Comedian

If you're unhappy, you can't make anything.

I've been doing comedy for 20 years now. I started when I was 13 and I think for the first 10 years I was impersonating other people.

Talking about darker stuff from my life was definitely very cathartic and at times confronting.

In comedy you are allowed to be weird - and even applauded for it.

It's a universal experience to be compulsively doing something that's damaging your life.

A Canadian comedian once told me that when you first go out there to imagine that you're actually just going back out for the encore, that all the clapping is because they've already seen you do your thing and they want to see more. You can train your mind to do anything.

If I could go back and tell 13-year-old self that I would be on screen with Lisa Kudrow, spending my birthday on a ghost train in Blackpool with her, I would have been beside myself.

I feel like I grew up in quite a public way in front of audiences.

What audiences see is a curated version of myself.

I love 'Titanic', I love 'Romeo & Juliet', those are my favourite films, and so it's crazy to think that people wouldn't connect with 'Feel Good', it's just a love story.

As a child I wanted to be a kind of hybrid of Ferris Beuller, Ace Ventura, Bette Midler, and Lucille Ball.

If you bite and chew the peel of a banana, then eat the fruit of the banana itself, you will find that it tastes like a tomato. I swear.

In my pantheon of comedy idols there's maybe six people: Lisa Kudrow, Conan O'Brian, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Martin Short. Lisa is at the top.

Watching comedy for the first time I felt absolutely on fire. I just couldn't believe there was this environment where people were being applauded for the weirdest things about themselves.

Making someone laugh is a good way to get their defences down so that they might then be open to new ideas, especially when they're laughing at some common ground they relate to. Comedy's always been an amazing tool for social change.

I like to do shows that open a dialogue.

I'm attracted to funny people with nice hands who smell good and are kind to people.

I want people to see how universal experiences of intimacy are, regardless of demographic or label or whatever.

I'm a real romantic, big time.

I formed a sketch troupe with two friends, started doing gigs, and dropped out of school shortly after to pursue it full time! Now it sort of has to work out because I have zero other qualifications.