I thought people would think I only wanted to be an actor because my dad was, rather than because I had an innate calling.

With acting, I always felt like I didn't have control of it. It was all about other people giving me a job.

I looked into studying psychoanalysis, wrote to the governing body and was about to start the year where they psychoanalyse you, four times a week, before you get to do it yourself. I just thought I'd taken the ventriloquism as far as I could. My act is so deconstructive, and I'd made all the monkey jokes anyone wanted to hear.

It's sad, the lottery. Good projects get funded by it, but there's an air of desperation about it.

I have always been more relaxed around comedy.

Part of being a mother - part of the comedy of it, anyway - is what happens to your body.

I made so many jokes about poor Russell Crowe, he once knocked on my dressing room door, and told me he wanted to go out on this chat show we were on to laugh with me. Now he's ruined it. I can't make another joke about him.

There used to be an art form called the 'comedy of manners.' Why aren't comedies of manners made now in this country? The answer is simple. We no longer have manners to speak of.