With 'Nighty Night' series one, Oprah Winfrey's channel took it on, so she must have liked it.
Julia Davis
I worked in a supermarket for a year; I worked in a finance department at a university, a pub, busking and singing. I tried to be a nanny for about three weeks.
I'd love to do more 'Nighty Night,' but that's always down to commissions, really. It's weird as well because everyone's moved on. I don't know if I could get all those people back.
My dad was a civil servant, and my mum was a secretary.
I do think, with people in comedy, you can have your time, as it were, and then you don't realise that it might have gone. I hope it hasn't for me. I think what I do is, I just... I just try to plough my own furrow, in a way.
The main thing is to believe writers know what their voices are, and if they are left alone, they will come through with something. There are a load of brilliant U.S. comedies: at the moment, I'm loving 'Girls.' People say the U.S. is more conservative; I think, actually, it is a bit looser here, but trends change.
I love the spiritual side of religion, but the church, for me, is a place where I feel very repressed.
I sometimes write in a cafe down the road from my house now because I feel guilty trying to work if I can hear them playing. I invariably end up sat in a corner, depressed, retreating into my own world.
I just find it funny and terrible: someone being very rude and overbearing over somebody who doesn't know how to deal with it. Maybe it's because I've experienced that sort of thing and I don't know how to say, 'You can't do that. You can't say that to me.'
I love all Daphne du Maurier's stuff. And just enjoying period dramas, really... wanting to do something drastically different from 'Nighty Night', the chance to write very different language.
I think I am generally prone to exaggerating characters, taking them to a ridiculous extent. But you do also meet those people in real life who are just really awful.
I can't just lie in bed and be self-obsessed if there are two children running about who could easily fall down the stairs.
I'm sure all parents think their kids are funny, and I'm sure a lot of kids are, whether their parents are comics or not.
I love watching programmes about food. I always think, 'When I'm old, I'll take up baking.' There's something calming about watching the recipe and thinking, 'I'm going to make that' - and it's never going to happen.
I was brought up in Guildford, and I think I used to absorb all the suburban things - seeing coffee mornings, women talking... that stuff, really. I was watching Alan Ayckbourn on some documentary, and he was talking about how he was around a lot of women as a child, listening to all that stuff.
My desktop is really chaotic, and I'm always trying to work out where I am going to put all these ideas.
I do use a laptop, but I'm very technophobic. I've never downloaded anything. I've never bought anything on Amazon. I'm really ridiculous. I don't know what it is.
I think, in comedy, you only hit about one or two great characters in your career. Sometimes my character will be just a sketch... what is the funniest situation to put this person in?
'Robin's Test' is more contemporary than what I normally do. It's about couples going on a camping holiday for a 50th birthday. Two couples go, and then this other couple were going to come, but they've broken up, and so the man from that couple turns up, but with a new girlfriend that nobody likes - and I'm playing that character.
I'd love to find a lifelong female film editor as Scorsese has with Thelma Schoonmaker. I think women are probably, without generalising, sensitive to subtle things as an editor.
That is one thing I really hate about working in TV - you have to shape episodes to exact time-lengths, do like 22 minutes, and it is just so against what you are making.
I just try to put myself in the minds of all the characters.
I think most people, including me, like to read gossipy things about others: revealing things that I love to read but I don't really want known about me.
I'm quite tactful, actually. I worry about whether people are all right. With my friends, obviously, conversations are quite free and uncensored, but I would never enjoy making someone feel uncomfortable at all.
If I can laugh with people, it makes me feel safe with them. If I feel someone has no sense of humour, I find it really scary. I do it with the kids as well: put on stupid voices to lighten up the spirit or gee them along to do something.
If I claim I'm the opposite of my characters, then it'll just sound awful. But I tend to write the sort of things I'd never say because I'm not a very forceful person.
To me, if something makes you laugh, that's heart-warming. It doesn't necessarily have to be friendly; it might just be the weirdest thing ever. Laughing makes me feel better.
My grandfather was a vicar, and there was quite a lot of churchgoing when I was growing up. It's a world that I spent a lot of time around.
People say the comedy is so shocking, but if you read newspapers or look around generally - I mean, obviously I'm not writing about all the lovely things that there are, which I do see as well - but there is a lot of outrageousness around, slightly covered up. And obviously, it's fun to take that a little bit further.
A lot of my comedy is to do with being angry, then finding a way to channel that.
I watch a lot of U.S. comedy, shows such as 'Eastbound & Down' and 'Veep.' I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her character in that show.
I still think of things for 'Jill' all the time. It's annoying, because I want to be able to find another character who I could write for indefinitely.
You have to be enough of a parent - you have to be there. If I'm feeling bad, I really do just have to get on with it and try and channel it back into my work somehow, do something positive with it.
I always imagine people give succinct answers. I have no prepared thoughts on what I do.
I would never say, 'Ooh, let's do something really dark.'
All the time, I'm watching relationships.
As a child, I just found a lot of things quite difficult. I found school quite overwhelming. There were just too many people. I wish I could have gone to a school with about five people. And if I saw someone bullying someone else, for example - I don't mean because I'm a perfect person, because I'm really not - but I'd always be, 'Well, why?'
I actually think I'm still quite childishly optimistic in a certain way, which is maybe why I find life quite shocking.
People who know my track record know when I've got a vision in mind, I'll see it through. But sometimes it's hard to convey what you're trying to achieve.
I think my dad has a similar black sense of humour to mine, so perhaps it's just an inherited thing. I've got two little boys now, and I can see it with them as well. I don't know if you learn it off your parents - but my dad used to take me to see certain plays when I was quite young, so maybe that had an effect as well.
People could write stuff that's really offensive, but if it's written within a believable world that has a tone to it, then it can be funny. But if it's just shock-value stuff, then it's not going to work, because it's not coming from a true place.
