Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I worked every single night, not even caring if I got paid, to get myself known. Within a year I was on the Royal Variety Show and that was it.
Our family home, a large house in Hampstead, was sold to Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. I remember being told that 'someone who eats bats' was buying it.
I got my big break at the Royal Variety Performance in 2006 and returned in 2008, but now to host it is such an honour and I'm unbelievably excited.
People have their special room for Christmas. One year my mum left her present on the arm of the sofa and it was still there the following Christmas!
I don't just like to use punchlines anymore, especially in arenas. They freak me out. There is nothing worse than 15,000 people waiting for a punchline.
They had to ask spain I think, they've had to say to Spain, can you lend us some stuff for the roads, and it's Gordon Brown phoning up going 'pass the salt'
I thought I was going to do some cult, cool, late-night interviewing thing on BBC2. But everyone kept saying: 'No, Michael, you're teatime, you're not cool.'
I wanted to bat for the England cricket team. I was quite good at cricket. But then I kept getting out for low scores. It turned out I didn't have the talent.
I always used to want everyone to like me, because it used to hurt so much when people made snidey comments or gave me bad reviews, but I've learnt to deal with it.
I've heard that my father was a really funny man in company, but I never got to see that side of him. I was just 17 when he died, and he didn't know that I was funny.
I was trying to do one-liners and it took me years to realise I just had to be myself. My fear was if I was myself and no one found it funny, I'd have nowhere left to go.
I was in Starbucks and the person in front of me said: 'Can I have a tall, skinny, black Americano please?' I said: 'Are you ordering coffee or voting in the U.S. elections?'
Now I almost overly embrace how weird I am, how I look and how oddly camp I am. It's almost too honest for me because I harboured ambitions to be quite a cool, good-looking guy.
Stand-up comedy is what I do, and it's so rewarding. If you write a joke and tell it to an audience of 15,000 people who laugh their heads off at it, it's the best feeling in the world.
Given this voice, I know it does sound like I've come from money. But my dad was Canadian and my mum Hungarian, so it's not like I have some high-society, upper-class English background.
I think if anyone becomes so obnoxious to believe they could be a national treasure, they just need to go on Twitter and realise they're not. That's there to curtail anybody's confidence.
I think everyone wants to know why I look like this. These jokes I make about looking Chinese… My mother's from Hungary and my dad was from Canada. There's a lot of immigration in my past.
I usually do quite well with presents, but the problem with Christmas is it's such a big build-up and such a big day that if someone tests you the year after, you've got no idea what you got.
I don't want a chat show or to be on telly every day, as that's not my business; my business is standing in front of people and making them laugh, and I want to see how far I can get with that.
My wife and I both made a list of 5 people we could sleep with...she read hers out and there were no surprises...1 George Clooney...2 Brad Pitt etc...I thought 'Ive got the better deal here'...1 Your sister
Coming up with your own opinion is hard. When I go to see a movie I don't really know if I enjoyed it, so I ask my wife and listen to people talking on the way out. If they all say it was magnificent I'll agree!
If I'm honest, I think everything is funny. You've just got to find the right way in. When I'm at my happiest and when I'm really on it, when I feel like I'm really on good form at the moment, everything can be funny.
I don't understand people who write blogs and have children. You can't stop in the middle of bathtime and say: 'I'm just going to write a load of words - for free.' I won't do it - unless someone wants to commission me.
I've got a little baby, I made him...He doesn't speak, he's 2...He's a slow learner, he's only got 2 words...car and map...I'm slightly worried he's trying to escape. If his next word is passport we are in serious trouble!
Men need to be with women otherwise I don't think they really know how to behave. They'll just stare at me and it's awkward, so I scramble around in my mind to say the rudest things I can think of just to get something out of them.
I don't know how it is with other people's relationships, but my wife is always much more tired than me because she works much harder looking after the children, which is an endless battle - a lot of it is battling with them to stop battling with each other.
The world is in a bit of a state. I don't know how it's happened so quickly but everyone's a bit on edge. I'm not sure that our leaders are doing a great job globally. We're hoping on Trump and Kim Jong-un - these two people who maybe aren't necessarily the sanest.
There's nothing better than having a bright, blinding light in your face and being guided by big, rolling laughter. There's nothing more encouraging than hearing that huge sound. I've waited my whole life to hear that. You come away with the biggest high of your life.
I think actually performing on stage when everyone's facing you and you're one person facing them, that is quite a lonely thing in a strange way. You have to be quite insular from everybody else, you've got thousands of people staring at you and you're just on your own.
It's a weird one: nobody notices when a brilliant comedian is fat or has sweat marks under their arms. Peter Kay isn't in the best shape and neither is Ricky Gervais, and it doesn't matter. Still, I like to feel like I'm transforming into something quite cool when I go on stage.
One of the weirdest things about Christmas in this country is that people love to watch 'EastEnders' when everyone's in floods of tears and there's a huge row. I don't know if watching it makes them feel better about their own day. Personally, I would rather try to be a bit more positive!
I go to the British Comedy Awards and, you know, quite a few people were making jokes at my expense. It just made me feel awful, because I am there with my wife and she has gone out and bought a dress. And it is my big night and I won, and yet the overriding experience was that of nastiness.
Hard audiences tend to be when it's all men. It's when businesses have dos where they're at conferences all day then book a comedian for the evening. They're men of a certain age - basically middle-aged, balding, 50 to 60 years old and I just know I can't make these people laugh hysterically.
I had some terrible times - comparatively speaking. I saddled myself with a load of debt, I wasn't liked by a lot of my fellow comics and I used to blame other people for me not getting a break. But now I realise I just wasn't very good. And as soon as I became good, things took off pretty quickly.
I don't eat huge amounts, I'm just very lazy. But then this story appeared about me being on a diet and several weeks later I was snapped on holiday with my ''new physique'' on display, which was basically my old physique under a baggy T-shirt. I hadn't been on any diet. But I felt I had to live up to it.