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Cos people think I'm on drugs and I'm not. I'm really quite... Just a bit of coffee. When I take drugs I start going, Oh, would you like insurance?
But puberty was... well, before puberty, at school, I didn't tell kids I was a transvestite 'cause I thought they might kill me with sticks, you know?
Makeup's just crazy, anyways. Native Americans used to wear it, and it did all right for them until, uh ... well, until you killed them all, I suppose.
So then there was the Greek, Socrates, he was great... He invented questioning. Before Socrates, no questioning. Everyone sort of went, ''Yeah, I suppose so.
Charles Darwin wrote a famous book in 18 [gibberish]. And that book was an interesting book, cuz it was called "Monkey-Monkey-Monkey-Monkey-Monkey-Monkey-You".
I try to keep performing as much as possible - I just like to. I used to take huge gaps off between gigs, now I just like to do stand-up gigs as much as I can.
You have the American dream! The dream is to be born in a gutter and grow up, and then get all the money in the world and stick it in your ears and go THBBBBBT.
Scrabble was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia. This is true, they proved this one. The word dyslexia was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia.
They say that 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people.
Spiders frighten me. In response to the spider alerts for Australia, please can the Australian government remove all spiders from Australia and blow them into outer space.
Because we all know one of the main factors of war is the element of surprise. And what could be more surprising than the First Batallion Transvestite Brigade? Airborne Wing.
I don't believe in God. I believe gods and devils are within us. It's our own battle. Our life's battle is to appeal to the gods within us, and to fight the devils within us.
I felt audiences are happier to take comedy people who play darker people because there's a link between the psychosis of comedy and the psychosis of being a twisted character.
So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naive, I feel!
Racist people, interestingly, are never as polite as smokers. Have you noticed that? Smokers always go, "Do you mind if I smoke? Oh, you do? Okay, I'll go outside and have a cigarette."
The bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of drama is to be truthful. You can be truthful and funny, but if you're not truthful in a drama than the audience leaves you.
People still talk about a British sense of humour, or French slapstick or how the Germans have no sense of humour - and it's just rubbish. I do strongly feel that we are all the bloody same.
If you're choking in a restaurant you can just say the magic words, 'Heimlich maneuver,' and all will be well. Trouble is, it's difficult to say 'Heimlich maneuver' when you're choking to death.
In Britain we have a very powerful tabloid culture with celebrities on the front page crying with their make-up smeared and tears, and it's kind of what you'd expect from someone who likes to dress up that way.
I saw something in a program on something in Miami, and they were saying, "We've redecorated this building to how it looked over 50 years ago!" And people were going, "No, surely not, no. No one was alive then."
I want to be a taxidermist! I wanna fill animals with sand. I wanna get more sand into an animal than anybody has ever bloody got in one. I wanna fill a rat with the entire Gobi Desert, so it’s really quite tight.
There's a thing about trying too hard, which I think is in all forms, which is if you really try to do things really well, you can get to a less good place than if you just let go and let it fly. Especially in creativity.
If you're trying to get a bit of attention, you can smash up your hotel room or spend all your time going to openings or doing the gossip column thing. I just decided to do gigs in French, German, Spanish, and in America.
You’ve got to believe you can be a standup before you can be a standup. You have to believe you can act before you can act. You have to believe you can be an astronaut before you can be an astronaut. You’ve got to believe.
Puberty is the sickest joke God plays on us. So you're just noticing members of the sex: "Girls girls, ooo". Naturally you want to look your best, and God says "No! You will look the worst you've ever looked in your life!"
No matter how much makeup I wore, people just kept saying "Yes, sir! Would you like tea with that, sir?" "Yes, I would like tea. Why don't you put it on my breasts?" "Certainly. Tea for this man's breasts! Anything else, sir?"
When I was seven, I said, "I want to act." When I was 10, I realized that films exist, and I wanted to be in them. Not a comedian, I wanted to be a dramatic actor. Films just seemed such fun, and like such a great thing to do.
This is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard flight...one, from...here to there. We'll be cruising at a height of ten feet, going up to twelve and a half feet if we see anything big. And our copilot today is a flask of coffee.
In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you're just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z. Unless you've got a twin brother who's also a stand-up.
I am encyclopaedic on World War II. My dad took me to D-Day beaches when I was a kid. I was there four years ago - every five years they have a remembrance on D-Day beaches and I would have liked to have been there and done my bit.
How to survive boarding school. Do not express emotion, do not feel emotion, do not have emotion. If someone hits you, hit them back, if someone argues with you, argue back, never give in an inch, never look vulnerable and you will survive.
In the UK a lot of people don't like to try. There's a different cultural thing. Here [in USA] if you try and fail, you get up again and start again and keep going. People respect you for it. Even if you keep failing, they respect the tenacity.
I am someone who's very positive about business, as a social Democrat. I do like the safety net of the welfare system and people setting things and creating business, and that's what I try to do with my own work: export it around the world from the U.K.
Fox hunting, there's big fox hunting thing, there's arguments in Britain about fox hunting. And they go around. They obviously hunt foxes because the foxes, they attack chickens. And posh people have an alliance with chickens just like in the First World War.
I mean, sometimes... a comedian becomes an actor, and they just don't deliver, because the bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of acting is to be truthful, and they get that mixed up sometimes, or don't even notice that that's the thing.
I remember when I was being told about Watergate, and I thought, "Oh, America is not what I think America is." But America is what I think it is. It's just that it's two bits of it, and I don't go with the Republican bit of it. I go more with the Democratic bit.
So in Europe, we had empires. Everyone had them - France and Spain and Britain and Turkey! The Ottoman Empire, full of furniture for some reason. And the Austro-Hungarian Empire, famous for f-k all! Yes, all they did was slowly collapse like a flan in a cupboard.
When I first came out, I thought, I want to walk like a real woman, I don't want to do mincing steps. And there was some girl I saw walking up Holloway Road in Islington who had this long languid walk and I thought, that's what I like, so I incorporated her walk into mine.
Performance enhancing drugs are banned in the Olympics. OK, we can swing with that. But performance 'debilitating' drugs should not be banned. Smoke a joint and win the 100 metres, fair play for you. That's pretty good. Unless someone's dangling a Mars bar off in the distance.
I'd be happy to be taken as a woman - and that's what I was initially trying to do when I started throwing on dresses and stuff. But that wasn't going to happen because everyone kept calling me sir. So I thought I'd change the method and just start wearing what I wanted to wear.
For me to put a look together, if it's going to be a boy look or a girl look or whatever, is quite a tricky thing to do. I'm not doing drag because drag is seen in a certain way and my comedy has got zero to do with what I'm wearing. I could wear an elephant suit and say the same thing.
And the National Rifle Association says that, "Guns don't kill people, people do," but I think the gun helps, you know? I think it helps. I just think just standing there going, "Bang!" "That's not going to kill too many people, is it? You'd have to be really dodgy on the heart to have that.
Comedy is like a very cokey, druggy sugar. You get hits of comedy, and it's very, "More, give me more of that stuff," because serotonin is being released in the brain. So it's basically, everyone becomes serotonin junkies, and we are serotonin dealers. And that's what being a comedian is about.
It's a historical thing, up to the 19th century the English hated the French. Then in the 20th century the English started to hate the Germans - as we began to move alphabetically through the map of the world. Now, the year 2000, we are fine with the Germans... but the Hungarians are pissing us off.
He [Charlie Chaplin] was always playing as if it were to the camera, if you've seen the live shots of him when he's going to an opening night or something like that. And the skills that he had were beyond my ability to throw together. You just couldn't really compete with him. He was too athletic at that.
I think I'm actually a mainstream, popcorn-eating kid. I've always been that, so I'd sit there watching action movies and American moves before I watch other movies quite often because I am that kid. But I've pushed into the more alternative area because that's where it gets really interesting creatively.
I use a Bruce Lee technique: 'The way of no way.' He had the idea that he would learn everything, so that whoever he had to fight, he could improvise anything. The best way of starting a gig is just to not think of anything - to clear your mind, not in an empty Zen state, but more just to go on and see where you go.
When you're more mature, you do start telling the truth, in odd situations. "I'm sorry, I've broken a glass here. Is that expensive? I'll pay for it. I'm sorry." And you do that so that people in the room might go, "What a strong personality that person has. I like to have sex with people with strong personalities."
I use a Bruce Lee technique: "The way of no way". He had the idea that he would learn everything, so that whoever he had to fight, he could improvise anything. The best way of starting a gig is just to not think of anything - to clear your mind, not in an empty Zen state, but more just to go on and see where you go.
If you think about determination, if people have a heart and are determined, they can get to that place. But there are a lot of negative people who were enormously determined. All the Nazis were determined. They wanted to murder everyone. Everyone with a bad heart, who doesn't care about people, I wish they hadn't started.