Angus Deayton

“Football is my first love - Man United, not comedy.”

“I find it baffling that for years and years I got tremendous stick for the amount of money I earned.”

“I was just about to sue the BBC for unlawful dismissal when I ran into Michael Foster, Chris Evans's agent, who said never go near the law courts. Especially as an individual against a corporation with limitless funds.”

“That's sort of what showbusiness is - a charade. People are basing their assumptions about you on half the facts. The rest of it just isn't true.”

“I was away in France, as I was studying French and German, and a friend of mine bumped into a guy called Richard Curtis, who was producing the Oxford Revue that year. Two people had dropped out and he asked me to step in.”

“I'm not sure anyone ever feels they belong in showbusiness. I think everyone feels a bit of a fraud, that one day they'll get rumbled.”

“I appear to have had more comebacks than Status Quo.”

“When you are in a long-running series you don't look outside it because you don't really need to do much else. When you don't have that you are much more open to offers, like presenting Hell's Kitchen or making a motoring show in Madagascar with Mariella Frostrup.”

“Sir Alex Ferguson is the most impressive person I've met in terms of charisma and achievement.”

“People think the end of a relationship is a bad thing, but it can be a natural thing.”

“I took great offence at a journalist who called me blokeish. I have always seen myself as metrosexual and in touch with my feminine side.”

“I was the youngest of three, so simply copied my older brothers. It made life very easy. We wore the same yellow jumpers that our grandmother knitted, went to the same school, laughed at the same jokes, and supported the same football team.”

“I was presenting the Baftas live on BBC1, and as I skipped down the steps on to the stage at the start, I felt my heel clip the edge of the last step. Fortunately there was just a stumble, but one centimetre more and that could have been the most dramatic entrance of any awards host.”

“I fell into presenting after doing about a decade of parody shows of presenter-based shows, and a lot of it was me parodying a presenter, so when I started doing 'Have I Got News For You', I carried on that persona.”

“I never set my sights on being an actor or comedian or presenter.”

“I have had girlfriends, but nothing to go public on. I recently worked out that I have only been single for about six months of my life. Since I was 18 I have gone from one long-term relationship to the next. I am not unhappy.”

“I live 300 yards away from my ex and son. I see them all the time. We all went away on safari recently.”

“Most of the comedy characters I played have been extensions of my own personality and very similar to Mike Channel. It's a weird eclectic mixture of your genuine character and the character you portray.”

“I still listen to Radio 1. I never really matured or progressed to Radio 2 or even Radio 4, like most of my contemporaries.”

“When I was five I said I wanted to be either a funny man or on an advert.”