Fundamentally, I was a very shy and quiet person growing up, so it was just really difficult getting up on a stage. It was a perverse career choice really.

The big turning point for me was a school debate in sixth year when, against all odds and to everybody's surprise, I put myself forward... I wrote this funny speech and was determined to do my own thing, and it wasn't on topic and people were laughing a lot. I really can't describe how wonderful an experience it was.

The English, being the most practical people in the world, came up with parliamentary democracy and codified football and Cadbury's Creme Egg. And yet they voted for Brexit.

I was never ideological in any sense, or a slave to any particular politics or religion. My solace and my inspiration always came from books and literature.

Despite the apparent trappings of modest success in television and so on, I have always been an uneasy person. I can't change that. I can't change that part of my psychological makeup.

If I was a very stable person, I would not have to do comedy. Nobody would have to listen to me.

As a comedian, you can't tell people that they're wrong or that they're stupid.

Dragged out of your bed at the age of seven, my mother screaming, six kids under the age of 12. I'm not equating my experience with the people who lived in Northern Ireland. But my dad was always out and about late at night, and I could not go to sleep until I knew he was in.

To be honest I would like to do more movies, I've been a victim of my own success in that sense, as if you have a TV character that really endures, it's really hard to get into film.

I have a certain sympathy with politicians having lived with one. I've seen how no matter how earnest or driven or energetic they are, it's still difficult to change things. I have been encouraged to go into politics, but I don't think I could make a contribution, it suits me better to be sniping from the sidelines.

I was genuinely shocked to even be in the frame for a sitcom role on British TV.

Even when we had new clothes, we were told not to wear them. You just didn't draw attention to yourself. Showing off was the worst thing you could do. We could put the clothes in the drawers - but not wear them.

I had a thirst for knowledge. I was always curious about stuff.

I think my first girlfriend and I hardly spoke to each other in the year we were going out. In fact we never even spoke to each other to formally break it off. For all I know she still thinks we're together. Maybe in a parallel universe we're very happy.

They were always my favourite scenes working with Don Warrington. He's such a brilliant actor, he has such a presence, you don't have to act with him you just react you know he's so good.

I think I was always this weird, watchful kind of kid, and there was an awful lot of coming and going in my house as a result of my father being a doctor and then, later, a politician... We'd literally be having to get through the window some days because we couldn't get in the door.

I'm Irish. I don't know how to take a compliment.

I was a terribly quiet, shy child. The comedy thing came when I was at university and I started doing stand-up, which I think was a belated compensation for all that time I spent hiding behind the couch.

I'm an ardent tennis player. I'm like an overenthusiastic child out there and I've damaged my back. It's not that it's crippling pain, more mental anguish.

I spent five years in Dublin as a stand-up, living on pea sandwiches. But at times I quite enjoyed the bohemian penniless existence.

I don't take myself or the species too seriously. You have to laugh at everything.

People pay far too much attention to the television and they're quite literal in some ways. At the beginning, when I was playing very stupid characters, I think people genuinely thought I was possibly quite dim-witted myself, which is a compliment in some ways, as I must have been doing my job very well.

Before really high-pressured gigs I tend to freeze and crawl into bed. Under the covers you just feel safe for a little while.

I've been a Leeds fan for as long as I can remember. When you are about five or six, you adopt a team - obviously, I didn't grow up in Leeds. I grew up in a small town on the Irish border, and most of the people my age were Leeds fans, both then and now.

Tony Currie was another great favourite, even if he only played for a short time at Leeds. His wife told me once that she was a big fan of 'My Hero'.

I remember being chronically shy. I came out of my shell a bit when I went to university, but I'm still fairly shy in company.

Irish politicians are very accessible to the public, just the messenger boys for the local constituency.

My mother tells me I regaled people with stories but I don't remember that. And she disputes the idea that I might be chronically shy. She says I was the most outgoing of all of us.

When we left university, in the late '80s, one of the guys had been to the Comedy Store in London, came back very excited and suggested we set up something like it. And so we did.

I was able to tour successfully and attract a fairly wide audience, but it was hard to assert myself as a stand-up because people were more familiar with me as a TV character.

The beauty of stand-up is that it's very flexible, it's very malleable and immediate. Whatever is in your head that day you can verbalise in some way that night. It's the medium that suits me best.