Miranda Hart

“The embarrassment of a situation can, once you are over it, be the funniest time in your life. And I suppose a lot of my comedy comes from painful moments or experiences in life, and you just flip them on their head.”

“No blessing goes uncontested. It will take a long time to get your dream.”

“If I had had plastic surgery, I would have asked for something better than the face you are seeing! I actually really hate plastic surgery when it's just for aesthetics and anti-ageing. I think ageing is beautiful and expressive and characterful.”

“I loved school. Not sure how much I focused on the education; just had fun and played lacrosse for seven years. It was lucky I had sport, which I was good at, so it didn't matter that I wasn't great on the academic side, or not brilliant at drama. Although I am still bitter about not being in the school choir. Furious, actually.”

“The main reason I got into comedy was in the hope that I could make a few people laugh and feel better about life, and the fact that I do that is quite overwhelming, really.”

“Look in the mirror and say, 'There is none other like you and for that reason alone you are beautiful.”

“No one likes a show-off, but if parallel parking was an Olympic sport, I would get gold, no probs.”

“I am not married, no. I wasn't really into the notion when I was younger, but now I think a proposal is the ultimate romantic gesture.”

“However much I might have yearned to be one of The Beautiful Ones, particularly at those ghastly school discos, where any desperate attempt to impress the opposite sex lead to at best deep humiliation, I now feel extremely blessed that I wasn't.”

“I've always felt a bit of an outsider. It used to worry me that, in terms of TV, I did not look like 'the girlfriend' or 'the daughter'. That pushed me to write my own stuff, as I thought no one else was going to write me a lead in the sitcom.”

“I kiss, but I don't tell.”

“Things don't have to come to you in your youth. It's fine for them to come to you when you get older. That's a motto in my household.”

“My mum said to me once years ago, which really spurred me on, 'You're the funniest person I know'. I loved that.”

“I'm not saying writing comedy's brain surgery, but there is a certain pressure to it. It's the equivalent of doing homework that's going to end up on national television.”

“If you're naturally a certain size, I think it suits you and you can see that. There's no point in trying to conform for the sake of it. People are meant to be different shapes, and their different shapes are so interesting and, ultimately, why people fall in love with them.”

“I hate the fact that we all feel the pressure to go to gyms, have a trainer if money allows, get jogging - all those societal pressures to keep fit and look a certain way.”

“I'm quite a confident person in many ways, but there's only so much you can hear about being compared to Hattie Jacques. For the record, she was a comedy goddess, but she was 25 stone. I hope I'm right in saying I'm not in any way nearly 25 stone.”

“Everyone - particularly my female friends I speak to - all say 'I wouldn't be in my twenties again if I was paid.' It's a difficult time.”

“I did things like get in a cupboard before the teacher came in at the beginning of a lesson, and then, two minutes before the end of the class, I come out of the cupboard and go, 'Sorry I'm late.'”

“People are obviously going to mention what I look like, but it's a shame it has to be a key part. I can't just be Miranda.”