I only really and truly fully relax on my own. Give me a sun lounger, a pool and a sea view, and I'm happy.
Miranda Hart
I'm not a stereotypically beautiful woman, and I'm so happy that I'm not. I've seen those ladies - the need to be attractive at all times is ghastly. Also, in your twenties, if you are beautiful, everything comes to you, so you never need to develop a personality. I never had that problem.
No blessing goes uncontested. It will take a long time to get your dream.
I hate talking about my height, because I don't feel like a tall person... When I see a tall woman, I'm always slightly like, 'Whoa.' It looks weird, but that could be because of my complex about it, my worry over whether it's womanly to be that tall.
I am essentially a middle-aged woman who likes making up weird snack combinations and galloping.
I kiss, but I don't tell.
Obviously I love the fans, and it's beyond lovely that people like my work, and I love saying 'Hi,' shaking a hand, doing a high five. All that's fine. But the posing for photos is so time-consuming and frankly a bit weird.
I wanted to be a farmer's wife. I thought it would be quite fun to wake up of a morning, collect eggs and have sheep and pigs as pets. I know now that it would also involve having to sleep with the farmer, but at the time I wasn't thinking about the sexual implications - I was 11.
It's on the bucket list for sure to do a comedy film, even if it was just one line on the lot.
I suppose you want me to say I'm at parties all the time and am secretly going out with Tom Cruise, but I am afraid that is not the case. I'm still in my pyjamas at nine o'clock each night, watching ITV2 without telling anyone.
If I had had plastic surgery, I would have asked for something better than the face you are seeing! I actually really hate plastic surgery when it's just for aesthetics and anti-ageing. I think ageing is beautiful and expressive and characterful.
If you're naturally a certain size, I think it suits you and you can see that. There's no point in trying to conform for the sake of it. People are meant to be different shapes, and their different shapes are so interesting and, ultimately, why people fall in love with them.
I spent my childhood clad in 1970s hand-me-downs, primarily from male cousins, which mainly consisted of a selection of beige, brown and orange dungarees. That, combined with a perfectly round pudding-bowl haircut, made me look, on a good day, like a cross between Ann Widdecombe, one of the Flower Pot Men, and a monk.
I'm such a comedy fan that I just love laughing and so admire comedians who have brought me joy.
My mum said to me once years ago, which really spurred me on, 'You're the funniest person I know'. I loved that.
I have lots of ambitions. I'd love to do theatre. I'd like to be in 'Tea With Mussolini 2;' I'd like to touch Meryl Streep - which would involve being with her in some exotic location. I have lots of fantastical dreams.
I am not married, no. I wasn't really into the notion when I was younger, but now I think a proposal is the ultimate romantic gesture.
In my head, I have the most sensational singing voice. I perform concerts to thousands in the shower. The reality is I can hold a tune. The dream is a West End musical one day - no, really!
I absolutely don't write for women - far, far from it. It's so not what I want to do. Some of the writers, who have helped out at the beginning and end of the process - they're all men - have suggested quite feminine subjects they want me to explore. And I'm always, simply, 'No.' I don't want to do diets, don't want to. I just can't do it.
I'm not saying writing comedy's brain surgery, but there is a certain pressure to it. It's the equivalent of doing homework that's going to end up on national television.
I think there are different kinds of comedians, and I prefer the clowns who are going: 'I'm an idiot, aren't we all a bit like this, laugh at me.' Whereas, a lot of other comedians are saying: 'Aren't I clever? You want to be me, aren't I cool? Revere me.' Which is fine. But that's not my bag.
I started watching some 'Doctor Who' recently on my own and got too scared. I had to watch it in the daytime - I'm pathetic.
Writing humour certainly involves pain. A sitcom is 6 months of writing pain!
I do love to cry. I'll cry at the drop of a hat. I'll cry at your basic television programme, let alone a weepie. But not big, heavy, serious crying. I haven't done that for a while, which is a relief. More like a little welling up of joy.
I'd like someone tall, dark and nice. Independent and confident. Not a macho man. Perhaps a little bit girly, in a way. The key for me is if we can cry with laughter.
I loved school. Not sure how much I focused on the education; just had fun and played lacrosse for seven years. It was lucky I had sport, which I was good at, so it didn't matter that I wasn't great on the academic side, or not brilliant at drama. Although I am still bitter about not being in the school choir. Furious, actually.
There are some professions that culturally and sociologically take a long time to change, and because of that, there's still sexism in comedy audiences. We shouldn't blame them: I do it too. A woman comes on, and I feel slightly anxious. I'm a woman in comedy, and I do that; I think everyone does.
Things don't have to come to you in your youth. It's fine for them to come to you when you get older. That's a motto in my household.
The embarrassment of a situation can, once you are over it, be the funniest time in your life. And I suppose a lot of my comedy comes from painful moments or experiences in life, and you just flip them on their head.
We all get given these bodies, and they're all fascinating and different... I wouldn't want to be without the wrinkles.
I own nothing of value at all. I spend money on experiences.
Because I have a dog, it's easier to work at home: I sit in a horrible weird 'Mastermind'-style chair and bask in my own mediocrity. Being single, I've no family life to distract me at the end of the day. Apart from taking the dog for a walk, I have no other responsibilities.
It's a real man who can go out with a woman who's taller than he is. That's an alpha male right there.
By the age of 13, I knew I wanted to be a comedian like Morecambe and Wise. So, obviously, I thought I'd better start practising my interviews for Parkinson. Don't look shocked - I wasn't the only teenager to imagine that. Though I may have been the only one to have chosen T'Pau as my walk-on music.
I hate the fact that we all feel the pressure to go to gyms, have a trainer if money allows, get jogging - all those societal pressures to keep fit and look a certain way.
Everyone - particularly my female friends I speak to - all say 'I wouldn't be in my twenties again if I was paid.' It's a difficult time.
Being tall when I was youngerl I was always a bit awkward. As a teenager, I was very, very thin, so I was very gangly and limby, and would sweep things off the table without realising how big my wingspan was - just out of control. A lot of women write to me and say, 'I'm six foot and exactly the same happens' - that's been lovely therapy.
It's a vicious circle. If you feel hideous, you convey it to people. A couple of male friends from university have said, 'I quite fancied you, but I wouldn't have dared...' and I was like, 'Oh really?' I was completely amazed that anyone had ever fancied me, and also that I'd obviously given an impression of 'Don't touch me.'
If taking one-self seriously as a woman means committing to a life of grooming, pumicing, pruning and polishing one's exterior for the benefit of onlookers, then I may as well leave my unwieldy rucksack to the top of a bleak Scottish hill and make my home there under a stone, where I'll fashion shoes out of mud and clothes out of leaves.
I've always felt a bit of an outsider. It used to worry me that, in terms of TV, I did not look like 'the girlfriend' or 'the daughter'. That pushed me to write my own stuff, as I thought no one else was going to write me a lead in the sitcom.
I am pleased to say that as I get older, I get less and less like the sitcom 'Miranda.' She is really a clown character, a heightened version of the 20-something me.
I am pleased to say that I am not a tortured comedian - I laugh a lot. My twenties weren't particularly happy, but it's the same for a lot of people. In your thirties, you realise that your life and your worries are really insignificant, and you have to force yourself to be more positive and take each day as a gift.
I do feel that there is a little confusion in people's minds between the real me and sitcom Miranda. I am pleased that people identify with the character, but I think they want me to be her and are disappointed that the real Miranda doesn't actually fall into graves or be that rubbish at life.
I'm quite a confident person in many ways, but there's only so much you can hear about being compared to Hattie Jacques. For the record, she was a comedy goddess, but she was 25 stone. I hope I'm right in saying I'm not in any way nearly 25 stone.
No one likes a show-off, but if parallel parking was an Olympic sport, I would get gold, no probs.
Being tall is very good for reaching high shelves and seeing in a crowd. Sadly, it has also given me the inability to dance. There's too much of me to look neat, which is most disappointing.
I want to be more physical and theatrical within the stand-up. There might be dance moments, and people better watch out - I will gallop.
When my sitcom 'Miranda' first became successful, I was so in the thick of working and I was so stressed that I didn't really enjoy the moment. You suddenly look back and go, 'Gosh, you've just got to enjoy every day.' And now I wake up and literally pinch myself every day.
I did things like get in a cupboard before the teacher came in at the beginning of a lesson, and then, two minutes before the end of the class, I come out of the cupboard and go, 'Sorry I'm late.'
I'm very much in denial that I can't dance. I really go for it, which is almost more embarrassing.
