David Baddiel

“Yeah! "I love you" is subject to the law of diminishing returns; like one or two other critical weekly elements of a relationship, it loses a bit of thrilling value every time you get it out.'... That's what happens with "I love you", that same phrase that you once shouted Hollywood or Heathcliff-like in the lashing raining, now- now you are saying it dumbly at the end of every phone conversation, a follow-on from," I'll be back for dinner." Once it came out spontaneous rush, it forced itself out; now it's reflex.”

“I certainly don't think comedians are more depressive than any other walk of life. I have had clinical depression, as it happens. The stress of performing didn't help, but it wasn't about being a comedian in itself.”

“Football fandom is this, it's magical thinking, it's hope over experience.”

“If you're going to talk about the devil, at some point you've got to meet the devil.”

“If you can get tickets, a show on Broadway is worth the effort and expense.”

“I remember watching an episode of 'Seinfeld' in which George can't understand why security guards can't sit down. He gets obsessed with it and eventually buys a chair for a security guard who sits down and goes to sleep. The shop gets robbed. That's a brilliant extrapolation of what is essentially observational comedy.”

“My show 'Fame: Not the Musical' is about the fact that fame is seen in two ways in our culture: either as a glittering bauble we desperately covet, or as a narrative of tragedy and despair. My own experience of fame is a third, mundane way, which often involves being mistaken for someone else - Ian Broudie from the Lightning Seeds, or Steve Wright.”

“I am someone who is going to say what I want to say.”

“Now 'South Park' - they are interested in blasphemy. They're interested in creating offence for its own sake.”

“Frank Skinner was a terrible flatmate in some respects. He never cooked and the cleaning lady refused to go into his room. But he was brilliant because he was very, very funny. You could just sit around at home and have a laugh without having to rely on any social arrangements.”

“I've seen episodes of 'Friends' which are as funny as any sitcom I've ever seen.”

“We are all frightened now. No one says anything public without looking over their shoulder and wondering, Have I said something wrong? Am I going to get in trouble?”

“I'm incredibly uncommitted to party politics. I vote Labour but only because Glenda Jackson was my MP and I loved her on 'Morecambe & Wise.'”

“I had a 'the Cure' hairstyle, bigger even than Robert Smith's for many years. I used to do jokes about it which went well, but which meant I had to keep sporting it long after it was fashionable.”

“I don't believe in God, so I'd say that laughter is one of the only true weapons for fighting against real darkness, grief and loss.”

“It gives me cancer to have an idea but not do it. Whether I get into trouble for it is not as important as the need to chase the idea.”

“Our culture is being shaped by trolls and the Holocaust deniers are a very extreme example of the trolls. Ignoring them has not worked. It doesn't mean that confronting them will work completely but I think it's a debate we have to have.”

“I am a nice boy.”

“Without wishing to sound pretentious, my basic standard of happiness is to do with being who I am.”

“Baddiel is a slightly quizzical name - it comes from Latvia but people thought it sounded vaguely Hindustani or something. I thought it might be a good idea to write a body swap movie, like 'Trading Places' or 'Freaky Friday,' about somebody who believes they are one thing but suddenly become another.”