Jimmy Carr

I love those people who do story-telling and who ramble on, but I don't do that, I tell jokes - the sort of jokes that anyone really could tell in the pub.

When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis.
No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.

But what's true about comedians is that we've all got a huge hole in our personality. In a room of 3,000 people, we're the one person facing in the opposite direction - yet we have this overwhelming desire to be liked.

So they've laughed and then they've thought, should we have laughed at that? Well, too late now. You did. I imagine I get more than my fair share of that.

I'm a stand-up. And no one on the circuit's terribly impressed if you're on TV. I suppose I've stolen my ethos from Jay Leno. You can do all the TV in the world, but that's a team game, and anyone can be dropped from the squad. And if you haven't gigged in a while, you're not firing, you're not match fit. So I try and do it whenever I can.

The highest terrorist threat level, as we all know, is “I don't care if this does look racist, I'm getting off the bus... That backpack is huge and he doesn't need to be saying his prayers.”

As head of the Catholic church, Pope Benedict is the boss of every Catholic priest in the world, he's effectively king of the pedos.

I immediately adored performing. It really empowers you when everyone's laughing. It gives you an immense buzz. You just feel on top of the world.

I think that comedians, more than any other type of celebrity, have to keep their humour and keep their feet on the ground. If they start taking themselves too seriously, they're heading for a fall.

I literally can't believe my luck. Torturing Americans should not only be easy, but a pleasure!

I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.

Jokes spread around the world and embed themselves in our shared culture; the most resonant of them get lodged in the language in the same way as clichés or old wives' tales do.

To me, my approach is the most sensible. You're a comic. Therefore you want to get laughs. How do you get the most laughs in an hour? Tell short jokes. And don't say boom boom at the end. Just let the audience laugh then tell another joke. It's the shortest route to where you want to go.

The great thing about being a comedian is that it kind of doesn't matter how you look. It's actually a disadvantage to be too good-looking. There's a Darwinian advantage to being funny. If you're a good-looking fella, you can't be bothered to make up jokes.

As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing.