Actress

I think acting is overrated. I'm not sure I enjoyed it. You never get to write your own roles. It's wonderful for some people, but I found it nerve-wracking. I was too busy worrying that no one would give me their words to speak.

Once I'm on stage, there's just no time for a sip of water - I've always got my hands in puppets! My voice is raw by the time I finish.

If I have a gig in the evening, I get 'the doom' at about 5 P.M., when I think I'm getting flu.

I will remember the night I won the New Comedy Awards, as I was young and unformed, so that sticks in the mind. I've also done a fantastic gig at the Royal Albert Hall, which was amazing. Appearing in the Christopher Guest film was also a real highlight, even if I was only in it for a couple of minutes.

I feel Scottish when with English people, and when I'm with Scottish people, I realise I'm English.

The way I talk to the puppets is real, and it's in the moment, and it's seeing what will happen. It's not something that is scripted.

When I'm gigging, there's an uneasy shift when I pull a puppet out. People look at me aghast and I feel I have about 20 seconds to win them over. You even get the prejudice among other people in your own profession.

I do laugh when I hear myself saying, 'I am a ventriloquist.' I am definitely suited to it, though. I took it and ran with it quite hungrily. It is not for everyone, but it is just the chance to write for a character.

I make napkins talk in restaurants, socks talk on car journeys. There is an awful lot of puppetry going on in the house.

Acting is seductive. It looks so much fun. I did dally with other things. I did pupillage in a law firm, but I didn't like the look of how many files the lawyer I was working with had to take home every night. It looked like a hideous amount of work, when actors were having nice lunches and discussing books.

I always said I wanted to be scientist, but I didn't really have the staying power.

The character of the monkey just grew from something out of his face and my granddad's personality. They fused, and that's what I ended up with! The monkey belonged to a friend of mine, and I saw that it had such a little beguiling face and it grew from there.

I've started running three or four times a week, which prompts millions of sketch ideas.

Having a puppet is a way of having opposing opinions - I say a thing; he says the other.

I don't want to tie myself into one area or the other. I think its important not to rely heavily on either TV or stand-up, but to let them work off of each other.

I looked into studying psychoanalysis, wrote to the governing body and was about to start the year where they psychoanalyse you, four times a week, before you get to do it yourself. I just thought I'd taken the ventriloquism as far as I could. My act is so deconstructive, and I'd made all the monkey jokes anyone wanted to hear.

I was really awful at auditions. There's something about sitting down and saying into the camera: 'I'm Nina and this is the name of my agent.' That makes me just die inside.

Because I'm around comedians all the time, in my downtime I tend not to watch comedy. Something the whole family enjoys is 'You've Been Framed!' It satisfies all of us. It's universal, and we all laugh a lot.

I had a terrible dream when I was pregnant; I dreamt the baby had a ventriloquial mouth, but there was no hand hole; I had to flick the mouth down to get words out.

My dad is a much more flamboyant character than I am. I think that's why I couldn't see myself going into straight acting. I always just felt daft.