Quotes from Johnny Vegas

I used to be good with kids, but as I get older, I'm grumpy and terrible with them. As for doing a gig at a 6-year old's birthday party, you couldn't pay me enough.

I think if you're at the point where you're popular enough to sell your wedding photos to OK! Magazine then you don't need the money.

I'm getting positive feedback for my acting so we'll see if any other interesting parts come up.

You can't be a proper comic unless you've been out on stage and felt the fear.

You always hear people saying, 'I hope I'm not turning into my dad', but I'd be honoured if I became half as decent a bloke as he is.

Oh, I'm terrible at travel.

My work's never been accepted by my family, but it's something I'll always carry on with.

I've spent lots of time in London, I studied in London, I like London. It's just not my home.

My first holiday to San Francisco in 1998-99 was supposed to be a two-week vacation but I ended up staying five weeks and nearly didn't come home.

I came back from university thinking I knew all about politics and racism, not knowing my dad had been one of the youngest-serving Labour councillors in the town and had refused to work in South Africa years ago because of the situation there. And he's never mentioned it - you just find out. That's a real man to me. A sleeping lion.

Comedy's so subjective, and if someone comes to watch, doesn't get it, doesn't find it funny, then fine.

I am a big fan of smelly cheeses but the rest of the family don't seem to be particularly keen on them.

I trained to be a priest - started to. I went to seminary school when I was 11. I wanted to be a priest, but when they told me I could never have sex, not even on my birthday, I changed my mind.

I've got too much respect for stand-ups to call myself one.

I love the way my weight fluctuates in the newspapers. It was 18 stone and then people look at a bad picture of me and add a few more stone on. I think the highest was 22 stone.

I think it sort of dawns on you that if you're not gigging constantly you're not actually relevant. You may be relevant to a different part of the media now, to television commissioners and editors, but to a young live-comedy audience you're not, really.

I sang 'American Pie' a lot in my stage set. It had a knack of uniting an audience in a sing-along. It's a clever song about American history but wrapped in a fantastic tune.

If you write, produce and direct, you own things and see them through to the end.

I wanted to try and trace the genuine origins of 'Johnny' and how he so successfully staged this takeover of 'Michael Pennington.' 'Johnny' is a contradiction to who I am as a person. I'm not very good at confrontation, I have a tendency to internalise and to carry things around.

I don't want to demonise 'Johnny.' I was really proud of what he achieved. Especially within stand-up. He was quite a unique voice. I will always possibly be trading off 'Johnny's name, but there's a lot more things that I'm able to do now - the strengths that 'Michael' can bring to it.

I also want to return to doing stand-up. I've become frightened of live audiences. This is a really telling sign that I need to go back on the comedy circuit again.

From a certain age, I sort of accepted myself for what I was. And although to other people it was like nothing ever goes right, I had a really nice attitude that I'd inherited from my parents, and especially from my dad.

I was loved as a kid; I was raised with more love and emotional support than most folks could wish for my memories aged nought to ten are all bound up together in a mesh of innocence and fun.

Being 'Johnny' was almost like an out of body experience. I thought he was just a character that I'd created and could quite easily step away from, but it was much more difficult than that.