No one likes a pushy parent, and, 'pride' being one of the seven deadly sins, I needed to tread very carefully when creating a show about my eldest son, Tom, better known as Peter Parker and even better known as Marvel's new 'Spider-Man.'
Dominic Holland
I had a crisis of confidence and ran away from being a standup for a while.
I'm a confident person next to the guy in the street, but if you go into the showbiz world, it seems the guys who are most successful are the most confident, and I don't think I fit into that category.
A barrel of laughs should be enough, but it's not. A good review is official and endures. A bad one is like a tub of Flora. It spreads easily and lasts for the whole festival.
When I phoned up and said, 'Mum, I'm doing a 52-date national tour with Eddie Izzard,' she said 'That's nice, dear. How are you?'
I might get a break again, and I might get back on telly. If I don't, I'll just keep doing stand-up and doing the best gigs I can.
Because it's such a good car, I think we'll have a Multipla till the kids leave home, which is tragic because I could probably afford a really nice car!
The house I've bought in London, the holidays, everything has been bought from making people laugh, and if you'd said to me when I was 14 that's how I was going to make my living, I would have smiled from ear to ear.
When I do a show, I jot little notes for me to remember, and when the show is done and forgotten, I chuck them all over the car. My wife goes nuts.
In my career, all my most important breaks have come from Edinburgh. Winning awards, being reviewed, bagging my BBCR4 series and the chance to tour has all come from Edinburgh, which begs the question, why the hell have I left it so long to come back?
Where I live in south London, it is a very Tory area, so a Labour vote is a wasted vote. My leanings would certainly be not to vote Tory.
I find it pressurising coming to the Voodoo Rooms to do my hour of comedy.
All kids should vote - it gives them the opportunity to whinge afterwards because you can't complain if you haven't voted.
Invest your money safely. Avoid the risky lure of spectacular returns; go for an investment that cannot lose its value. This is why I have put all my spare cash into buying not shares, but thousands of penny chews.
My Fiat Multipla is bright green - it looks like a frog. I look like a monkey, so between the two of us, we are a hideous prospect. It's the ugliest car on the road but the most practical, and I would live and die by it.
The garden is something I always try to get into, but it always beats me.
I like to call myself numerically dyslexic, but officially, I am mathematically thick.
When I was a little boy, I was fascinated by the way my dad used to laugh at the telly, and from a very early age, I had an idea of what was funny and why people laughed.
Tom has a gilded life which I have had a glimpse of. Yes, he does travel in private jets.
Even though Bandos is one of the biggest islands in the Maldives, it only takes 20 minutes to walk round. All it has are some chalets and a little harbour centre with three restaurants and a bar. The food is magnificent.
I always think stand-up is the most brutal environment for a comedian.
I was spectacularly average at school, while my two brothers did really well academically. But my dad never said I didn't try hard enough. He knew I did my best.
Making people laugh is the only thing I've ever done naturally.
Apathy in youth culture is pretty stark.
I've written 'Eclipsed' as a funny story. It is completely bonkers.
How I've fed my kids over the years is by doing stand-up comedy in clubs.
Edinburgh is the most pressurised environment to do comedy. You get an hour. There's no compere. You'd better be on the money straight away; you've got journalists in.
I don't like false modesty.
It's not cool to be star-struck.
I am a professional comedian, a published novelist, and a general wit for hire.
I am the first to admit that I have never been a household name.
I have tried many times to write a TV sitcom - with little success.
It is the natural order of things that successive generations will achieve more than their predecessors.
Stand-up comedy is not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned.
There is nothing quite as loud as the silence of an audience when a comedian is on stage.
Many years ago, I was a young and, dare I say it, very hot new comedian. Maybe even the hottest of all if the now defunct Perrier panel of judges were to be believed.
My story is comic because I've spent vast amounts of effort trying to become a Hollywood screenwriter and made no direct effort on making my son a movie actor.
I just talk about the funny things in my life, and the idea is that my observations reflect the lives of my audience - so people are really laughing at themselves. This is the theory, anyway, and I am aware that in print, that it doesn't appear to be very funny. But it is, and I am definitely funny.
Doing stand-up is not normal. People fear public speaking above all other things, and I am no different.
Growing up, I was always enthralled by Ronnie Barker. He made my dad howl with laughter, which always intrigued me, and he had the rare gift of being as good a performer as he was a writer.
I must say that I am rather partial to funny dog videos.
As a parent, I often wonder what I should be encouraging my kids to do for a career.
It's because finance is so baffling that makes being an economist such a safe option. It nestles down comfortably with psychiatry and astrology as a profession where getting it patently wrong is just not a problem - and also, rather wonderfully, seems to have no adverse affect on their professional standing whatsoever.
I am not a natural show-off. Some of the monster comedians are terrifyingly assured, and I don't have that, and that's held me back.
My job is to make people laugh. If I've upset them instead, then I haven't done my job properly.
Edinburgh is a world city, visited throughout the year for its beauty and history, but in August, it is the City of Hope. There is something very exciting and romantic about performers of all shapes and sizes, honing their stuff for the biggest arts festival in the world.
I even like the Scottish weather because, like everywhere in the U.K., you can't have great beauty without lots of rain.
Seeing a full room of punters queuing for my show is always heartening.
I've been recognised in garages. I'll be paying for my petrol, and I'll see this guy looking at me, thinking, 'Is it him?' Then he'll be looking at my car: 'No, he couldn't be driving that car.' I've actually had two people say to me:,'Hello Dominic, I thought you might have a better car than that, mate!'
For comics, Edinburgh makes no financial or medical sense. Get an audience; that's the first task. Once the punters are in, simply make them laugh for an hour, and then sweat on the critics.
