Comedian

People used to think I was just a shouty comic but I was doing stuff about Sartre.

I like the south of Spain, notably for the Moorish influence and the weather.

I would say I was still a Marxist - which is not to be confused with being a Communist. Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

I've been going to Granada for many years and 12 years ago bought a house a few miles outside the city.

For me, the showbiz memoir is uninteresting - you want to tell people something they don't know about.

Now, as a comic, if you're vaguely amusing you can go straight into TV, then you play the O2 and then everyone's sick of you.

The optimum frequency with which comedians should do a series is every year. I do one every three years. My audience is literally dying off.

Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.

Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, may have had his charms, but he really couldn't be considered hip.

However, my problems with my memory are further complicated by the fact that while I don't have any recollection of things I have actually done, I have very vivid recollections of loads of things that I haven't done.

You can't do comedy with a beard.

I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor, so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.

Dire Straits is a great band. Someone tells you they like 'Brothers in Arms' and immediately you know they're a stupid annoying git.

Recently, my personal advisors have been telling me to go to America. Actually, people have been walking up to me in the street and telling me to sod off, but that's the same thing, isn't it?

Everyone I used to work with is still alive and can afford expensive lawyers.

I'm sure a psychologist would see something highly significant in how absent-minded I am. I mean I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached to my neck by muscles, ligaments and my esophagus.

I don't think people were that interested in what I was doing for the most of the 1990s.

But as in all cults, what's central to the Communist Party is the belief system and the elimination of nuance. From there you're very slowly led down the road to fanaticism and mass murder.

I'm fascinated by comedy.