John Bishop

“Something can only go wrong if you know what you're doing.”

“I feel like a bit of a jinx.”

“It's nice to have the family around, as I have been on tour for a while.”

“I know what it's like to have nothing.”

“You can't pretend you're not part of the world that you come from.”

“I am in my late 40s now, so I wake up fatter than when I went to bed.”

“'Panto!' is basically my life. It's not a comedy drama; it's a documentary. I was going to write an autobiography, but I thought I'd write this instead.”

“Some families out there have unimaginably tough lives.”

“I think there's more to be happy about than sad about on a daily basis.”

“I was at a pharmaceutical conference in Dallas and bored out of my head. I'd split up from my missus and went downtown and had my kids' initials done, JLD, for Joseph, Luke and Daniel. Then I got back with my wife so I had her initials added during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival - after I'd waited a few years to see if the marriage would work!”

“I love pure joke-tellers, but if I go to see a comedian for a full show, I want to feel I know them more than when I came through the door.”

“You know what I mean, I'm not Tom Cruise. I can act as long as the character happens to look and sound a lot like me.”

“I can be a little bit of a control freak.”

“Oh, listen, stand-up is my home.”

“You have to spend four hours filming a 30-minute program. That seems mental to me.”

“In 2006, I left my job in sales and marketing to go full-time as a comedian, and I started off doing panto at the Lowry in Manchester.”

“I mean Ireland, in all honesty I owe Ireland a lot because I think, and I'm not just saying this flippantly, Ireland is probably the reason that I do the job I do because when I started doing stand-up I came to Ireland and I just sort of gelled with the idea of doing it the way I do - telling stories.”

“When I was 10 I had a bone disease called osteomyelitis; they said if they didn't operate, I had 24 hours to live.”

“Imagine growing up never feeling loved by your family - the most basic of human needs.”

“I want to do straight, dramatic acting so I do a hit show when you get chased by aliens!”