I'm attracted to funny people with nice hands who smell good and are kind to people.Collection: Funny
If I could go back and tell 13-year-old self that I would be on screen with Lisa Kudrow, spending my birthday on a ghost train in Blackpool with her, I would have been beside myself.Collection: Birthday
Love is universal, luckily, but also in general I've found that whenever I've been the most specific in my stand-up, revealing some weird neurosis or quirk I'm ashamed of, that's what people relate to the most. Specificity is key!
I want people to see how universal experiences of intimacy are, regardless of demographic or label or whatever.
I'm talking about personal stuff so I think people are on my side.
Watching comedy for the first time I felt absolutely on fire. I just couldn't believe there was this environment where people were being applauded for the weirdest things about themselves.
It was a slow process of getting closer and closer to my actual personality on stage. And now there's very little separation. I definitely find the more open and vulnerable I am, the more people enjoy it.
If you're unhappy, you can't make anything.
I sort of thought acting was just about arranging your face into emotions. I didn't realise it was about actually allowing yourself to feel the feelings, then letting your face follow. That was a big learning curve.
With the 12-step program, if you don't subscribe to that way of life completely, it can be seen as failing, and I think a lot of people can take the parts of that kind of program that they need and not other parts.
I love being gut-wrenchingly honest.
People have referred to me as 'innocent', which makes me feel disingenuous.
I don't have much time for the 'sad clown' thing. It's only associated with comedians because of the disparity between feeling like that and what we do for a living. I bet there are loads of sad bankers and sad dentists. We just don't notice because they aren't bringing that much joy to the world.
You don't need a murder on a Martian colony. What is more dramatic than love? There's highs and lows, especially in your twenties, when it completely takes you over.
I'm a real romantic, big time.
Most people have had that feeling of like, being obsessed with someone, and losing self control a bit, and that hopefully humanises addiction a bit.
It's a universal experience to be compulsively doing something that's damaging your life.
We're all severely addicted to our phones... it's not glamorous or always harrowing even, it's just damaging.
What audiences see is a curated version of myself.
You're basically getting on stage and asking people, 'Do you guys like me? Do you like who I am?' But you grow pretty thick skinned. And the less scared you seem, the more people like you anyway.
A Canadian comedian once told me that when you first go out there to imagine that you're actually just going back out for the encore, that all the clapping is because they've already seen you do your thing and they want to see more. You can train your mind to do anything.
It's very weird trying to imagine yourself as a 'comedy character.'
I love the comedy world and really grew up in green rooms, so I wanted to show the positives and negatives.
If you never, or rarely, see your experience depicted in art or pop culture then you can begin to feel isolated or separate; Othered. So, representation is super important.
I have the armour of self-worth that comes from having open-minded parents who felt there was nothing wrong with me.
Making someone laugh is a good way to get their defences down so that they might then be open to new ideas, especially when they're laughing at some common ground they relate to. Comedy's always been an amazing tool for social change.
I'd love to write more observational comedy but the stuff people seem to respond to is the most personal so it's snowballed from there.
I've been doing comedy for 20 years now. I started when I was 13 and I think for the first 10 years I was impersonating other people.
In my pantheon of comedy idols there's maybe six people: Lisa Kudrow, Conan O'Brian, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Martin Short. Lisa is at the top.
It's exhausting trying to impress someone and be a version of yourself that might be attractive to them.
I love 'Titanic', I love 'Romeo & Juliet', those are my favourite films, and so it's crazy to think that people wouldn't connect with 'Feel Good', it's just a love story.
I can't tell you how much money I waste on plaid shirts, whisky that I hate the taste of, and Moleskine notebooks that I never write in.
I'm so unqualified to be a family therapist.
I like to do shows that open a dialogue.
In comedy you are allowed to be weird - and even applauded for it.
I dropped out of school when I was 14 and I was hanging out with comedians in their thirties. I moved out of home and had some real lows.
Being on stage at the Soho Theatre is hard to beat.
How can I tell if I was born hating coconut or developed a hatred of coconut because my father distrusted it as an ingredient?
If you bite and chew the peel of a banana, then eat the fruit of the banana itself, you will find that it tastes like a tomato. I swear.
Bette Midler was my first love, and the intensity of those feelings remain.
As a child I wanted to be a kind of hybrid of Ferris Beuller, Ace Ventura, Bette Midler, and Lucille Ball.
I formed a sketch troupe with two friends, started doing gigs, and dropped out of school shortly after to pursue it full time! Now it sort of has to work out because I have zero other qualifications.
I feel like I grew up in quite a public way in front of audiences.
Don't edit yourself too much. Don't be afraid of looking stupid, 'cool' is so rarely funny I think. And just do it! Do as many gigs as you possibly can, and watch as many gigs as you possibly can. You'll get the rhythm of it in your head and make lovely friends.
If I had met Bette Midler, I wouldn't be answering these questions right now because I'd have spontaneously combusted and gone to heaven.
Talking about darker stuff from my life was definitely very cathartic and at times confronting.