Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Banter is a great way of breaking the ice.
I'm as crippled with doubt as the next actor.
I'm Irish. I don't know how to take a compliment.
All my memories of 'Father Ted' are very pleasant.
Football is the best way to get to know a people and a city.
I had a thirst for knowledge. I was always curious about stuff.
I was genuinely shocked to even be in the frame for a sitcom role on British TV.
If you expect a kick in the balls and you get a slap in the face, it's a victory.
I don't take myself or the species too seriously. You have to laugh at everything.
Marriage is when two people are joined together to become one desperately boring person.
Where I come from people are very deadpan with a dry humour that I suppose rubbed off on me.
If I was a very stable person, I would not have to do comedy. Nobody would have to listen to me.
Running is never fun. Running is something that you do when there's a man chasing you with a knife.
I make a lot of jokes about vegetarians in my act but most of them don't have the strength to protest.
I was quite young when my dad went into politics but, as it went on, I became self-conscious about it.
Irish politicians are very accessible to the public, just the messenger boys for the local constituency.
I visit a lot of art galleries. I live in Dublin and there's a very good gallery called the Kevin Kavanagh gallery.
When I was growing up, you never knew whether people were being serious or not. There was a lot of nodding and winking.
I suppose British people generally, probably have very stereotypical notions about the Irish that go back to Victorian times.
I get up every morning the same as everyone else, and scratch my head and just get on with the job. Whatever that job may be.
I remember being chronically shy. I came out of my shell a bit when I went to university, but I'm still fairly shy in company.
Before really high-pressured gigs I tend to freeze and crawl into bed. Under the covers you just feel safe for a little while.
We thought 'Father Ted' was destined to be obscure late-night Channel 4 fodder and then it works and you don't really know why.
I spent five years in Dublin as a stand-up, living on pea sandwiches. But at times I quite enjoyed the bohemian penniless existence.
I've always wanted to play a detective. Always loved detective shows, right back to 'Columbo', 'The Rockford Files', 'Starsky & Hutch'.
There are lots of channels and lots of companies looking for content, as they say, but it's quite difficult to get things off the ground.
My father was driven, active and always busy. We didn't see that much of him, although he never went far away or stayed overnight anywhere.
Tony Currie was another great favourite, even if he only played for a short time at Leeds. His wife told me once that she was a big fan of 'My Hero'.
People love authenticity in comedy and, coming from a region, you get a very strong sense of place. They can place you straight away, so they can relax.
I have other careers in terms of stand-up, stage acting and writing, so I don't feel too hidebound by that, but I do quite like playing those warm roles.
Irish people are still very prickly about Catholic Church. Despite all the scandals and cover-ups that have rocked the church, you can only push it so far.
I'm an ardent tennis player. I'm like an overenthusiastic child out there and I've damaged my back. It's not that it's crippling pain, more mental anguish.
Fundamentally, I was a very shy and quiet person growing up, so it was just really difficult getting up on a stage. It was a perverse career choice really.
I was never ideological in any sense, or a slave to any particular politics or religion. My solace and my inspiration always came from books and literature.
I think we all get a bit bogged down in our lives and our own careers and we have to take a step back and get a sense of proportion and perspective on things.
While I try to retain the slightly odd perspective and some of the innocence, it's really liberating to be able to talk/rant about all the stuff that bothers me.
I am going through a Neil Young phase. I also listen to a lot of alternative country, a band called Smog and Bonnie Prince Billy, which is very dark and twisted.
While I loved my family, I would always have this association with my father. I would always be coming up against that conservatism. It was just liberating to be in London.
The English, being the most practical people in the world, came up with parliamentary democracy and codified football and Cadbury's Creme Egg. And yet they voted for Brexit.
Carrickmacross always had a border mentality. Smuggling would have been a big thing there in the past; there would have been spillover from the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
I was able to tour successfully and attract a fairly wide audience, but it was hard to assert myself as a stand-up because people were more familiar with me as a TV character.
I think there is a very strong sense of Irish identity, and I think partly that's to do with the fact that we have evolved differently from Britain and other countries in Europe.
I remember my first ever gig in town, I was very nervous. I had a big red shiny face. But that all disappeared after 30 seconds and I settled down and got a great lift from that.
Johnny Giles is my favourite Leeds player, without doubt. He was a fierce competitor. I met him once, at a black-tie event in Dublin, which was one of the great nights of my life.
When we left university, in the late '80s, one of the guys had been to the Comedy Store in London, came back very excited and suggested we set up something like it. And so we did.
It's quite telling that the really big comedians - like John Bishop from Liverpool, Kevin Bridges from Glasgow, Peter Kay from Bolton - stand out with their strong regional accents.
My mother tells me I regaled people with stories but I don't remember that. And she disputes the idea that I might be chronically shy. She says I was the most outgoing of all of us.
To be honest I would like to do more movies, I've been a victim of my own success in that sense, as if you have a TV character that really endures, it's really hard to get into film.
Despite the apparent trappings of modest success in television and so on, I have always been an uneasy person. I can't change that. I can't change that part of my psychological makeup.
They were always my favourite scenes working with Don Warrington. He's such a brilliant actor, he has such a presence, you don't have to act with him you just react you know he's so good.