So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said 'Is that the local swimming baths?' He said 'It depends where you're calling from.'

So I rang up a local building firm, I said 'I want a skip outside my house.' He said 'I'm not stopping you.'

I was reading a book... 'the history of glue' - I couldn't put it down.

So I went to the Chinese restaurant and this duck came up to me with a red.

With silly stuff, it's seventy-five percent confidence. I always tell people that it's because I'm nervous about getting that next laugh and I need to hear it. I always want to condense a joke.

So I said to the gym instructor: 'Can you teach me to do the splits?' He said: 'How flexible are you?' I said: I can't make Tuesdays.'

So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me "Can you give me a lift?" I said "Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it.'"

Now, most dentist's chairs go up and down, don't they? The one I was in went back and forwards. I thought 'This is unusual'. And the dentist said to me 'Mr Vine, get out of the filing cabinet.

You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine.' So that was nice.

Now you know those trick candles that you blow out and a couple of seconds.

I sit in places like Costa Coffee in Banstead and write rubbish. I need a deadline. I think about the 44 tour dates and keep imagining standing in front of all these people. Then every day I write 15 jokes minimum.

My house is a bit like a teenager's bedroom. The kind of pictures you have hanging up on your wall say a lot about you. I've got ones of Evel Knievel, Elvis and Starsky and Hutch, signed by David Soul.

So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said 'Is that the local swimming baths?' He said 'It depends where you're calling from.'

I love acting, but it's all just a bonus.

Black beauty - he's a dark horse.

Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother, Colin. Or my younger brother, Ho-Chan-Chu. But I think it's Colin.

So I got home, and the phone was ringing. I picked it up, and said 'Who's speaking please?' And a voice said 'You are.'

You see I'm against hunting, in fact I'm a hunt saboteur. I go out the night before and shoot the fox.

People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.

I'll tell you what I love doing more than anything: trying to pack myself in a small suitcase. I can hardly contain myself.

I was at sea the other day and loads of meat floated past. It was a bit choppy.

Velcro: what a rip-off.

I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again.

As you get older you're told to be sensible, but it's important for writing if you're a comic that you're able to still access that childlike thing.

I went out on a date with Simile. I don't know what I metaphor.

If you compulsively pun you are called a paronomasiac.

If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn't really count as narrative.

With silly stuff its seventy five percent confidence. I always tell people that its because Im nervous about getting that next laugh and I need to hear it. I always want to condense a joke.

From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.

Growing up in New England, being schooled and classically trained, it needed to shake, it needed to evolve.

All through my life, I didn't really consider my eyes at all, and then I became an actress. It's great, I guess. They're just in my face, and one is green and one is blue. It's different, and I'm definitely a proponent of being different in any way you can in life, so I guess if you're born a bit different that's a good thing.

Releasing a record is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the promotion of the product, but you have to play the game if you are to have a chance of competing in the market place.

The first thing a kindness deserves is acceptance, the second, transmission.

Do not, on a rainy day, ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won't feel like watching.

Network television is all talk. I think there should be visuals on a show, some sense of mystery to it, connections that don't add up.

The nice thing about 'Futurama' for me personally was that it was a way to honor some of the traditional ideas in literary science fiction, not so much movie or television science fiction - although we have that too, obviously. Our situation, a workplace comedy, led to all sorts of stuff.

When you're just able to distill it down to the idea and the feeling that a character is experiencing in a scene, it can become very, very razor sharp and really clean and really efficient and simple. And sometimes it takes twenty-five years to learn how to be simple.

I'm a happy person, and I want everybody else to be happy. Nothing wrong with that.

I'm down to earth; people sense that and they appreciate it.

I'm totally active. I am just this side of hyper. I jog and go to the gym every day. When I'm on the computer, I'm reading, I'm writing, I'm never quiet. My brain is very rarely not engaged. Every now and again I will fall asleep under the parasol in the sun, but that's a rarity.

I made myself a little angry before beam. That's the best way to do beam. It's important to fuel yourself with some devastating things, but I also realized that if I daydream about doing well and having this silver medal, it's more motivating than focusing on the negatives. So I learned to focus on the positive.

Each time I make a movie, it's like a paid scholarship to a different university course.

The older you get, the more yourself you can be and the less worried you are about what other people think.

I am one of maybe three people in the world who knows anything about Robert W. Chambers.

I couldn't choose a favourite author, but two contemporary writers who have never disappointed me are Tim Winton and Alice Munro.

I have people in my life who will say, 'Honey, you're trying too hard.' I like being saucy, but I'm 73 and a half. I'm still trying to find my way between matronly and coltishness.

My stand-up has always been very character-based. I'm not really the kind of person that's like, 'Hey, here's what's on my mind! Tip your waitress!' I would create the jokes based on the character I was playing. It was always a performance-based thing for me.

I write about the period 1933-42, and I read books written during those years: books by foreign correspondents of the time, histories of the time written contemporaneously or just afterwards, autobiographies and biographies of people who were there, present-day histories of the period, and novels written during those times.

Life is a series of punches. It presents a lot of challenges. It presents a lot of hardship, but the people that are able to take those punches and able to move forward are the ones that really do have a lot of success and have a lot of joy in their life and have a lot of stories to tell, too.