Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My first holiday to San Francisco in 1998-99 was supposed to be a two-week vacation but I ended up staying five weeks and nearly didn't come home.
You can sway an audience if you win the women over. The gentlemen will follow 'cause they can be so foolish like that at times, they are easily led.
People are always asking, 'Where does Michael Pennington end and Johnny Vegas begin,' and you're going, 'It's not like that: it's blurred right across.'
We had a week off in the middle of shooting, but as soon as everyone stopped, we all went down with six different types of flu and other unmentionable diseases.
Writing a book about yourself is like therapy, and you go 'Oh My God, that's the reason that happened.' Writing about it, you're forced to really examine things.
I'd never experienced stress before I did stand-up, and it was a massive shock to my system, this thing of waking up, and the nerves of, 'You're on stage tonight.'
I used to be good with kids, but as I get older, I'm grumpy and terrible with them. As for doing a gig at a 6-year old's birthday party, you couldn't pay me enough.
I also want to return to doing stand-up. I've become frightened of live audiences. This is a really telling sign that I need to go back on the comedy circuit again.
I get obsessed with decorations and decorating the house. I keep it tasteful outside, but when you get inside it is a bit like Blackpool illuminations, I go bonkers!
There's lots of stuff about me being a fan of Cliff but not being gay. Which suggests that he is, but he's not. Anyway, this is Channel 4, let their lawyers sort it out.
I sang 'American Pie' a lot in my stage set. It had a knack of uniting an audience in a sing-along. It's a clever song about American history but wrapped in a fantastic tune.
I think I'm realising more and more that I've got a job to do and I can't be doing the big nights out and working to my full potential the next day. I feel much better for it.
I love the way my weight fluctuates in the newspapers. It was 18 stone and then people look at a bad picture of me and add a few more stone on. I think the highest was 22 stone.
They look outside the windows of their apartment in town and realize they're not living in a terrace anymore. This is a room full of dreamers who like to go to London for a day.
When I wasn't as attractive as I am now, I suffered at the hands of cruel children and their taunts until I realised that confidence and a bit of aesthetic care can overcome that.
I do need to explore my faith, because it has got lost over the years and it has been kind of tainted through experience. But I also know it's enriched my life, my dad being a Catholic.
Being 'Johnny' was almost like an out of body experience. I thought he was just a character that I'd created and could quite easily step away from, but it was much more difficult than that.
I was loved as a kid; I was raised with more love and emotional support than most folks could wish for my memories aged nought to ten are all bound up together in a mesh of innocence and fun.
I trained to be a priest - started to. I went to seminary school when I was 11. I wanted to be a priest, but when they told me I could never have sex, not even on my birthday, I changed my mind.
I'm loath to use my personal life to promote what I do, but at the same time, I don't like a journalist going away with no more than you could get off Wikipedia, where most of it's invented anyway.
I was loved as a kid; I was raised with more love and emotional support than most folks could wish for... my memories aged nought to ten... are all bound up together in a mesh of innocence and fun.
Some comics are in it for what they can get out of it. Others are in it for a love of comedy. I think those that are in it for a genuine love of comedy find each other within the circuit and become friends.
There have been times I've finished a big job and thought, 'Great, a couple of weeks off.' But then a couple of weeks turns to three weeks and then after a month you're staring at the phone willing it to ring.
There's this idea that it has to be made in London. But we've got everything up here, and if you've got comics who are gifted because of where they're from, you shouldn't drag them away from that natural resource.
'Johnny' was a coping mechanism who could take those things which could have ordinarily destroyed me, by tweaking my past and throwing it back out there, getting laughs from things that would have otherwise upset me.
From a certain age, I sort of accepted myself for what I was. And although to other people it was like nothing ever goes right, I had a really nice attitude that I'd inherited from my parents, and especially from my dad.
I've been offered all the reality TV shows but have turned them down. If I did it as 'Johnny,' there'd be no jungle left! It was really hard regaining control of myself, so I am reluctant to let 'Johnny' back out of the box.
I am very proud of what 'Johnny' achieved in stand-up comedy because he believed entirely in giving an audience the best kick he could. But he was someone who was quite detrimental to my health, both emotionally and physically.
I've always said that with kids' TV that people get stuck in it from drama school but that's not fair because I know myself that when you go in creatively, kids are so much more open to ideas. You're so much freer to mess about and try things.
You get people who come to London, sever links with where they come from, and then when they need people, there's nobody there. To feel like you can't go back home would be a horribly sad place to be, as is mistaking fame for genuine love and affection.
I think it sort of dawns on you that if you're not gigging constantly you're not actually relevant. You may be relevant to a different part of the media now, to television commissioners and editors, but to a young live-comedy audience you're not, really.
In credits, I'm 'Michael' sometimes now, but people know you as something, so there's no point fighting it. 'Squiggle,' you'll always be 'Prince,' and 'The Rock,' just accept it. I want to move on, but not that much. So I'm still known as 'Johnny Vegas.'
I thought I could play the hellraiser and then put 'Johnny Vegas' back in his box. I found popularity through self-destruction. The more you damage yourself, the more people are drawn to you, and that can be quite addictive. It is not a lifestyle you can maintain.
I came from a very loving home, had a happy life with no great aspirations, but going to the seminary changed me. There was a chunk of my childhood missing. Once I'd realised it wasn't for me, I still felt a tremendous pressure to continue for fear of letting everybody down.
I wanted to try and trace the genuine origins of 'Johnny' and how he so successfully staged this takeover of 'Michael Pennington.' 'Johnny' is a contradiction to who I am as a person. I'm not very good at confrontation, I have a tendency to internalise and to carry things around.
I don't want to demonise 'Johnny.' I was really proud of what he achieved. Especially within stand-up. He was quite a unique voice. I will always possibly be trading off 'Johnny's name, but there's a lot more things that I'm able to do now - the strengths that 'Michael' can bring to it.
Being behind the camera is where I feel comfortable. I've found something that I feel I, as 'Michael,' can be as confident in as 'Johnny' was on the stage. It's great being part of the creative process. You're right at the start of an idea, and you get to see it all the way through till the end.
I couldn't be 'Johnny' in front of a camera in acting jobs and behind the camera I like to be 'Michael.' With directing, you can't do it by halves. There's a lot of reflection, and I have found that I, as 'Michael,' thrive on it. It's lovely coming home and feeling that stuff from a day's work as myself.
There was always that thing with 'Johnny' - I always saw myself as his writer and PR. But when he got out there, I had no control. His whole thing was going off on those flights of fancy. Going, 'Let's see what we can possibly do that hasn't been done before up here.' And when it works, it's lovely; it's a great night.
I came back from university thinking I knew all about politics and racism, not knowing my dad had been one of the youngest-serving Labour councillors in the town and had refused to work in South Africa years ago because of the situation there. And he's never mentioned it - you just find out. That's a real man to me. A sleeping lion.
The people on the QVC shopping channel convince me that life is worth living. They see the good in everything. People who go to counselling should actually go to a room with a QVC seller for half an hour and let them find the qualities within them. For example, they'd look at me and say, 'To anybody else this looks like a stomach but, actually, his feet never get wet in the rain.