Stand-up on the telly is one thing, but seeing it live is something else. There are brilliant comedians playing to rooms above pubs and arts centres around the corner from where you live. And anything could happen at a live gig.
I don't think I'd want to be a comedian today if I saw it on the telly. I wouldn't think it was a thing for weirdoes and drop-outs; I'd think it was a thing for squares who wanted to be famous.
I don't want a chat show or to be on telly every day, as that's not my business; my business is standing in front of people and making them laugh, and I want to see how far I can get with that.
Turn up your radio. Watch lots of telly and eat loads of choc. Feel guilty. Stay up all night. Learn everything in six hours that has taken you two years to compile. That's how I did it.
After your heart fails, you just feel really vulnerable for a while. You just want telly and your little house. Then, suddenly, three, four months have passed.
In my middle age I seem to love a bit of pastoral telly: 'Countryfile,' 'Springwatch.' I love watching people in nature. It's a moment of calm, it's a moment of meditation.
I never did that badly with women when I wasn't on telly, but it's a bit out of control now. Women try it on with me more than I'm comfortable with. It's strange, because I think I look like a troll wearing a woman's wig backwards.
I don't have a problem with the concept of a box set per se - we have many of them merrily lined up on the shelf above the telly. No, what gives me the pip is the fact that I'm never going to watch any of them.
I was very small, about 3 or 4 I think, and just wanted to be the people on telly telling these wonderful stories. Obviously the idea grew and matured with me but I can't ever remember wanting to do anything else. I've just sort of taken it for granted all my life that that was what I would do.
I don't think I'm any different on 'Celebrity Juice' or daytime telly. It's what's going on around me that's different. I don't suddenly become all outrageous and rude on 'Celebrity Juice.'
At yoga you get some sense of spiritual space so that people don't intrude. You can go there and close your eyes and no one will talk to you. People are too worried about not fainting to bother with some bloke who was on the telly.
I was playing in the juniors at Wimbledon I forgot to turn my mobile phone off. It was lying there in my bag and it rang in the middle of a match, and it was one of my friends from school saying, 'Murray, you're on the telly!' I learnt from that. I now put my phone on silent.
I'm really visually stimulated more than anything. I don't really listen to music. I'm more into watching telly or watching movies and visual art.
I just do what I gotta do and try to show people I can write some funny lyrics and play piano, and hopefully that'll make them dig further. I really believe in my form. That's why I haven't done a lot of telly, and I'm not a regular on any panel shows, and I'm not in a sitcom or all those things.
With the likes of social media and outside influences - we're going to be on telly a lot more - I think it's important that you listen to the right people, whether it's your team-mates, your parents, or your coaches, and don't take too much to heart.
I did a TV show called 'Lenny Henry Dot TV' a couple of years ago and I hated it. These things always happen when you don't have time to reflect. And I didn't do anything on the telly for three years.
I might get a break again, and I might get back on telly. If I don't, I'll just keep doing stand-up and doing the best gigs I can.
There are two things that happen when there is a recession. One, more people watch telly and two, people buy more raw foodstuffs, instead of processed foods.
I think shows like 'Dancing on Ice,' 'X Factor' and 'Britain's Got Talent' make great telly, but I'd never want to be contestant. I'm far too insecure and competitive. Also, working in theatre, you're being judged all the time - and I'd rather not be told I'm awful in front of millions of people!
I was a latchkey kid. Every afternoon, I would walk home from school, let myself in, make myself a banana buttie, and watch telly until Mum came home.
'RuPaul's Drag Race' is a show about love, art, passion, acceptance, and the quest for finding America's next drag superstar. No show on the telly box has more grit than these queens.
I don't have a telly in my bedroom. I think the bedroom should be saved for more appropriate things, like sleeping, eating biscuits, sorting through your knicker drawer and, of course, the thing that should only be done with someone you know really well - naps.
The swimmers ask me all the time 'is it going to be on telly more?' They want their families to watch them. Not every family can afford to go to Rio or Budapest. And it is nice for the clubs and coaches as well to see the people they have brought up.
Do you know what, the reason I haven't worked loads and loads is because I got so lucky working on 'Popworld' and T4. They were such unique pieces of telly, so I got really spoiled.
When I'm on tour, telly-watching happens at unusual times for me. After a hotel breakfast, I generally catch up on 'Homes Under Hammer' and 'This Morning', while replying to emails and dozing slightly. A full belly will do that to a woman.
If your pal or neighbour is in the SNP, you're more likely to listen to them than if you just turn on the telly and see me or Alex. The growth of membership is building a politically engaged community base that hasn't been there in my lifetime.
If I'd been doing the cabaret circuit or the club circuit or the Saturday night telly that was around in the 80s, I wouldn't be around any more, because those shows have fallen by the wayside. So I have had to keep changing.
You have more freedom on radio. When people used to tell me they preferred radio to TV, I always thought they were making the best of things because they couldn't get any telly work, but now I understand, sort of.
I like to think that I listen to Classic FM while domestic goddessing and, truth be told, I often do, but you know sometimes classical music can get a bit hectic and I just want to turn all the violins right down. That's when I pop the telly on.
I've just realised that I lean towards telly that features people of a similar age to me. That's a bit weird, isn't it? I watch soaps with casts of all ages because there are at least three or four people in my age band. Somehow it's fine if they're a murderer as long as they're not a young one.
When we first did 'Big Night Out,' there was no chance of someone doing a little show in a pub then being on telly. There was a little Oxbridge route in and an old-fashioned variety route.
You know when you get into that thing where people want to discuss the relationship? I'd rather discuss what was on telly, avoid the issue, discuss anything other than the relationship.
You get pigeonholed. Some people are film stars, and some are theatre stars who do one-off telly. Somehow, I get into long-running series.
We're not ashamed of the old stuff, but when you look back at the posters it does make you think: 'My God, six men and one woman.' Weirdly we didn't say 'that's wrong' and no one else did, either. It's been a really quick shift in the landscape of telly, which is brilliant.
A BOOK?! WHAT D'YOU WANNA FLAMING BOOK FOR?...WE'VE GOT A LOVELY TELLY WITH A 12-INCH SCREEN AND NOW YA WANNA BOOK!
Even with the 'Top Boy' series with Ashley Walters... I've been talking like on the creative direction wave with Drake about the series. Making greatness with it. The whole style of what's going on in London, the sound, is real. It's an actual thing that actually happened. So it deserves to be on the telly.
Despite some of the stories that have gone around, I've never had a big, flouncey strop about how much I'm paid. Considering I have a pretty interesting life out of making telly, I'm really paid quite well for it. So I'm not complaining.
I do look better on TV. In real life, I look scruffy and pale, and I get the worst kind of recognition... I get the 'Haven't we met somewhere before?' I suggest it might be because I'm on the telly, and they say, 'No, it's definitely not that. Wasn't it at so-and-so's party?'
At the time I left film school there wasn't a lot of hope for young film-makers. It was a calling card of film school to be quite slick and commercial, which might lead to getting some stuff on telly.
At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.
For me, Christmas was always about presents. As a child, we each had an allotted place in the sitting room for the ceremonial unwrapping and mine was perched beside the telly on a Moroccan pouffe. We would watch our mum with bated breath as she divided up the gifts.
I remember Phillip Schofield saying to us, just before we started 'SMTV: Live'... 'It will be the best fun you will ever have on telly.'You know what the innocence and freedom we got on that show you don't get anywhere else. We could just mess about.
I've been offered radio but never done it, partly because the radio ideas that I've been asked to come up with, I've thought about them and then converted them to telly things.
I am the kind to sit in front of the telly for hours. In fact, my parents and I are addicted to food shows. We can watch them endlessly. People who have seen us like, this call us a crazy family.
I spent as much time watching telly and films when I was a kid as I did lying around reading books. I think it's crazy that writers are only allowed to say that certain books have influenced them.
It takes time and energy, and if I'm working, then I'd rather flop in front of the telly than put on a tiny dress and work out how to get myself to God knows where. I mean, lazy some would call it.
Some people are instantly brilliant. The Kenneth Branaghs of this world are ready-formed actors at 23 - he has used his success in lots of different ways - but there are people out there for whom acting is: 'Ooh, I can get on the telly and be famous.'
I saw this train driver and said, 'I wanna go to Paris.' He said, 'Eurostar?' I said, 'Well I've been on telly but I'm no Dean Martin.' Mind you, at least the Eurostar's comfy. It's murder on the Orient Express isn't it?
The transitions will be tough because of the nature of a triathlon, you have to get changed and dry off or whatever. But this is going to be even harder because I have to do all that, then speak on the radio, do an interview with local telly, do some press and some interviews.
On telly, there's been a move towards entertainment - with some very high-powered, fast-moving dramas. Then we have the Internet, where we get our information but it's all in bite-size pieces. I think the documentary, as a form, actually speaks to what's missing.
I never really think about myself really, but I hope I'm no different whether it be on the radio or telly or on a podcast. It's about being genuine, and approachable and accessible, not talking at people but with people.
The telly's almost always on. It's how I wind down after a show. It's how I relax on a rare night off. It educates me, entertains me and makes a hotel room feel a lot more cosy.
And people are so het up about the fact I'm in the theatre - it's like, 'Ooh these telly names, can they be any good?' I came out of RADA and my first job was at the National Theatre, but everyone wonders if I can cope. It makes me laugh.
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 never thought I'd be one of those old hams who favours theatre over everything, but I'm getting that way. Telly and film seemed more fun when I was younger; turning left on planes and washing up in nice places. But there are things that you only learn in theatre.
I did four or five years in telly, and by the end of it was drained. I was a bit sick of myself. I didn't feel like an actor anymore. That sounds silly, but when you're doing a play you're using different muscles, and it blew all the cobwebs away.
I like to get up and get out. Otherwise you end up kicking about, and it's easy to flick the telly on; then before you know it, it is 11 A.M. and you haven't done anything.
A guy playing pool in a pub once said to me that they should put me on the telly. It went in one ear and out the other. But then I started thinking about it. I wondered how it all worked, did you have to be best mates with someone at the BBC who you went to uni with in Oxford?
On telly, if it's not the right kind of show, I revert back to my 'Girlie Show' persona, become this daft, bawdy caricature of myself and I'm not actually like that, I'm actually quite - not clever, but smart with my words.
I think I wanted to be on Top Gear from a fairly young age because I loved cars and I wanted to do something on telly because I loved TV. I know that I?m ridiculously lucky
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