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I'd done an Edinburgh show before, in 1981, called 'The Importance of Being Varnished' - I was in the pun trade at the time.
When I did 'Bremner, Bird and Fortune' I think it was accepted that comedians can contest the arguments just as well as journalists.
To get to do a West End play is once in a lifetime chance.
I used to do my Nelson Mandela voice to blag restaurant tables in Cape Town. It rarely worked. Now what a great city that is.
I like the idea of people coming to opera for the first time and finding it an enjoyable experience. I don't like the fact that opera is seen as elitist and all black ties and that stuff.
I am more relaxed at home in Scotland, and my children are of an age where I want us, as a family, to spend more time up here.
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.
I wish my father had lived longer. He died when I was 18.
Now I'm instantly nervous about the demands of doing a weekly column.
It's harder to take politics seriously, to understand the issues, than it is to drown it all in a sea of scorn. And while the world cries out for greater analysis and insight, we are distracted by bread and circuses, aka the 'Great British Bake-Off' and 'Tumble.' We should rediscover our tradition of satire. Of speaking truth unto power.
A lot of what I do - I have to try and make sense of things before I can make nonsense of them.
One of my greatest sadnesses at the prospective break-up of the Union is that it will set English, Welsh and Northern Irish against Scots in a bitter division of the debts and resources of the whole of the U.K.
When I think back to my childhood, it's with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment. I was always forgetting things. My mum called me scatty because I could never sit still. But there was no sense I was suffering from a medical condition as such.
I am proud of Edinburgh's status as a financial centre, but where is it on the index of global financial centres? Sixty-fourth. Below Hamilton, Casablanca and Mauritius. London, by contrast, is second only to New York. That's a link worth keeping.
I remember when Tony Blair came into office, and there was a sense I was thinking, 'Well, what on Earth am I going to do now?' until I realized that's exactly what he was thinking.
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
Most Scots might be able to identify six vegetables - but only two MSPs. There are parts of Scotland where you rarely get more than 40% turnout at the polls. There's a big disconnect there, and I think comedians bridge that gap.
I love anywhere new and different. That's the fun of travel. I've always loved driving through Spain, France and Italy - sometimes in an Alfa Spider.
Scotland needs comedy more than ever. With the independence debate, finally after 300 years, reaching room temperature.
I don't think my life would be significantly poorer if I don't impersonate Nick Clegg. Life is short enough without sitting up night after night listening to tapes of him.
I've never felt entirely comfortable in high society. I'm more comfortable talking to the bar staff than the super-rich. I don't really get what makes them tick.
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