“Problems often look overwhelming at first. The secret is to break problems into small, manageable chunks. If you deal with those, you’re done before you know it.”

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.

Why do people want to swim with dolphins? The equivalent would be an Indonesian fellow coming over here, going up to a farmer and saying ‘Can I get in with the cows? I just fancy scuffling about with them.’

I never really thought comedy was a career option, just something I did for fun. Suddenly I realised I was getting paid which was a bonus. I studied for a diploma with the London College of Music, and teaching was something I thought I might do but comedy intervened.

My wife bought me a vintage Gibson guitar that isn’t just beautiful but has tremendous sentimental value. I have plenty of guitars for live gigs but this is one to treasure.

At college, I felt frustrated thinking three years was a long time and I just wanted a job but afterwards I was in employment the whole time.

Everybody has barriers and obstacles. If you look at them as containing fences that don’t allow you to advance, then you’re going to be a failure. If you look at them as hurdles that strengthen you each time you go over one, then you’re going to be a success.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

When you have a character to work with, you carry them around in a strange way – they make you look at the world in a different way.

What to me is anathema – a corpse-like, outmoded hangover – is for photography to be a bad excuse for another medium. … Is not photography good enough in itself, that it must be made to look like something else, supposedly superior?

I’d love to travel more. I really look forward to traveling with my kids. I’m just waiting for them to want to travel with me.

Enjoy that you can see me now. I would love to see the great Michael Jordan and Julius Erving in their younger days, but they’re gone. Look at me at 50, I’m going to eat right and live right so I can take less punches and look normal.

Look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it.

If you look at the types of directors out there, I’m not as weird as most of them.