It sounds deeply shallow, but for brief spells every member of the public can be fascinating.

It's lovely to get one successful show - the chances of finding a second one are not so hot.

My life could have been so grim... really, really grim.

My parents grew up working class, but in that way that working class families do, they spent a fortune on education to better me.

Occasionally the state of the planet can knock me off my perky perch.

One of the great things about being gay and out is that the papers couldn't care less about your love life.

Straight men just can't imagine the bliss of being in a relationship with someone who finds farting as funny as they do.

The BBC is a victim of its own independence.

The BBC will always be attacked by whoever is in government. It is that George Bush thing of 'If you're not with us you are against us.'

The higher your profile becomes, the more aware you are that people out there might hate you.

Those years between drama school and getting onto the stand-up circuit were pretty lean.

Tolerance is forced on people in London.

Well, certainly I think American television is - that's proper TV.

Where I get bored is when I show up for a shoot and they want me to wear a feather boa. Too obvious a thing for a poof on the telly to do.

You don't want money to make you a social freak where you can only hang out with rich people.

You don't want to be hard to look at. Plain very good, hard to look at bad. The plain shall inherit the earth; time is our friend.

All my day is spent dealing with other people. When I come home I like it to be empty. The presence of others in my house kind of annoys me. I love coming home and shutting the doors. I feel brain dead. I'm relatively available, but not to live with.

All my interesting stories are from before I was on television. Nothing interesting has happened to me since then. Maybe it's because the most interesting thing in my life is the show and that's on telly.

Basically, I'm a really bad interviewer. I love meeting celebrities, but then I get a bit bored. Once you meet them you thing, 'really, what an ordinary person'.

Because society places a value on masculinity, gay men aspire to it. If you go to a gay club and the doorman says, 'You do realise this is a gay club, don't you lads?' you get all excited because you think, 'Wow, he thought I was straight!'