Greg Davies

Humour is learned behaviour, and I know exactly why I learned to be funny. I did it from a very early age. My dad was a hilarious man, and the way we interacted was being silly together. It was a way to hold his attention.

One day I woke up, had an early mid-life crisis, and decided it all had to change. I went and did Logan Murray's comedy course for 11 weeks and then started sneakily doing open-spot gigs, and that was it.

When you're trying to enter something as intimidating as comedy, starting out with a support network of likeminded people is a powerful thing. It was natural we'd end up working together because we went through those first petrifying moments together. We created gigs for each other, slapped each other on the back, and protected each other.

I got to the stage where I physically couldn't carry on unless I gave comedy a go: it was necessity.

I try and make myself or consenting people I am very close to the victims of my comedy. I don't enjoy bullying masquerading as comedy.

Comedy brings out this rage in people: they get furious when they don't like something. I have some lovely hardcore fans.

I came into comedy to make people laugh. If the fact that I can't stop eating Hobnobs in any way helps, I'm happy to celebrate that.

Every time I travel, I'm in a rage until I reach my destination. I find myself shouting at suitcases, as if it's their fault that I'm an inefficient packer. I've also learnt that whenever you despair of humanity and start thinking that you hate people - as I frequently do - you only have to travel to realise that people are basically all right.

I rather like finding out instantly whether you've been successful or not. It's a cliche, really, but the fact is that every gig is different: it's a live event, and you're with a different group of individuals every night.

I have no desire to work my adrenal glands any harder than necessary. I like lazing around; it's pretty important to my well-being. But I also get bored, so that's when my culture-vulturing kicks in.

I tend to develop my rambling anecdotes by actually getting up and performing them. That's the joy/horror of stand up - if you have the germ of an idea that you think might be funny, there is a way of finding out if it's funny very quickly.

As anyone who's done any acting will tell you, if you haven't got a malicious evil streak, it's such a joy to let one out.