If comedians were truly free of repression, there would not be an inherent need to perform for the love of a roomful of total strangers.

Everyone represses everything. Do you think any of these "normal" human beings really do exactly what they want to do all the time? 'Course not. It's just the same. We're middle-class and we're British. Repression is in our veins.

Here I sit, beneath the large window of a first-floor Georgian flat, exploring the corridors of my sordid imagination for comedic words of beauty.

Milk which is just about to turn is akin to that moment spent on the cusp of failure in a dulled and fettered relationship.

Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There's a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I'm so easily led.

I won't perform in Cuba until there's no more Castro and there's a free Cuba. To me, Cuba's the biggest prison in the world, and I would be very hypocritical were I to perform there.