In 1987, I was in Edinburgh doing my first one-man show. I took part in a kickabout with some fellow comedians and tripped over my trousers and heard this cracking sound in my leg. A couple of days later I went into a coma and was diagnosed with a pu...
As you get older as a comedian and keep doing it, what you actually start to cherish on stage is not the build-up to the jokes, but how comfortable you can be in the silence and the non-laughing parts, and how long you can take the audience without a...
Over the years, I've realized that I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian. I'm in an odd world where I make things and share them with people.
I have late onset ADHD. I take on too much and end up spinning plates, but it's entertaining, and it helps you make quick connections if you're a comedian, if you have a brain that can dance around too much.
When I was a teenager, I met a comedian who I admired, and he was very rude to me. That's why when people come up to me I try not to be rude. I don't want to name who he is, but it really put me off watching his stuff since.
The feeling of being an outsider was a big part of my childhood. I think that helps comedians. That feeling of being an outsider. That desire for a perspective that's all your own. The idea for me to make stuff myself with my own meaning came from th...
At comedy festivals, we always get grouped with other musical comedians, so you can get to know them and see what everyone is doing. it's really fun and awesome that we're the only girls, because we can tackle issues that guys can't sing about.
People expect comedy from me but I am not just a stand-up comedian anymore. I act on stage, host 'Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa' and also conduct interviews on my show. I have grown as a person and an artiste.
I guess I still feel that I'm a comedian; if I had to pick one thing that I feel like I could do, it would be that. That doesn't mean that I like it, but I feel that's what I am.
I would be so mad if I saw something called a memoir, and then it was Mike Birbiglia. It would be so infuriating. It's like, 'Who is this guy, and why does he have a memoir?' David Letterman could write a memoir. Joan Rivers could. I'm just a nobody....
I don't have a fear factor. Well, not much of one. And I'm willing to risk quite a lot - as a comedian, you're always risking a lot. You're risking failure, especially if you're improvising and going on TV shows trying to make comedy out of thin air....
Racial humor was about 35% of my act when I first started. But I realized that it was a crutch. What brought it home was when another comedian said to me, 'If you changed color tomorrow, you wouldn't have any material.' He meant it as a put-down, but...
When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.
I'm all about showing people that I'm a little messed up, I have a lot of the same problems you have. By exposing myself and putting myself out there, people can relate to me and my act won't grow stale. I mean, nobody wants to hear a comedian say, '...
I had a lot of bad jobs but the one big internship I had is I interned for 'SNL' when I was 21 years old and that was the joke. You intern there and you think man, I'm going to be with the writers and the great comedians. Then you're getting everybod...
I know that it's probably not a good idea for a comedian, especially a satirist, to support a public policy group or a politician. This is something I learned only too well years ago when I did a fundraiser for Pol Pot. A few years later I saw 'The K...
I owe my whole acting career to the fact that I'm a singer. I went out to Los Angeles and auditioned for a TV show called 'Fame L.A.' The original role was for a comedian, but they said I wasn't very funny, so they asked me, 'What else can you do?' S...
When we go to see comedians or funny movies, they don't address the wall behind them; they face us. This is why a game's first job is to entertain through gameplay and secondarily through humor, drama, or other traditional entertainment devices. The ...
I pushed against doing a podcast for so long. I'm a very late comer to the podcast game. But you're responsibility as a comedian is to get your viewpoints out into the world, and we have a lot more avenues to do that. So it's a lot more opportunity, ...
I was influenced by a lot of stand-up comedians... Eddie Murphy back when he was doing 'Raw.' I watched that so many times as a kid, I can probably still quote the entire thing to this day. Chris Rock. Dave Chappelle. George Carlin. A lot of the guys...
[last lines] Jack Walsh: You wouldn't happen to have change of a thousand, would ya? Cab Driver: What are you, a comedian? Get out of here, ya bum! Jack Walsh: Well, looks like I'm walkin'.
