Rhod Gilbert

“But I don't think I'll ever completely shake the low self-esteem that robs me of the ability to go up to someone new and chat without feeling I'm being rude and intruding.”

“I am a bit of a control freak I think but I do enjoy as editing is really fun. It is where you build the story because you have got all this footage and you just go 'right how can we tell a story out of this?'”

“But my dad was a jazz pianist and plays by ear, and all my family are musical. And that bizarrely, is quite off-putting when you're a kid because I used to plinkety plonk and try and work out a tune and then my dad would sit down and play this amazing jazz version of what I was trying to.”

“All the success has come as a huge shock, because most famous people you see just seem born into that world.”

“So it's fun to build this jigsaw in the edit by moving scenes around, you can do anything that you want and tell a story in a hundred different ways but you have got to find the right way to find that story.”

“I swear, even if I'd had to drive all the way to Leeds after a full day's work to do a show, nothing would have made me happier than to find out upon arriving that the booking was off.”

“I did one gig in a French youth club. I was in front of the mic - it was quite weird. There were only about nine people in the audience - nine French youths staring at me and this other guy who was with me. I don't think they quite knew what we were trying to do.”

“I'm not one of those people that subscribes to that thing that you need any life experience to be funny or to do stand-up.”

“And I loved teaching to the point where I may well retrain.”

“In the old days, there were things like 'Call My Bluff', they were sort of gameshows, panel shows. When they're right, they're brilliant.”

“I've made a conscious decision and one that took some time not to do arenas.”

“The only thing that stops me doing the teaching is that there's so much stress involved. And there shouldn't be. It's the most wonderful, inspirational job on the planet from what I saw. I loved it. Teachers, we should be molly-coddling them. Looking after them. Nurturing them.”

“My wife and I sometimes get nostalgic, both yearning for a time when Friday nights were exciting and Sundays were lazy; I miss the comfort of that predictability.”

“I want to stick two fingers up to shyness, make people aware that it's a widespread problem and not just something they and they alone are going through.”

“I'd love to spend the day drinking a real ale in front of a fire at a lovely pub, doing the crossword with the dog at my feet.”

“I can see the appeal of panel shows to commissioners. It's fairly cheap to make and it's fairly reliably watched in fairly significant numbers. If you get the right combination of people and the right format, then I think a panel show is wonderful.”

“When you are use to having complete control it is really hard to give up control of things to other people so it can be very stressful for a stand-up working in television, you are getting paid just to go on a road trip with your mate.”

“I never know what I'm going to say when I first walk out. It might be 'hello' or 'how are we?' or something like that. It's not planned to that extent, but within about a minute or so I will get into the rhythm of the show, so that I know where I am.”

“When I started, I used to be like a tiger. My comedy developed in the comedy clubs in London and up and down the country, and I used to bounce onto the stage like an animal let out of its cage. In some of those comedy clubs, in the early days, I had to come out fighting.”

“I never had any massive burning ambition to be on the box in everyone's front rooms at peak time on Saturday night never remotely in my life.”