Calgary wins for my coldest New Year's Eve gig. That's when I learned Fahrenheit and Celsius cross at 40 below. I could see callers' breath coming out of my phone.

When I was growing up in comedy, there were maybe 10 comics in the whole country. Everyone had a day job. You worked free for years in little clubs, then you got your big break and became a star.

I don't categorize myself. I don't think I'm perceived as a female act by my audience. My fans include just as many men as women.

My fashion philosophy is, if you're not covered in dog hair, your life is empty.

It's successful, middle-class Arab men and women, professionals with seemingly happy family lives, who are prepared to go to paradise for a greater cause. That's terrifying.

I tend to deal with characters who are sort of at that same point of wrestling with, 'Who am I going to be as an adult? What do I believe? How am I defining myself in the context of my culture and my peer groups, my family?'

No mother, or father, should despair over whether or not they can afford - or access - the health care their child needs.

I meet people from really grand backgrounds who had horrible parents who took no interest in them, whereas I'm a working-class boy from Deptford who was worshipped by all my rellies. Everybody in my extended family helped to raise me, and I realise now how lucky I was to grow up among kind folk.