Much as I respect Russell Brand's point of view, I'm in the opposite camp to him about voting. I think it's enormously important to engage with the electoral process.

L.A.'s hippies are actually quite scary - more like Hell's Angels than the Haight-Ashbury hippies of San Francisco.

I go back to L.A. as often as I can, and even if I'm there on business, I always add on a few extra days for pleasure.

Initially, the best thing about being in L.A. was the girls - they loved me. It was like being a pop star.

My enthusiasm for L.A. stems from my father, who was a lecturer in American literature at the University of Birmingham. Through his work, our family did several house swaps with L.A. families. It was a dreadfully daring thing to do in the early 1980s; there was no Internet, so you had no idea of what you were getting into.

You meet every different kind of possible person from different ethnic and cultural background, and after you while, you realise it's all just people, isn't it?

I did a very stupid diet where you have three food groups, and you never eat them together. It's so bloody tedious; I'm losing the will to live just describing it. I managed to stay very thin because you spent your life wandering around starving hungry looking for a chickpea to go with a chicken leg.

I'm not a 'suffer in silence' type; I'm a 'let's throw money at the problem' type - I've done reflexology, reiki, psychotherapy, counselling. I've never actually had analysis, but I'd like to try that sometime.

I've been going bald since I was about 17. I'm still hanging on to my hair for dear life, but I do sometimes wonder - should I get a wig?

I used to fantasise about being able to stay up all night; now I fantasise about how early I can go to bed. Tragic isn't it?

Children basically need one thing: to be played with.

I very much wanted the perfect nuclear family, and I came from the perfect nuclear family, but like so many people, that isn't the way things have worked out.

For my mother, everything stands in relation to her Welshness; the fact she married an Englishman seems to be something of an issue. She's kind of anti-English... anti-imperialist.

My father was always clowning around. It was a huge influence on me. In my family, everything is turned into a joke.

This is a shameful thing to say, but I've never really got that 'grown-up' mind-set. I have to buy forks? Why?

I'm really spectacularly thick in all areas of my life except comedy and science. I'm crap at everything else.

I've turned down all sorts of good things accidentally, too. I read the script for 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind' and thought, 'This makes no sense.' Then I went to the cinema to see it. Well, what an idiot.

Comedy is my proper job. It's what I should be doing, and when I do other bits like my science series, I miss it.

Bob Dylan - I will listen to any of his songs over and over.

Every meal is so important and colours the rest of your day - my whole day can go into a spin if I make the wrong choice at lunchtime!

Actually I don't mind the gym when I get there, but I hate the psychological battle I have to go through to get there.

I studied physics at university, and I'm still a sucker for an experiment or scientific theory.

I'm always a bit wary when people say in interviews, 'I'm at the happiest place of my life that I've ever been.' I think, 'Really? Are you?' Life is a mix, isn't it?

More than anything, I enjoy making people laugh.