I was asked to do an ad campaign for a supermarket once. I was baffled. It's strange when you realise your popularity or reputation is a marketable commodity; it's a stock, a currency.
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.
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.
I had this plan that David Byrne was going to come through the West Country one day, think, 'Who's that guy?' and ask me to go on tour with them.
You have to have a thick skin, yes. If you're going to do something as foolhardy as standup, you've got to be able to take it on the chin if someone has a go at you.
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.
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.
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.
Twenty-two years I've been doing this comedy lark, so it's been like a meteoric rise to fame... if the meteor was being dragged by an arthritic donkey across a ploughed field, in northern Poland.
I play the piano and that's how I learned about music. I then taught myself the guitar, drums, percussion and various other things, such as the bazooka, the mandolin, the Theremin, the alpine horn, the didgeridoo.
If I'm a national treasure, does that mean I'm like the Elgin Marbles and will get repatriated at some point?
Now, with the success of musical comedy like the Mighty Boosh, Flight of the Conchords and Bo Burnham, I feel vindicated.
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.
Paddle boarding: it's the closest you get to walking on water.
When you're a birder, you have all sorts of reference books, and you know about migratory patterns and technical stuff. Most people just look out the window, and say 'is that a pigeon?'
If you become famous but haven't actually achieved anything, then your life has no real meaning - unless you're spectacularly shallow.
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.
At school, I was bored with the teachers, and there were moments where I felt they were singling me out.
When I was in Cardiff, playing with the National Orchestra of Wales, they said they get letters from people complaining if they're smiling during the concert. Nuts, isn't it? As if you have to respect the solemnity of the music by not smiling. Music is this joyful thing that enriches our lives, and you're not supposed to smile?
When the sun shines in Britain there's no finer place on Earth.
