Quotes

I was quite a shy boy. Growing up in Middlesbrough, I felt a bit of an outsider. My three elder brothers are funny and boisterous and I was in awe of them. I felt like an appendage. It's probably the curse of being a younger kid. I've seen some become the loudest because they fight for their place, and others retreat to the fringes. I was in the latter group.

I hate conflict. I'm good at avoiding it. Being in a family with four boys, you learn give and take - when to say something, when not to say something, how to keep things harmonious. I did what I was told. I should've been in the army. That would've suited me fine, being told what to do.

I'm comfortable with getting older. I try not to look in the mirror. I try so hard, but you get occasional side glimpses, and it hurts.

I'd like to be remembered as somebody some people found quite funny, but I've no great expectations. I hope, in the future, my sons say: 'He was a good bloke. He was a good dad.' That's hard to pull off, isn't it? That would be an achievement.

I once accidentally set fire, with a sparkler, to a box of fireworks and threw them from the living room into Mum's kitchen. They scorched the Formica and the lino, so I got down on my hands and knees, crying, and cleaned the marks with a Brillo pad, then half an hour later walked back into the living room, which was ablaze. You'd think you'd get a right rollicking from Mum for burning the house down, but it was too desperate a situation and her priority was not to shout at me at all.

I can't remember ever cooking food to impress a woman. The idea's quite cheesy and sort of makes my skin crawl. But I sometimes make a special effort to impress my cats, with chicken liver or something. It's tricky to know if a cat's impressed. They might give me a little look, a glimpse at least. That's cat ownership for you.

Going on stage and being in the public eye ended my shyness for the very practical reason that people now come up to me and talk. It took away that frightening step of approaching a stranger. You realise people aren't a threat.

I always put prunes in my salads. Or pears, water chestnuts, celery. Those sorts of stringy foods. I'm not trying to be scientific, but I've been told by the experts who look after me that the body uses bad cholesterol to digest that stuff. Then you shoot out your bad cholesterol, basically. Happy days.

I love being in the car on my own on a long journey. I listen to crime podcasts... What does make me sad is that I don't really listen to music in the car any more. And I used to love that, because music is so much more worthwhile. The other good thing about driving is the car meat. The king of car meats is, of course, the pork pie. However, the one I eat the most is the Scotch egg. The Scotch egg is very vehicle-friendly.

Paul Whitehouse is actually my current outdoors hero. I had no idea he had such a deep knowledge of the countryside and the animals and plants in it. When he was a boy, he'd forged a real bond with his dad down the riverbanks in Wales and the Home Counties. You can't really be in love with fishing without understanding everything around it. I've learnt so much from Paul and he's been very patient teaching me about the fragile ecosystem.

[on fishing with friend Paul Whitehouse] I'll set off with no food at all, but on the way down I'll pick up my pocket meats - scotch egg, sausage roll - and a lump of cheese. All the things I'm not meant to eat in my pocket to nibble during the day. Nicolas Roeg said 'You can get away, but you can't get away from yourself', but I can look at my watch, expecting half an hour has passed and realise it's been hours and I certainly think in those hours I've got away from myself.

When I went fishing with mates as a kid I'd usually have strawberry jam or banana sandwiches on Mother's Pride with sugar sprinkled all over. At one point I was putting 17 sugars in my tea. I know it's unbelievable and I do wonder sometimes what my mum was thinking to allow it. The weirdest thing was that if I had 18 teaspoons it was too sweet. I suppose if I was trying to analyse it, losing my dad was more upsetting than I would have realised, yet I got quite a kick out of sugar.

In my kitchen is an old-fashioned sweet jar with a cow's heart in it with an arrow through it. It was given to me as a gift after my operation. The blood red of a heart and the chrome silver of the arrow are a useful reminder of the damage you could do to your heart in a kitchen.

Meeting Jim [Moir, aka Vic Reeves] changed everything. It's like part two of my life started the day I walked into a room above the pub where he was performing. He took me under his wing.

I love being a dad but it doesn't half have you tearing your hair out. There's this whole myth about how children are born and you fall instantly in love with them and everyone lives happily ever after. That just isn't true. It took me a long time to get used to it. When my first arrived I looked at him and expected to go all gooey. I didn't. It took ages for me to fall in love with him. And the stress. The responsibility. I quite understand why some people throw their babies out the window.

I used to be a Marxist anarchist. Now I'm sending my kids to private school. How's that for letting your principles go?

The simple fact is that you don't know how long this career will last so you have to make the money while you can. You think, 'Well, that's the loft extension sorted. Now for the school fees...'

You can go two ways after heart surgery, you can either get scared and just shrink onto your sofa and keep yourself safe, or you can engage with life again. I think I was probably in danger of taking the first option. Paul Whitehouse just kept asking me, 'Come on, let's go fishing.' [He] kept asking, until eventually I did go fishing with Paul and I absolutely adored it. I discovered something that I'd lost from when I was young: just a purposeless day, with a friend just chewing the fat.

When I was about 13, I went to see this band called Free, who I'd never heard, and I just fell in love with them. I found my heroes. I stood at the front with my chin on the stage.

[on the influence of Shooting Stars (1993) on other television shows] Talking about it seems slightly bitter, but it's a good thing when you see it done. You see a 'Celebrity Juice' and you go, 'Oh... it's the thing we did!' Even a show like 'QI' - which is so far away from 'Shooting Stars' in many ways - you see them with wacky noises and silly buzzers. 'Shooting Stars' changed panel shows a bit for ever, I think.

I was interviewing a doctor the other day and he was explaining that a lot of the time the NHS is just repairing the damage done by a bad diet. And he said the one thing that frustrates him more than anything else is processed meats. According to the World Health Organization, officially processed meats cause you cancer. And as he was sitting there saying this to me, I was aware that I had a Peperami in my pocket

[on the 1990s] It was great fun. I wouldn't want to go back there now. But there was something in the air and we felt at the centre of something, you know? And it's an ego thing, really. You would sit there with Damien [Hirst] and with Blur or whoever's about, thinking, 'We're right in the middle of things here.' But it was just acting like an adolescent really.

I think it was my appearances on Would I Lie to You? (2007) that were so important for me because... to say I found my voice would be the wrong thing, but I found a little bit of confidence... I did OK on 'Would I Lie To You?' just on my tod. And that gave me more confidence than you would think. And people might say, 'What, an appearance on a panel show changed things?' But it did for me.