“You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said ‘Parking Fine.’ So that was nice.”
“So I said to the gym instructor: ‘Can you teach me to do the splits?’ He said: ‘How flexible are you?’ I said: I can’t make Tuesdays.’”
“For one thing, I don’t pun excessively in real life.”
“People ask ‘do you make a conscious effort not to swear?’ – if you’re doing silly stuff you’re not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.”
“Black beauty – he’s a dark horse.”
“I sit in places like Costa Coffee in Banstead and write rubbish. I need a deadline. I think about the 44 tour dates and keep imagining standing in front of all these people. Then every day I write 15 jokes minimum.”
“People think that because of my act that I must have a really busy mind and I must be driven. I really am not. I quite like going outside and looking at spiders on a hedge in my garden and stuff.”
“Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It’s either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother, Colin. Or my younger brother, Ho-Chan-Chu. But I think it’s Colin.”
“Now, most dentist’s chairs go up and down, don’t they? The one I was in went back and forwards. I thought ‘This is unusual’. And the dentist said to me ‘Mr Vine, get out of the filing cabinet.”
“I went out on a date with Simile. I don’t know what I metaphor.”
“Velcro: what a rip-off.”
“I was at sea the other day and loads of meat floated past. It was a bit choppy.”
“So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me ‘Can you give me a lift?’ I said ‘Sure, you look great, the world’s your oyster, go for it.’”
“So I got home, and the phone was ringing. I picked it up, and said ‘Who’s speaking please?’ And a voice said ‘You are.’”
“So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said ‘Is that the local swimming baths?’ He said ‘It depends where you’re calling from.’”
“So I rang up a local building firm, I said ‘I want a skip outside my house.’ He said ‘I’m not stopping you.’”
“I was reading a book… ‘the history of glue’ – I couldn’t put it down.”
“Now you know those trick candles that you blow out and a couple of seconds.”
“You see I’m against hunting, in fact I’m a hunt saboteur. I go out the night before and shoot the fox.”
“So I went to the Chinese restaurant and this duck came up to me with a red.”
“I’ll tell you what I love doing more than anything: trying to pack myself in a small suitcase. I can hardly contain myself.”
“I’ve just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I’ll tell you what, never again.”
“My house is a bit like a teenager’s bedroom. The kind of pictures you have hanging up on your wall say a lot about you. I’ve got ones of Evel Knievel, Elvis and Starsky and Hutch, signed by David Soul.”
“With silly stuff, it’s seventy-five percent confidence. I always tell people that it’s because I’m nervous about getting that next laugh and I need to hear it. I always want to condense a joke.”
“I love acting, but it’s all just a bonus.”
“If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn’t really count as narrative.”
“One of the things I like about when I tour sometimes is that occasionally you’ll see a dad there with his 12-year-old son and they’re both enjoying it.”
“Comedy covers such a wide range of different styles that I’m not really qualified to talk on all of them any more than anyone else is.”
“I’m not someone who gets to play The O2 and places like that, but that’s the kind of rock and roll venue. The popularity of stand-up means that some people are getting to play rock star venues.”
“My DVD cellophane was put on by a psychiatrist. It was shrink-wrapped.”
“If you compulsively pun you are called a paronomasiac.”
“As you get older you’re told to be sensible, but it’s important for writing if you’re a comic that you’re able to still access that childlike thing.”
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