Greg Davies

“As anyone who's done any acting will tell you, if you haven't got a malicious evil streak, it's such a joy to let one out.”

“Humour is learned behaviour, and I know exactly why I learned to be funny. I did it from a very early age. My dad was a hilarious man, and the way we interacted was being silly together. It was a way to hold his attention.”

“It's a strange thing when someone passes away. It's always when you're not expecting it that you're affected by it. When we first started filming, we were filming with existing characters in a location that we'd never been before.”

“I was a drama teacher, so I had the opportunity to show off in front of a captive audience. I essentially did 13 years of stand-up. Whether my pupils would agree that I was remotely interesting or not is another question.”

“When I was 17, my dad was teaching in the States. He hired an A-Team-style van, and we drove all over. My resounding memory of it was that we saw all these wonderful places but that my sister and I were being horrible, sulky teenagers.”

“It's an irony that with the physical decline of age comes more mental wellbeing. It's life's cruel trick. You've settled down as a person, you feel happier with who you are, and then you get a massive swollen prostate and have to go for a test every two weeks. It's life's way of saying the struggle isn't over.”

“When I've mentioned my screen wife is Helen Baxendale, so many people have burst out laughing. My self-esteem has been crushed by it.”

“Love at first sight is probably for stupid people, but maybe I'm just cynical.”

“When you're trying to enter something as intimidating as comedy, starting out with a support network of likeminded people is a powerful thing. It was natural we'd end up working together because we went through those first petrifying moments together. We created gigs for each other, slapped each other on the back, and protected each other.”

“I swam for the county when I was 12. You wouldn't think it to look at me now, but I'm as graceful as a seal.”

“Our family were very quick to laugh at each other.”

“Every time I wrote a school scene, I thought of that drama studio, because that's where I was a bit lost at sea.”

“Myself and some kids on our estate became obsessed with the creation of the ultimate go-kart. This ambition culminated in the creation of a six-man super-cart, which was essentially a plank of wood with four wheels, and a failed attempt to jump a tributary of the River Severn powered only by Rex, our dog.”

“'Taskmaster' taps into a universal humour of people making a fool of themselves.”

“I was a very young 21-year-old. I was very scared. I spent three years at university in west London, and I went into central London three times. I came from Shropshire, and just having travelled that far was enough ambition.”

“My dad always told me that, as far as he's concerned, I can do whatever I choose in life as long as I'm happy and can handle the consequences of bad decisions. He only ever said that when he thought I was doing the wrong thing. I would employ similar passive aggression.”

“I have no system of writing. It's chaos. I could be upside down on my bedroom floor; I'll be scribbling on a pad that I'll then lose. I'll be on the toilet with my laptop on, sitting in the pub with my iPad.”

“The truth is, I should have never done teaching. I did teaching because I didn't have the bottle to have a go at comedy. Whether there's any gain to comedy is not for me to say. But certainly it was no loss to teaching.”

“I have a terrible work ethic. The best way for me to do anything in life is for someone to say, 'You need to do this by this time, or you're in trouble'.”

“If you want something badly enough, you go for it.”