David Baddiel

“When I first started, stand-up comedians writing novels was thought of as a great encroachment on the art form and people got very angsty. But comedians are storytellers so it's really a hop, skip and a jump.”

“When I first started on telly, I used to get quite a lot of fan mail from Indians saying it's great that an Indian is on!”

“Vegas felt glamorous on the outside but disappointing on the inside.”

“I've adapted my own work a couple of times, and I've also given my novels to other people to adapt, and I do find that quite difficult.”

“People think making jokes about something is just going to cause trouble. But actually, not making jokes about something is a type - and this sounds very pretentious - of apartheid.”

“I am an intellectual.”

“I think 'Friends' is brilliant and it was massively underrated in this country for a very British reason, which is the assumption that because the cast is beautiful, it must be vacuous. Whereas in fact, it's brilliantly, brilliantly written.”

“The food in central Asia is not so great: it tends to be horse.”

“Because I've been around for quite a long time and done a lot of different stuff, there's a shifting idea of who I am.”

“I think it is quite hard to be as angry and abusive face to face as it is online. But my fear is that as we get more and more normalised to abuse online, it will start spreading away from the screen.”

“When I retweet a troll, I'm not thinking of the troll, I'm thinking of the audience: how can I make them laugh with me, at him?”

“I'm very committed to anti-racism and gender equality - political issues, but not party political.”

“Unfortunately, we no longer live in a culture where what is spoken about and what truths are told and what lies are told are objective any more, so my personal feeling is that you have to try to take them on.”

“My parents are very unusual characters, both of them - they're both only children, and they're great, but neither of them are the sort of standard idea of a parent, and not of Jewish parents.”

“Most people who know me well say I am almost autistically myself. I like to never change.”

“I only work with the ideas I have. I only want to talk about stuff that happens to me.”

“Everything I do is storytelling; storytelling is about curiosity.”

“I've always been an insomniac, and as I've got older that's got harder.”

“I think I have a problem. I'm incredibly open about myself.”

“I had probably never met a non-Jew until the age of 12.”