Quotes from Sarah Millican

There are no secrets. Everything gets mined for comedy.

When you look out at somewhere like Hammersmith Apollo and all those people have come just to see you on that night, it's overwhelming. You can't rest on your laurels. This tour's got to be better than the last one because I want people to come to the next one.

Forgive me but I've been tutted at in Paris a fair few times and I still don't know if it's because I was wearing Asda jeans or had the temerity to order food in a restaurant.

A place I've been a fair few times is the Lake District. It has the edge on Paris in that it's ace. It's the sort of place I show off to my Aussie mates like I made it or own it or something. I love that I know where to park, where there's a choice of 30 ice cream flavours, where you can fall asleep on the grass while your friends go for a walk.

Everything feels different on Christmas morning because there's nobody about. And if they are, then they're on a new bike.

You'd expect the third time you do Live at the Apollo to be easier, easier peasier, a doddle. Like riding a bike. Except I can't ride a bike so that analogy has always been lost on me.

I tell the audience bits of my rude life on stage so they don't mind telling me bits of theirs.

People always say that you shouldn't read reviews at all, or if you do then believe both the good and the bad ones. I just choose to believe the ones that think I'm brilliant. The ones that don't, well, I just don't bother with them.

I feel like it's my responsibility not to lose weight, to be honest. I'm a bright, successful woman who isn't stick-thin.

Food recommendations are a must, but be careful. A friend went to a cafe I'd suggested and got food poisoning.

We all need a big cushiony telly show to fall back on. Like the pair of slippers after you unexpectedly went Christmas shopping in your work shoes. Like the cup of tea when your deadlines are making you cry. Like the hug off someone who matters when it's cold and you wanted to look nice, not warm.

If you think how many female comics there are compared to how many male comics there are, I think there are quite a few female comics on the TV.

If I write a joke and it works, and it works consistently, that is gold to me.

At school I was the mousey one in the corner that nobody really liked.

I was shy at school, but not at home. We had a boiler that had tiles around it, so if my sister and I got new shoes we'd do a little tap dance on the tiles. I also wrote poems but would read them from behind a curtain.

And you can be in real danger of judging people based on their reactions to what you love. If I recommend 'Modern Family' to someone and they return saying it wasn't for them, I finish their sentence with 'cos I hate brilliantly written and hilarious sitcoms.'

My humour is a mix of my parents'. I get the chatty, anecdotal stuff from my dad and the filth from my mam, Valerie. She has a very dark sense of humour, I think from having grown up with disabilities. It's a coping mechanism. She had polio when she was eight and has been in a wheelchair for about 20 years.

It seemed wrong to look forward to watching a man cut his arm off, and especially weird having dined at a carvery before going to the cinema, but Danny Boyle's '127 Hours' didn't disappoint.

If an audience is watching you and you're a bloke - it's the same as if you're a woman. They're expecting the same: to be entertained.

Pretty much every comic that you see live is going to be slighter ruder, slightly darker and slightly more scary. But there are restrictions when you're on the telly. I'm not trying to rude it up for live. I just have to restrict myself on the telly.

There's so much to see and do in Austrailia, but a lot of it is outside so I've ben immersing myself in their telly.

I've just realised that I lean towards telly that features people of a similar age to me. That's a bit weird, isn't it? I watch soaps with casts of all ages because there are at least three or four people in my age band. Somehow it's fine if they're a murderer as long as they're not a young one.

I like to think that I listen to Classic FM while domestic goddessing and, truth be told, I often do, but you know sometimes classical music can get a bit hectic and I just want to turn all the violins right down. That's when I pop the telly on.

It's best, I think, to treat stand-up comedy on the telly like tapas: small tasters of something you'd love a proper plate of.