Peter Baynham

“I have always been against cruelty to animals and remain so.”

“The redemption plot is one of the oldest story shapes.”

“So many Christmas films either are twee, or try and go super edgy, then stick on something Christmassy at the end of the movie.”

“It's a fairly common phenomenon of London life - people having fully developed critiques of books they haven't read and films they haven't seen. I'd probably include myself in that.”

“I'm nostalgic for the future I knew as a kid. Back then, it was a lovely, bleepy, heavenly land populated by svelte men in white polo necks, who would lounge on big white sofas sipping blue wine from big glass globes, beside women like the ones on the covers of Hedkandi chill out compilations.”

“People sort of imagine Chris Morris and me sitting somewhere dark, with dripping taps and chilling background music. In fact, we like to sit on his roof in the sunshine - and there's an endless amount of just sitting there, going, 'So, erm, er, what shall we do?'”

“Christmas movies, it's a hard thing to do. The danger is you just end up with a Hollywood star with a Santa beard. You risk it being fake and cheesy and not real.”

“Innovations, instantly followed by a demented lust for them, now arrive with dizzying speed, not just daily, but in one-hour delivery slots.”

“I have no disagreement with the aims of anti-vivisectionists.”

“In 2001, my father finally succumbed to the bone cancer that had tortured him for seven years. His last weeks were a terrible, black icing on the cake, the agony, the slow twisting, thinning and snapping of his skeleton. Everything fell apart.”

“It feels quite cool, in a mad way, to be someone who skulks about in the shadows.”

“In life, comedy occurs naturally, as it should, in the most appalling of circumstances.”

“People complain that joking about serious subjects is 'making light' of them. Isn't that a good idea? Comedy lets the air out of the bully's tires.”

“The future's come and gone; it's a thing of the past. That once impossibly exotic expression 'the year 2000,' for so long evocative of silver suits and robots in pinnies, now feels antiquated.”

“We're chipping away at our capacity for wonder. When hologram TVs eventually go on sale, they'll cost £20,000 and be bought only by those strange, heroic, friendless men who live in flats piled high with giant 80s mobiles and DVD players weighing eight stone.”

“I was a pedantic child. I'd get really annoyed at the logic of small things that don't bother anyone else.”

“I'm the only comedian qualified to navigate a supertanker.”

“No subject is unsuitable for comedy.”

“First and foremost, I just want to write comedy.”