• What is the last thing you do before you go onstage (apart from check your flies and/or check your knickers aren't sticking out of your skirt and check for spinach between your teeth)? 

I generally pace up and down for the entire time I’m in the dressing room then I say a prayer to help get over nerves. It’s the step three prayer from AA and is something among the lines or ‘Release me from the bondage of self, so I may better do thy will’. It’s about forgetting the ego and serving the greater good. It really helps with nerves.

• What irritates you? 

Generally? Cyclists on tow paths. If I’m not on a towpath then anyone who walks really slowly in between tube stations when I’m in a rush and people eating on film. Actually people who eat and drink at the same time. And people snogging on public transport, yuk.

3. What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? 

Take a ton of drugs. It almost killed me so I guess that’s the most dangerous thing.

4. What is the most stupid thing you have ever done? 

Tried to jump into a plastic beer glass off a stool in the middle of a show. I gashed my chin, but you wouldn’t know by looking at it. Oh and once when I was working in a power station I picked up a socket for two leads that was lying in a small puddle. A loud band and sparks but luckily I wasn’t killed! I don’t have much common sense sometimes.

5. What has surprised you the most during your career in comedy? 

That I think I enjoy helping other people perform more than I enjoy performing myself. That said I perform because I have to; I have a compulsion to do it and am miserable if I don’t. 

I like to help other people I guess because I want to. It’s enjoyable, maybe because I don’t shoulder the responsibility.

Interview continues here.