Top 79 Quotes & Sayings by Greg Davies
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British comedian Greg Davies.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
It often occurs to me that this is a strange way to make a living. But it's wonderful, too. There are many ways to read maturity, and I'm not fighting the instinct to simply enjoy that kind of nonsense. I love that someone would pay me to draw on somebody else's bottom.
I once bought some enormous fireworks that were literally the size of sticks of dynamite. We would go into the field behind our house, slide them into the biggest cow pats we could find, and blow them sky high. It was exhilarating and, for the cows, incredibly confusing.
One day I woke up, had an early mid-life crisis, and decided it all had to change. I went and did Logan Murray's comedy course for 11 weeks and then started sneakily doing open-spot gigs, and that was it.
The only difference between a comedian and someone else? We need to make people laugh more.
I think the main thing I'd bring to Chewbacca is middle-aged spread. Chewbacca has looked after himself.
The most expensive thing I've ever splashed out on is... a tailor-made suit. It cost £1,400, and it's the best money I ever spent. It's a miracle thing - I put it on, and I don't look overweight.
'Taskmaster' taps into a universal humour of people making a fool of themselves.
I'm really not comfortable talking about my personal life.
I don't know why comedians moan about touring; you get driven to a town, stay in a hotel, work for an hour and a half with nice people, and eat fatty service station food. There's nothing not to like.
My dad is the funniest human being I've ever met in my life - for years, I'd watch him hold court in whatever situation he was in; he was the most amazing raconteur. I often feel I've hijacked what should have been his career.
Our family were very quick to laugh at each other.
I have a terrible work ethic. The best way for me to do anything in life is for someone to say, 'You need to do this by this time, or you're in trouble'.
My favourite place in Britain is... my home county of Shropshire. I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world.
I tend to develop my rambling anecdotes by actually getting up and performing them. That's the joy/horror of stand up - if you have the germ of an idea that you think might be funny, there is a way of finding out if it's funny very quickly.
My dad, who had spent his life as a lecturer, said, 'That's all very well, but you need to earn a living, so why don't you teach?' I did, and 13 years later, I woke up.
The truth is, I should have never done teaching. I did teaching because I didn't have the bottle to have a go at comedy. Whether there's any gain to comedy is not for me to say. But certainly it was no loss to teaching.
I would say the more significant factor of my starting late is that I developed a sufficiently thick skin to be able to - just about - handle the knocks that a fledgling comedian takes.
In my 20s and early 30s, I was very much a man lost at sea, with very little direction in life, and painfully immature.
I have no desire to work my adrenal glands any harder than necessary. I like lazing around; it's pretty important to my well-being. But I also get bored, so that's when my culture-vulturing kicks in.
One of my friend calls me 'lost to showbiz', but that's only because I don't go for a drink as often as he'd like, because I'm always working. I've met very few famous people who are lost to showbiz - I have met some, mind.
I can't remember the last time I can say I felt truly unwound.
Kids are great. They are endlessly fascinating and bizarre. But I also think that if I had left them on their own for long enough, one of them would have been eaten.
I swam for the county when I was 12. You wouldn't think it to look at me now, but I'm as graceful as a seal.
As a young ma,n I was an absolute idiot. I think my exes would say I was a likeable baby. I had a teenager's bedroom when I was 32.
I am not a father, and the only children that I get close to are my nieces.
Love at first sight is probably for stupid people, but maybe I'm just cynical.
I was scarred in 1977 by watching Jaws, and I've never got over it.
I frequently meet ex-pupils who seem to think I didn't totally ruin their educations, so that's something.
My greatest weakness is... food. If it looks like it's going to taste nice, it goes in my face - simple as that.
Every time I wrote a school scene, I thought of that drama studio, because that's where I was a bit lost at sea.
I have no system of writing. It's chaos. I could be upside down on my bedroom floor; I'll be scribbling on a pad that I'll then lose. I'll be on the toilet with my laptop on, sitting in the pub with my iPad.
If you want something badly enough, you go for it.
I am often driven by necessity, rather than actually doing things like an adult.
I don't watch an awful lot of television. It's a very strange thing, and I don't know a lot of people who work in telly who watch a lot of it.
I've politely declined a few reality-type things but generally have been asked to do things that I'd enjoy. I'll be doing less in the new year so I can get some writing done.
'Man Down' is not a serious study of the human condition: it is a balls-out attempt at making people laugh. So nobody in the show can afford to cling on to any vanity, because we're always going to push the humiliation levels.
It's a strange old thing, but I think an awful lot of 'Inbetweeners' fans still don't realise I'm a stand-up.
If you're doing a job, and you secretly want to do a different job, you start to blame the job. I was blaming the teaching for that fact I wasn't performing. I really felt I needed to follow a comedy career.
Being a teacher was great, but it wasn't what I wanted to do, so it was ultimately crushing.
When I've mentioned my screen wife is Helen Baxendale, so many people have burst out laughing. My self-esteem has been crushed by it.
I often run teaching down in my standup, but I had some great years, and it's a great job. It represented a place where I knew what I wanted to do but didn't have the courage.
Anything my dad says about what I say about him, I can remind him of ten examples where he publicly humiliated me. We're really close. The culture of mickey-taking is well established in my family.
People often tell me that they have no idea how I can do standup. The idea of trying to make a large group of strangers laugh is, for many, absolutely petrifying - and it is - but there are ways of gradually developing the material that can ease the fear.
I was a drama teacher, so I had the opportunity to show off in front of a captive audience. I essentially did 13 years of stand-up. Whether my pupils would agree that I was remotely interesting or not is another question.
Don't say I was an inspirational teacher - my former pupils would laugh their heads off. I was grossly incompetent, but I hope I didn't do the children a disservice.
I came into comedy to make people laugh. If the fact that I can't stop eating Hobnobs in any way helps, I'm happy to celebrate that.
There is nothing bad about this job. Comedians have nothing to complain about. That doesn't mean I'm not constantly moaning and worrying.
Every time I travel, I'm in a rage until I reach my destination. I find myself shouting at suitcases, as if it's their fault that I'm an inefficient packer. I've also learnt that whenever you despair of humanity and start thinking that you hate people - as I frequently do - you only have to travel to realise that people are basically all right.
I was a very young 21-year-old. I was very scared. I spent three years at university in west London, and I went into central London three times. I came from Shropshire, and just having travelled that far was enough ambition.
I grew up in Shropshire, but I was born in Wales. There was a hospital seven miles away, but my dad drove 45 miles over the Welsh border so I could play rugby for Wales. But as a skinny asthmatic, I was only ever good at swimming.
'Man Down''s my absolute priority. If they give me another series, I'll throw everything into it because I really like the characters. But after that, I'll certainly be getting back on stage because I haven't done a proper gig for two years. Which is ridiculous for someone who loves it so much.
I would spend a lot of time setting up an accident scene where it appeared that I had seriously hurt myself - hedge-cutter, ketchup, that sort of thing. When my sister happened upon the scene of horror, I would lift my head and pathetically plead for her to 'get Mum'.
I try and make myself or consenting people I am very close to the victims of my comedy. I don't enjoy bullying masquerading as comedy.
If you're funny and working in education, I think the perception is that you're either inspirational or awful. So which was I? I suppose that depends on who you talk to.
I rather like finding out instantly whether you've been successful or not. It's a cliche, really, but the fact is that every gig is different: it's a live event, and you're with a different group of individuals every night.
Me and my sister made up a game called 'Milky Cow'. We were on holiday in France when I was 12, and there was a kid who had bovine features, and every time we went past her, we'd say, 'There's Milky Cow'.
When you're trying to enter something as intimidating as comedy, starting out with a support network of likeminded people is a powerful thing. It was natural we'd end up working together because we went through those first petrifying moments together. We created gigs for each other, slapped each other on the back, and protected each other.
It's a strange thing when someone passes away. It's always when you're not expecting it that you're affected by it. When we first started filming, we were filming with existing characters in a location that we'd never been before.
My dad always told me that, as far as he's concerned, I can do whatever I choose in life as long as I'm happy and can handle the consequences of bad decisions. He only ever said that when he thought I was doing the wrong thing. I would employ similar passive aggression.
Comedy brings out this rage in people: they get furious when they don't like something. I have some lovely hardcore fans.
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