Tim Vine

“I sit in places like Costa Coffee in Banstead and write rubbish. I need a deadline. I think about the 44 tour dates and keep imagining standing in front of all these people. Then every day I write 15 jokes minimum.”

“Now, most dentist's chairs go up and down, don't they? The one I was in went back and forwards. I thought 'This is unusual'. And the dentist said to me 'Mr Vine, get out of the filing cabinet.”

“As you get older you're told to be sensible, but it's important for writing if you're a comic that you're able to still access that childlike thing.”

“I was at sea the other day and loads of meat floated past. It was a bit choppy.”

“Velcro: what a rip-off.”

“So I got home, and the phone was ringing. I picked it up, and said 'Who's speaking please?' And a voice said 'You are.'”

“People think that because of my act that I must have a really busy mind and I must be driven. I really am not. I quite like going outside and looking at spiders on a hedge in my garden and stuff.”

“Black beauty - he's a dark horse.”

“I'm not someone who gets to play The O2 and places like that, but that's the kind of rock and roll venue. The popularity of stand-up means that some people are getting to play rock star venues.”

“One of the things I like about when I tour sometimes is that occasionally you'll see a dad there with his 12-year-old son and they're both enjoying it.”

“You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine.' So that was nice.”

“For one thing, I don't pun excessively in real life.”

“So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said 'Is that the local swimming baths?' He said 'It depends where you're calling from.'”

“I love acting, but it's all just a bonus.”

“I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again.”

“Comedy covers such a wide range of different styles that I'm not really qualified to talk on all of them any more than anyone else is.”

“If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn't really count as narrative.”

“Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother, Colin. Or my younger brother, Ho-Chan-Chu. But I think it's Colin.”

“Now you know those trick candles that you blow out and a couple of seconds.”

“My house is a bit like a teenager's bedroom. The kind of pictures you have hanging up on your wall say a lot about you. I've got ones of Evel Knievel, Elvis and Starsky and Hutch, signed by David Soul.”