Frank Skinner
I think Jimmy Carr is very funny and probably the most industrious comedian I know and I really respect him for that.Collection: Funny
The edge of inappropriate is the spiritual home of the best stand-up comedy.Collection: Home
I must have been one of the few New Lads who was teetotal.
I did a few mainstream clubs in Birmingham when I started out. Racist comedy was absolutely the norm. Every act was doing it and when blokes talked about their wives or women in any way it was always derogatory.
Now, although I did some jobs that I really hated doing, my God, they really make you appreciate it when you get a job that you love doing.
I used to do homophobic material that I didn't recognise as homophobic. It's the only stuff I really look back on and think, 'I just wouldn't do that again.'
My dad had a dominoes team, and there was a Frank Skinner in it. When I was a kid I used to look at the team card and think it was a brilliant name, so that's what I went for.
I suppose that every relationship I have been in has had a lot of arguments. I find it very hard to keep things at the bickering level.
Not being a naturally-good-looking-ladies-man type of bloke, I hadn't had a tremendous amount of success with women. So when celebrity opened the door, I went a bit barmy.
I did a tour of Sweden with Eddie Izzard in our early days, and he said, 'I'm thinking of talking about being a transvestite on stage. You should talk about being a Catholic.' I said, 'I think audiences will be more accepting of you being a transvestite than me being a Catholic.'
Neuromancer' by William Gibson is a cyberpunk classic.
I was pleased Melissa Leo won Best Supporting Actress for 'The Fighter' at the Oscars. I hope that her outfits are maintained in some cinema museum.
I'm enjoying Channel Four's '10 O'Clock Live.' I like the idea of putting together a dream team and seeing what happens. I also like 'Not Going Out,' the sitcom starring Lee Mack. It's a sitcom packed with jokes. Not many of them as frowned upon as lacking kudos.
Alcoholic is a big word, but I'd have a hard time defending myself against it in court.
I'd rather be looked down on than beaten up.
For me personally, being a comedian is having funny ideas and saying them: it's not just saying them. I need the complete process.
One of the nice things about becoming a stand-up, one of the great things about becoming a stand-up, is you realise you haven't been wasting all those years you thought you'd been wasting.
I don't know anything about politics, so I don't do political material.
Well, I think that the most exciting stage of any tour is getting the tour together. Because when new material works, there is no other feeling like that. It's just brilliant. And for the first half of the tour, you're still often finding the extra stuff in that material. You're exploring it every night.
I suppose when I started out I didn't know the kind of comic I wanted to be at all. So in a way, the audience wrote my act. I went in and did stuff that I would have done in the pub, and some of it they liked, and some of it they didn't. And I kept what they laughed at.
I think, as I've gone on, I've got a sense that there are some laughs I want, and some laughs I don't want.
I don't think I'm in love with television. I think I'm in love with stand-up, and I'm in love with radio. And then, television is my employer.
You can be funny about your kids without being unkind.
Fame changes you and I suppose I stopped biting my lip for a while. I started to point out when people weren't doing their job properly.
Sometimes when you start improvising on stage, which I do a fair bit of, obviously you haven't planned it. But to be honest, it's not like I'm one of these blokes who is sitting at home pouring it all out and then does a different thing on stage.
There's only one thing more embarrassing than the celebrities talking about politics; and that's politicians talking about anything other than politics.
If I'd have had kids in my 20s it would have been nightmarish.
If you can stop thinking, it's like rebooting your brain.
I stopped drinking before I became a comic; one was a replacement for the other.
There is a period in your life when you need your parents and a period in your life where you only think you need your parents. Something clicks, there's a little switch that goes and your parents, who had been the wind beneath your wings, through no fault of their own can start to oppress a bit, can start to stop you doing stuff.
I never mind people who can't stand football. It's the ones who say 'I quite like it' that get me. Because for me it's all-encompassing.
I like to turn up my collar when I'm leaving the theatre and feel like I'm some heroic comedian figure.
The second gig I did was New Year's Eve at the Birmingham Anglers Club, and that started with booing.
When I started earning, a lot of me didn't need worrying about anymore, so I had scope to worry about someone else. Money, I think, has made me kinder.
I think I'm quite broad-minded.
Now that I've met posh people, I think you meet some you like and some you don't.
I'm prepared to stand by what I say.
I remember when I turned 30 and I started doing sit-ups, I split with my girlfriend and stopped drinking and all sorts of things. It was a very weird time. But 60... I like it.
Poetry has always been this completely alien art to me. I am the sort of bloke who, when he gets into things, generally tries to have a go at doing them. But I've never thought I could write poetry.
I have never managed to find a sport I'm good at - I love sport but I just can't do it.
My dreams are things like: I'm in the supermarket, I queue, and then I leave the supermarket. It's basically my life but I happen to be asleep.
If you earn a lot of money you should pay a lot of tax.
I wish I had started to play the ukulele much earlier in life.
I can't swim. I've got better, but I can't go out of my depth. As soon as I smell chlorine my heart starts racing.
As you get older, your injuries don't come with an anecdote any more, they just come.
I have this JPM thing: jokes per minute. I've worked out that I should get in about 12 punchlines in five minutes. I need them all. It's like when you walk down a road, if there's a lamp post that's out, it's fine if you can see the next one's alight, but if there's two out, that's a period of frightening darkness.
I haven't had fun since the 1980s!
It is so rubbish when comics belittle their children in the misguided belief that it makes them look cool.
I grew up on Laurel and Hardy. I'm aware from my own experience that comedy has got quite a fierce sell-by date, but that doesn't seem to apply to them; they made films I can remember laughing at when I was five that I'd still happily watch today.
That's the way I like my posh people, up front. I like the fact that Jack Whitehall will talk about being posh, or David Mitchell.