Romesh Ranganathan

I've done bits where I've perhaps talked about my kids annoying me and you hope that the audience realise that you do actually love your children. You can still be a good parent and be frustrated by your kids.

The experience of watching other standups is either: 1) you see your mate doing standup and it's really bad and you're heartbroken, or 2) You see your mate doing really well and it's heartbreaking.

What I'm like with lack of sleep is that I let the devil in, so if I'm tired the slightest thing will put me into a bad place.

People who are comfortable in their own skin I admire, but you don't know what's really going on. If you meet someone who says they nail being a human, they are as far away from nailing it as a human as you can possibly imagine.

I'm hugely negative, so if a joke doesn't land it takes me a long time to get over it. If something doesn't go well I go dark in my head. Basically I start thinking it should be illegal for me to be doing comedy.

My parents are super westernized. My mom listens to western music, my dad was like a pub landlord so he properly embraced English life. But the truth is they both came from tiny villages in Sri Lanka.

I worry about my children, actually. I'm trying to give them a decent upbringing but I sometimes worry that that means they're going to be kind of mediocre adults. Like maybe I should throw them out for a bit and give them some adversity.

My family is all obsessed with comedy. I grew up watching a lot of comedy in the house. I used to watch Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy with my dad. But my mom is more into slapstick stuff.

I did a gig as a standup when I was eight years old. I went on holiday with my family to this holiday camp and they had a talent competition and I entered as a standup.

If you're racist and you come out and say it's because of Brexit, then great. Then I know definitely not to talk to you, rather than you give me a sideways glance in a shop. Now I know, I've seen your Facebook post.

I know you're supposed to love yourself, but I really hate the way I look. When I look in the mirror I'm so disgusted by the chocolate blancmange abomination staring back at me, I actually apologise to my wife for my physical appearance. I've got no backside, an overhanging belly and I'm so disproportionate.

I just write what I think is funny, or interesting, and hopefully everything else will take care of itself. There's no strategy to anything.

My mum's very spiritual, and I think she just tells everyone that I'm spiritual, too.

My beard is just an ongoing effort to hide my face as much as possible.

I don't believe in make-or-break moments in your life. If you screw something up, it can knock you down, but that only means you'll be better when you get back to where you were before.

There is a magical, unexplainable phenomenon that still occurs to this day where, however funny you think the material you've written is, as soon as you turn up to a gig to try it out, it becomes almost incoherent.

When I started doing stand-up, I resigned from my job as a maths teacher and, three days before I was due to leave, my dad passed away.

Mum came to Crawley from Sri Lanka at 19 after marrying my dad. Later, Dad had financial problems and they split for a while.

Our house was repossessed and we lived in a B&B until we got a council house. It was a struggle, but Mum just got her head down, found cleaning jobs and never complained. I owe her a lot, so I now do everything she says.

We are entering an age where people can claim to know more about what really happened than the people who were there. Where people will dismiss eyewitness accounts, on the basis of their gut feelings; where they will refute scientific discoveries because the scientist just doesn't look trustworthy.