Alexei Sayle

“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.”

“Honestly, sometimes I get really fed up of my subconscious - it's like it's got a mind of its own.”

“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.”

“If I won the lottery I'd start a charity that helped little family hardware stores, cobblers and fruit shops open in city centres.”

“Most of the Communists I knew were nice people.”

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

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

“First off, I have to mention what is undoubtedly the greatest phenomenon of the modern era: All You Can Eat Buffets.”

“The journalists have obviously failed to capture my innate magnetism, humour and charisma, and they all need to be fired from their newspapers right away.”

“I wanted to write about how people's beliefs shift.”

“It seems easier to make a career out of comedy now than it was in the 1980s.”