Tim Vine

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.

You see I'm against hunting, in fact I'm a hunt saboteur. I go out the night before and shoot the fox.

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

With silly stuff, it's seventy-five percent confidence. I always tell people that it's because I'm nervous about getting that next laugh and I need to hear it. I always want to condense a joke.

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.

If you compulsively pun you are called a paronomasiac.

My DVD cellophane was put on by a psychiatrist. It was shrink-wrapped.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.'

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.

Black beauty - he's a dark horse.

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.

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.

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

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

So I rang up a local building firm, I said 'I want a skip outside my house.' He said 'I'm not stopping you.'