Quotes from Julian Barratt

My dad wanted to be a musician, so when I started playing guitar, he was like, 'Go for it.' That is what I did for ages; I was in bands. And then I went to university and got into comedy somehow.

Not really a good idea to eat things fans have made because you don't know what state of mind they were in when they made them.

I'm not very funny at all in real life.

I was going to be a jazz-fusion guitarist. I came to London at one point with my mate, and we were going to make it. We spent three days there and went back home to our mummies.

I like the countryside. I like chopping wood. I'd like to be a carpenter.

Me and Noel went to HBO once and pitched this really ludicrous idea about us driving around in a haunted car, and they just stared at us. Literally stared at us! It was awful. Luckily, we were together, so we could laugh about it, but if we were on our own, it would have been one of the worst moments ever.

It's a weird profession, as I don't really consider myself an actor. I did at one point, and I went and started doing auditions, and I was so useless at them and so demoralised by doing audition after audition and not getting them and also not being able to take it in my stride at all. I just felt crushed and worthless.

If you come away from a show thinking of an image, that's as good as remembering a joke. A lot of those shows, like 'The Office,' they are brilliant, but they're not visually interesting.

It's not immediately categorisable. I don't know what to say when anyone asks what the 'Boosh' is.

When things start running a bit too well on the tracks, I tend to derail them if I can.

I could say I'm a writer or that I'm a musician but I don't really do music; I do music to go with things I'm developing. Then I do act in a few things, but I'm not really an actor. I'm not a comedian, but I am known for comedy. I just don't know. I feel like I'm a slightly interdisciplinary jack of all trades.

I've done interviews in the past where, apparently, I didn't give the journalist any eye contact. I'm a bit shy, yes. I've thought about refusing to do any press at all.

We're so insecure, comedians. 'Did you laugh? Do you think I was funny?'

People can see that we are part of a tradition of absurd comedy, stretching from Spike Milligan and Peter Cook through to Monty Python and Vic Reeves. We're not like Ricky Gervais's hyper-real cringe comedy. We're at the other end of the scale, but there's room for the sillier stuff, too.

I write tragedies and things when I'm alone. Chekhovian dramas.

I want to do things or write things that make people feel a bit more beautiful or tragic or something because there are so many other things than just funny.

I liked horror and comedy, basically, from a young age, but I just ended up getting into comedy because there was - I could do stand-up comedy, and that was my way into this business, and then there was no stand-up horror, and I didn't know how to get into that world.

I can't do jokes. I've always come from left field and tried to subvert conventional comedy. I started as a rebellion against that - albeit a very soft and surreal rebellion. It's escapist.

Performers often can be quite socially inept, you know? And even great comedians are like that.

I was in a band called Groove Solution. Because there was a groove crisis, and we solved it.

I always dreamt of being in 'Kerrang.' That was my ambition. I read that religiously when I was into heavy metal. Then the jazz magazines took over.

I can act with either eye, but you've got to be twice as good as an actor to act with one eye. You need to put all your emotions just through one eye and really punch it out of that eye. I found it quite difficult to do at first, and then I found a technique that allowed me to act with one eye, which I patented.

We just thought of 'Boosh' as an extension of our childhoods in a way, the stuff we had grown up on and loved: 'Monty Python,' The Goodies, Frank Zappa. It spoke to a certain type of person, and we just carried on doing it.

I remember films I made at university, which are unbelievably pretentious. Poetry that I'd written that I delivered to camera, against a Venetian blind, strong shadows, looking slightly off-camera.