"I remember once having to stop performing when I thought an elderly man a few rows back from the front was actually going to die because he was laughing so hard."

"There is a lot of rubbish written about toilet humour - people saying it is childish and pretending it is beneath them - but there is no doubting the effectiveness of a really good willy gag."

"I'm waiting for the time when I fail - because we all fail - and I'm ready, I'll take up carpentry."

"Even though we work in the same field, we have an intense private life away from our professional lives."

"I watch things that are fun, or funny, or interesting."

"Since it's based on my parents, it's more emotionally close to me than some of my more surreal plays. And then I like the balance of the comic and the sad. It should play as funny, but you should care about the characters and feel sad for them."

"A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities."

"As a five-year-old in Berlin in 1965, I didn't know that funny women existed. It wasn't until I got back to England that I realised women could be funny."