London is a great place to be over Christmas.

I used to live on a houseboat near Hammersmith Bridge.

As a young man, the temptation was to drink the minibar dry. I did all that - now I prefer to get outdoors.

I discovered I'm 60 per cent Viking. Well, more Danish, I suppose. I'm also two-and-a-half per cent Neanderthal.

My earliest memory is feeling soil between my fingers when I was around three years old.

I grew up in a little town between Bath and Bristol with my parents and grandparents in the same house. It was rural and idyllic.

People perceive me as this kind of hippy intellectual, reflecting and communing with nature or in a pyramid somewhere chanting. Really, no. I love speed, fast things, quad and road bikes, and bombing down a mountain.

Fatherhood made everything more straightforward. I was relieved that no longer did I have to agonise over what meaning I had in my life.

If you really push yourself you can perhaps achieve something you didn't think you could.

Comedy can be quite all consuming at times, and if you're not careful you end up doing a tour, then a DVD, then another tour then a DVD. Suddenly the years have just flown by.

Having a break from comedy is quite good.

The point with me is that it's always been, even with the stand-up, that the music has to be right. You have to take it seriously. You have to try and play it as faithfully as possible. That way it helps the comedy. Rather than just playing it in a silly way.

I'm an omnivore, although I am trying to eat less meat. I went vegetarian for about two years, then I suddenly got a craving one morning and that was it.

The two worst enemies of comedy are lack of sleep and not having had a decent meal.

I am pretty laid-back as a parent, but I do like a lot of activity. So I am constantly suggesting things to do that involve some physical activity: cycling, mountain biking and paddleboarding.

I love to watch birds and wildlife.

I get a lot of nutters in my audiences.

The Lib Dems are such terrible ditherers.

As a comedian and satirist you have to be neutral, because everyone's fair game. Once you show bias, you lose that.

Somehow the Tories have deflected the righteous anger at the bankers who we bailed out. The Tories manage to take that outrage and direct it at benefit claimants. It's genius. Evil genius.

My comedy comes from the actual music itself - they're observational musical gags. I could take the music away and it would just be some words.

I think people are quite refreshed with politicians who aren't concerned with what Arctic Monkeys track they like, but with the day-to-day, dull business of politics.

I have sold stuff door-to-door, but not doors.

There is something very poignant about plastic bags. These lonely plastic bags that gradually disintegrate.

When I was 15, I went to see the Stranglers at Bath Pavilion. I saw Jean-Jacques Burnel take off his bass and whack a skinhead over the head with it because he gave a Nazi salute. I thought: 'This is brilliant!'

In my twenties, I floated around for years, doing the odd theatre job but mainly leading a hedonistic lifestyle, getting intoxicated in plenty of different ways in plenty of different places.

As I get older, I have a very strong urge to know about stuff. I want to learn the names of trees and birds; that's the sort of knowledge I want to pass on to my son.

At yoga you get some sense of spiritual space so that people don't intrude. You can go there and close your eyes and no one will talk to you. People are too worried about not fainting to bother with some bloke who was on the telly.

Comedy should be fluid. It should be both Left and Right wing.

Comedy is an indoors thing, so I take every opportunity to go outside. A lot of that involves finding places that are remote, or places where you can look at birds, or do mountain biking or paddle boarding or walking.

One of the things I do really appreciate is that my audiences tend to be a wide range of ages and backgrounds, and I ascribe that to putting in the hours.

If I'm a national treasure, does that mean I'm like the Elgin Marbles and will get repatriated at some point?

The worst thing is when people try and take pictures surreptitiously. I always say, 'Look, you can ask me for a photograph. You will get a much better one than just the side of my face.' Sometimes they just run off. They can't cope.

All kinds of things have gone into my shows - cajun and rock bands, Bollywood, Kraftwerk tributes, effects and so on. As long as it services the comedy, everything is up for grabs.

I realised that the 'future' is different to how I imagined it. When I was a kid I thought it would be a bright, shiny Tomorrow's World. It isn't.

In a way, I wish none of it had ever happened - Facebook, Twitter - if it had never happened the world would have just carried on serenely. It's utterly redundant and yet we all have to be involved in it somehow.

My grandparents lived with us. And I remember watching 'Doctor Who' with my granddad on his new telly. These were the days before remote controls but my granddad, being quite a resourceful sort of chap, had fashioned his own remote control - which was a length of bamboo pole with a bit of cork that he'd glued on the end.

Paddle boarding: it's the closest you get to walking on water.

Normally, with stand-up, it's quite solitary, you write the material on your own, you perform it on your own, it's all very much on you. Your own thoughts. You have to sort of modulate your own performance.

For me, audio books was about when you can't actually physically get hold of a book, like when you're driving. It's a fantastic companion on a long journey.

I have anti-establishment hair.

My grandfather had strong opinions. He was an argumentative character and quite staunchly socialist.

My mother was a classic matriarchal figure. She'd sing round the house and always had music on.

I was an only child but I never longed for a sibling. It just didn't occur to me.

Family helps you make clearer choices about things. Your priorities become clearer. Your obligations become clearer, and that is something I welcome.

We are almost in a time beyond jokes, beyond satire. When the Trump era is called the 'post-truth' period, then this is the greatest joke of all, albeit quite depressing.

Doing comedy around the world is a way of finding out how people tick.

I did a show in this tiny town called Longyearbyen. We went snowmobiling around Svalbard and saw Arctic foxes, snow bunting, polar bear footprints and almost got lost in a blizzard.

Melbourne has great eateries and you can go birdwatching.

The Dutch do have a slightly odd sense of humour.