Quotes from Lee Mack

In British sitcoms, you can get five minutes of nothing before the story starts.

I could have done a night at the O2 in London, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm not being big-headed, but for my act I can't be talking to an audience of 12,000 people. There's no intimacy.

When I tell a joke, I don't think about who's listening to it. I tell the jokes I think are funny.

Don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusions, I've got a very old-school, mainstream leaning to the way I present my comedy because I actually like jokes and don't just do observational stuff.

Going on stage is a performance, it's an act; you're playing a version of yourself. I don't give it a lot of thought. I clock on, I tell jokes, I clock off again.

I'm terrified of flying and have tried everything from prescription drugs to booze and herbal remedies. The only thing that works is Valium. I don't know why I'm so frightened - I think it's from seeing my mum freak out when I was young.

I'd been travelling in Romania. It was 1990, just after the revolution and you couldn't buy anything so we'd been eating basic food. We went to McDonald's and, I'm ashamed to say, it was wonderful. I hate McDonald's normally.

I don't look at comedy as a sliding scale of offensiveness.

Now and again I'll bump into people and say, 'I'm a big fan of yours. Would you like to be in my sitcom?' And they say, 'Oh yes,' but when it comes to the booking, they don't want to do it.

I know comedians who go on weird day trips in order to have random experiences they can talk about. They'll go on their own to Thorpe Park waiting for something hilarious to happen. That's really sad.

Telling lies is the easy bit, but telling the truth and pretending you are lying is hard.

From the age of 14, I remember thinking I wanted to be a comedian. But that was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut. It felt like a million miles away, something I could never do, but would be great to.

In TV, you get driven to work in a luxury car, and find flowers in your dressing room. Then suddenly you're on tour, drying your hair backstage on plastic curtains.

I feel that I'm a stand-up comedian more than anything else, that's my job.

The default position now is that comedians do Twitter but I don't know why. Every bad story you see about a comedian has a connection to Twitter.

I came to London with a girl. We lived together and split up very quickly. I was on my own in London so started going to comedy clubs.

My first recollection of performing was shortly after my parents split up, so the logical conclusion to draw is that that affected me.

When I was 24, I went back to the academic life and did a degree in film and television at Brunel University.

I don't know the statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a disproportionate number of comics come from broken homes.

I love buying things I wouldn't normally buy, especially cigars.

I used to tell people I was a comic and they'd be fascinated. Now all you get is: 'Oh yeah, my cousin Steve's a comic.'

I remember being captivated by Steve Coogan and Eddie Izzard and wanting to do what they did. That generation of comedians was my main influence.

The truth is that I don't really understand the concept of having an old-fashioned sense of humour, because to me fashion is about clothes not comedy.

Neck-down comedy was no longer valid after the 1980s alternative comedy revolution. Everything became about the cerebral. And with that came positive things - it helped get rid of some of the sexism and homophobia - but it also meant a lot of physical comedy was lost.