kids wanted to play football, I wanted to show off. Not complicated in that sense, very natural; it just depends on how you want to show off.

I was lucky in the sense that I was never blessed with an overly reflective nature.

I was very into New Order, Joy Division, all of that when I was younger. I had a lot of bootlegs that I saved up my pocket money to buy. I had all the obscure early EPs.

I would never really analyse what I do. I leave that to other people - I'm not a critic. I just want to get on with whatever I have in hand, you know? Just try to make the best job of the available material.