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" In the same way, there is some creature gnawing away inside of me, urging me to do things in different ways. "

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" I think that women just have a primeval instinct to make soup, which they will try to foist on anybody who looks like a likely candidate. "

" I really can't describe what my stand-up is like - people see it and they say it's like that, or it's like this, and that's really up to them, that's fine, but I don't sit around all day analysing it. I just try and enjoy a show and interest myself because if I don't do that then I won't interest anybody else. "

" I'm actually about as famous as a fourth division footballer from the 70s. "

" You have to assume that you're talking to the most intelligent, tuned-in audience you could ever get. That's the way you're going to get the best out of people. Whether they know you or not shouldn't matter for comedy. They should get to know you pretty quickly. and they should be having a good time pretty quickly. "

Having A Good Time

" I'm just a guy who happens to work in public from time to time. I've built a reputation as an established comic, not as a celebrity - a celebrity is someone who is famous but doesn't do anything. "

" A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention. "

" Showing off seemed to me to be a highly valuable and necessary activity when I was 20. "

" I don't watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something gets you when you're alone and someone's voice is coming through their work. There's a different quality to it that stays with you a bit more. "

" I was lucky in the sense that I was never blessed with an overly reflective nature. "

" I think a lot of the time you just parody yourself. "

" I suppose the best comedy shows do have the rock n' roll feeling - if it's a great night, and the roof is raised... yeah, it's a similar feeling, sure. "

" The measure of a conversation is how much mutual recognition there is in it; how much shared there is in it. If you're talking about what's in your own head, or without thought to what people looking and listening will feel, you might as well be in a room talking to yourself. "

" The characters can't be wittier than people are in real life. They have to be character witty. "

" I quite fancy the 1940s. I like the trams and the trousers. "

" I'm really not big on nationalism, to be honest with you. I really don't think it gets people anywhere except near a pile of dead bodies. I'm Irish, yeah, but I don't need to get up on a soapbox about it. "

" Do your own thing. Speak in your voice. "

" It probably says something really clinically terrible about my character that I need to get up on a stage and go 'Ra ra ra' in front of people. "

" We are both drawn to surreal situations so the writing was a joy. "

" What I prefer is an audience who listen. And are intelligent. Which I try and assume every audience is. And that if something goes wrong, it's generally my fault and not theirs. "

" One thing that's coming up a lot is: are you as grumpy as you appear from this Black Books thing. "

" People will kill you over time, and how they'll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases, like 'be realistic.' "

" Maybe this is just me, but as time goes by, I'm more bewildered by modernity. It gets more unfathomable with every passing year. "

" Home gigs can be hard because it's an odd collision. More than anything, I feel self-conscious when my family are in the audience. I'm doing this job which is not quite acting - part of it is me, part performance. You're presenting a cartoon of yourself to people who know you as a line-drawing. "

" It's true that I have spoken about doing a book before, but then everyone you speak to is planning to write a book. "

" Stand-up came naturally to me because people in Ireland talk. But that's not talking on panel shows; it is structured fun. It reminds me of some tragic aunt clapping her hands and bouncing into a room and announcing we should all play games... and if we don't we are all a rotten spoilsport. "

" I've been writing since I was very young, even before I was a teenager. As far as I'm concerned, I am a writer - whether my writing's spoken or written in a blog, paper, book or printed on the side of a submarine. "

" Black Books adheres to a more old fashioned, traditional sitcom format, which I think works, because in its own way, it's quite theatrical. "

" As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with. "

" I fear we might be losing the basic human facility to be alone - and with that you throw out independent decision-making, what to trust, what not to trust; key stuff - a perilous loss. "

" When I was young, all the politicians looked like ancient Latin teachers or greengrocers. They were mumbly, stumbly men with their hair blowing in their eyes, walking into trees, opening the wrong door. They had no idea how to present themselves. "