New Year's resolutions have always been something to beat myself up with by the second week of January. It seems perverse to set yourself up for failure right at the start of the year.

When I started doing stand-up, I resigned from my job as a maths teacher and, three days before I was due to leave, my dad passed away.

I loved stand-up, but I never thought you could do it as a job.

I used to do standup about footballers; they are easy targets because they are traditionally seen as stupid.

When I teach the formal curriculum, I have the chance to think about it ahead of time. I can rehearse it. I can illustrate it with self-deprecating humor and humble-sounding personal disclosure. I can try to make it comes out just right.

Toni Morrison was a big influence on my work since I was a teenager, what she did with English. I joke that I think she speaks 20 Englishes simultaneously, that she knows how to do that.

Certain shows, when it's all comedy, it's like when you eat something that's too sweet and it just tastes gross. You need that salted caramel.

I want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems to me that all of life has that.