“I’m English, and as such I crave disappointment. That’s why I buy Kinder Surprise. Horrible chocolate; nasty little toy: a double-whammy of disillusionment! Sometimes I eat the toy out of sheer despair.”

I tried to like it. For me, it was like being smacked around the head by a piece of IKEA furniture: it hurts, but you’ve got to admire the workmanship.

Presence always wins out over principles.

Three women walk into a pub and say, ‘Hooray, we’ve colonised a male-dominated joke format’

Well, I happen to have a love of vocal reproduction devices.

Television is where you earn regular money so you can plan a little bit but even then only when you have a regular gig. If you’re just doing the odd appearance, you don’t know if it will carry on.

Three blokes go into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability.

I would never condone the burning of a Dan Brown novel, much though I loathe and detest his work. Well, I say work, you know, words, randomly arranged to form millions of dollars… I’m not bitter at all.

Add a drop of lavender to milk, leave town with an orange, and pretend you’re laughing at it.

I’m quite lucky, because I’ve got a small, decorative concrete pig.

There’s more evil in the charts than an Al-Qaeda suggestion box.

The reason we’d stopped was that the buffet car was on fire, that was the reason we stopped. One of the giant biscuits spontaneously combusted out of boredom.

Or, as I call it, a Cheesel, it’s a Weasel with a Cheese finish.

I suppose you could be a member of a terrorist organization in a non-violent way, in the laundry or the catering department.

Stupid National Anthem… Look at this flag; Two bears fighting over a pineapple. What kind of message does that send to the world? “Come to Belarus, where wild animals will steal your fruit.”

Welcome to the O2. A unique building in Dublin, in that it is actually finished.

It’s the augmented fourth, or diminished fifth, depending on your outlook on life.

I love cakes. Chocolate and coconut cakes. I love that combination!

When I feel myself getting overwhelmed, I take a deep breath and eat a piece of chocolate.

Whether it’s the experiments on ‘MythBusters’ or my earlier work in special effects for movies

I’ve regularly had to do things that were never done before, from designing complex motion-control rigs to figuring out how to animate chocolate.

I love nothing more than a good, rich, dark chocolate. It exhilarates. It satisfies.

I adore dark chocolate.

I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants.

One time, Niall sat on the floor for hours trying to find a way of putting his M&M’s in alphabetical order.