The jokes are great but what really matters for a comedian is his performance, his whole attitude, and the laughs that he gets between the jokes rather than on top of the jokes.

The good thing about 'Have I Got News For You' is it's a compact show but it still gives everyone space to breathe, and everyone always gets a chance to say something if they want to. It's a very difficult show to dominate, and guests who come on and dominate always fall foul.

If I'm pushed, I'd also have to admit I don't like people with allergies. They just annoy me. There seems to be something far too self-centred about it. 'No thanks, I'm allergic.' Why not just say 'No thanks'? I wasn't asking for your medical history, I was just passing around the nuts. Trying to be friendly, that's all.

In particular, I found praying very disturbing, like swimming with bricks tied to your feet. And yet I was drawn to it constantly.

Over the years, I learned that in my career, unlike in life, sometimes my wheelchair is its own automatic door opener. I was able to win the OWN competition by applying one simple principle: be funny, and admit you suck before anyone else can call you out on it. In other words, make the narrative of your failure a comedy.

I'm not an impressionist, per se, but if you do any kind of comedy - and they ask you to do that, most of the time - there's some degree of appreciation, I think, involving somebody you like.

Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don't laugh, that's funny.

Reactionary conservatives are smiling through the racial apocalypse. To them, race baiting is a joke, as 'humorist' Rush Limbaugh will tell you when he's calling Mexicans 'stupid.' Or it's a matter of semantics when they claim that Sonia Sotomayor is a 'racialist' which, far as I can tell, is the smooth jazz version of being a racist.