Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Things like 'The Office,' and arguably shows like 'The Only Way Is Essex,' are comedies, just using real people in real situations.
I'm writing a science book - a sort of compendium of all the ways I've found of explaining things to my artsy friends over the years.
Every meal is so important and colours the rest of your day - my whole day can go into a spin if I make the wrong choice at lunchtime!
I used to go badger-watching as a boy, and it's brilliant fun - they're incredibly active animals, and the cubs are very funny to watch.
I've been going bald since I was about 17. I'm still hanging on to my hair for dear life, but I do sometimes wonder - should I get a wig?
Those who have never worked nude outdoors just can't imagine how much better a breeze feels on their skin than an item of sweaty clothing.
'Death In Paradise' is my dream job - a fascinating character, great scripts, superb cast, and shooting in the Caribbean with French catering.
It's the classic thing - children's TV gets watched by everybody, not just children. 'Horrible Histories' is the sort of thing everyone watches.
Being away from my family for six months a year - even if it was in the beautiful surroundings of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean - was just too hard.
I get dissatisfied really easily, and I have to constantly keep moving; I have to constantly keep doing things. I find it very hard to switch off.
I'd probably be one of these terribly over-protective parents whose children become a neurotic wreck because they've never been exposed to real life.
The one thing that makes me laugh about the phrase 'the worst week of my life' is that nobody actually uses that phrase when something really bad happens.
I think poshness is very funny! But I think it's also delightful. There's something wonderful and very innocent about it, particularly with the Edwardians.
I took my son to an exhibition about inventing things, and he was so inspired he started collecting toilet rolls and empty bottles for his own 'inventions.'
I very much wanted the perfect nuclear family, and I came from the perfect nuclear family, but like so many people, that isn't the way things have worked out.
You meet every different kind of possible person from different ethnic and cultural background, and after you while, you realise it's all just people, isn't it?
I'm always a bit wary when people say in interviews, 'I'm at the happiest place of my life that I've ever been.' I think, 'Really? Are you?' Life is a mix, isn't it?
Much as I respect Russell Brand's point of view, I'm in the opposite camp to him about voting. I think it's enormously important to engage with the electoral process.
My theory about comedians is that their greatest fear is other people laughing at them. So comedy is an attempt to control and manipulate the thing they find most frightening.
I'm a huge fan of French comedy. The French play comedy in a slightly different way than we do: they play it with a sort of realism that we don't necessarily often do ourselves.
My kids are blissfully unaware of anything I do. I asked my four-year-old, Harrison, what I did, and he said, 'You're an electrician.' He must have seen me changing a lightbulb.
For my mother, everything stands in relation to her Welshness; the fact she married an Englishman seems to be something of an issue. She's kind of anti-English... anti-imperialist.
It is hard to keep a straight face during comedy scenes. It's considered really bad form to laugh at someone else because you can ruin their best take. But sometimes it's very hard not to.
As a committed Whovian, I cannot believe my luck in joining the Twelfth Doctor for one of his inaugural adventures. My only worry is that they'll make me leave the set when I'm not filming.
It was only in the second year of my Ph.D. that I started acting. I wasn't in school plays or anything; I was in bands, but I wasn't cool. There's no such thing as a cool physics person, is there?
I'd like to have a neck. Everyone else has a neck, but I never got one; I don't know what happened. I'm not asking for much: just some sort of separation between my head and my body would be great.
I once played a character called Mr. Jonathan in something called 'Razzle Dazzle.' I was a choreographer of children's pageants. That was something I never imagined doing. It did great in Australia.
There's something wonderful about that sort of Poirot, Agatha Christie-style investigation: cross-questioning all the witnesses and checking their stories, looking for means, motive, and opportunity.
Ricky Gervais has jokes about people with disabilities, but do I think that's a healthy thing? Yes, I really do, because he's chosen his targets very carefully, and he's thought about what he's doing.
As with anything that involves emotional pain, comedy isn't too far behind. There's that element of no matter how painful something is - as long as it is not you that is going through it - it can be funny.
There are practical things which contribute to a joke's funniness. People will find a joke funnier if they are sitting closer together, if it's cold, if they've paid and if they are told it's funny beforehand.
My success at living a moral life is pretty terrible, but I still aspire to do it! I identify with the Johnny Cash thing that trying to live a good life and be a good person are not necessarily the same thing!
I'm not a 'suffer in silence' type; I'm a 'let's throw money at the problem' type - I've done reflexology, reiki, psychotherapy, counselling. I've never actually had analysis, but I'd like to try that sometime.
One of the saddest things I've ever done is download 'I'm A Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus and play along with it with my headphones on. Oh, God. If you were to walk in and see me do that, you would really worry for me.
I've turned down all sorts of good things accidentally, too. I read the script for 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind' and thought, 'This makes no sense.' Then I went to the cinema to see it. Well, what an idiot.
Steroids are] not healthy, ... There's a real health issue with steroid abuse. At any level, but particularly a young age level. There are many adverse health effects so I think it's a concern we have to take as a college-level group.
Science is a hobby, and I'm really into it, but it's not my job. My job is to learn about comedy and to make people laugh. Science, for me, is probably a bit like Danny Baker's love of football or Rod Stewart's obsession with train sets.
Galactic plankton is undoubtedly out there, but it's statistically highly likely there's also another intelligent civilisation out there somewhere. Unfortunately, the distances and time differences are so great, communication might remain impossible.
I work out in the Caribbean for half the year, playing a detective who's really into science. Anybody who knows me will tell you that's a dream come true. But it's tough for my family. We only get to see each other every two and a half to three weeks.
I want to get across that science is something that we all have ownership of and we can all take an interest in. We don't all have to understand complex theories, but we should have a working knowledge, like knowing your way round the engine of your car.
You can reveal yourself on stage in a way that you can't on TV. If you drop a character on TV, it's death. Each character has to be ruthlessly, faultlessly played. But live, you can hint at what's going on behind. You can let the audience in a bit and go off the script.
Personally, I think people need to get over this 'being offended' thing. Being offended does not give you the right to silence people. I get offended by things all the time - it's just part of life. The right not to be offended is not a human right, especially in a democracy.
I'm prepared to try to talk to a very beautiful girl. I learned a fantastic secret, which is that the most beautiful woman in the room is not being spoken to because she's too intimidating. They're not looking for somebody beautiful; they're looking for somebody to amuse them.
That was one of the amazing things about Doctor Who. Considering it is such an enormous charabanc, a centerpiece of international TV, it feels incredibly small when you are actually involved in it. It is very intimate, very small; it feels like a few people messing about with a camera.
I did a very stupid diet where you have three food groups, and you never eat them together. It's so bloody tedious; I'm losing the will to live just describing it. I managed to stay very thin because you spent your life wandering around starving hungry looking for a chickpea to go with a chicken leg.
Whatever happens in life can happen on the stage, but as a comedian you should always be clear what your target is. It's fine to be gratuitously tasteless if that's what you are intending to do. It's that old line: I don't defend what a comedian might say but I defend to the death his right to say it.
Science was always a passion, but I also loved 'Monty Python' and 'The Young Ones,' and I discovered the Footlights comedy club at university, where a lot of those people got their start. I had a go and loved it immediately. After that, I just couldn't stop writing sketches, and it all took off from there.
My enthusiasm for L.A. stems from my father, who was a lecturer in American literature at the University of Birmingham. Through his work, our family did several house swaps with L.A. families. It was a dreadfully daring thing to do in the early 1980s; there was no Internet, so you had no idea of what you were getting into.
I was on holiday in Ibiza, having a lovely time, writing a book and looking at the stars every night and generally not having a care in the world. Then I got sent the script for 'Death in Paradise.' I couldn't get back to England in time for the auditions, so my girlfriend filmed me on her camera, and I sent it off via email.
Our annual school physics trip was always to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, as it's such a good example of Newtonian physics. You can learn about centrifugal force and Newton's first law from the roller coasters, and the Viking long boat is a giant pendulum. It's good for children to understand that science underpins all these brilliant things.