JULIA DAVIS

That is one thing I really hate about working in TV - you have to shape episodes to exact time-lengths, do like 22 minutes, and it is just so against what you are making.

I do use a laptop, but I'm very technophobic. I've never downloaded anything. I've never bought anything on Amazon. I'm really ridiculous. I don't know what it is.

If I can laugh with people, it makes me feel safe with them. If I feel someone has no sense of humour, I find it really scary. I do it with the kids as well: put on stupid voices to lighten up the spirit or gee them along to do something.

My dad was a civil servant, and my mum was a secretary.

My desktop is really chaotic, and I'm always trying to work out where I am going to put all these ideas.

I was brought up in Guildford, and I think I used to absorb all the suburban things - seeing coffee mornings, women talking... that stuff, really. I was watching Alan Ayckbourn on some documentary, and he was talking about how he was around a lot of women as a child, listening to all that stuff.

I sometimes write in a cafe down the road from my house now because I feel guilty trying to work if I can hear them playing. I invariably end up sat in a corner, depressed, retreating into my own world.

The main thing is to believe writers know what their voices are, and if they are left alone, they will come through with something. There are a load of brilliant U.S. comedies: at the moment, I'm loving 'Girls.' People say the U.S. is more conservative; I think, actually, it is a bit looser here, but trends change.

If I claim I'm the opposite of my characters, then it'll just sound awful. But I tend to write the sort of things I'd never say because I'm not a very forceful person.

My grandfather was a vicar, and there was quite a lot of churchgoing when I was growing up. It's a world that I spent a lot of time around.

I love watching programmes about food. I always think, 'When I'm old, I'll take up baking.' There's something calming about watching the recipe and thinking, 'I'm going to make that' - and it's never going to happen.

People who know my track record know when I've got a vision in mind, I'll see it through. But sometimes it's hard to convey what you're trying to achieve.

I love the spiritual side of religion, but the church, for me, is a place where I feel very repressed.

I'm sure all parents think their kids are funny, and I'm sure a lot of kids are, whether their parents are comics or not.

With 'Nighty Night' series one, Oprah Winfrey's channel took it on, so she must have liked it.

I can't just lie in bed and be self-obsessed if there are two children running about who could easily fall down the stairs.

I'd love to do more 'Nighty Night,' but that's always down to commissions, really. It's weird as well because everyone's moved on. I don't know if I could get all those people back.

I'd love to find a lifelong female film editor as Scorsese has with Thelma Schoonmaker. I think women are probably, without generalising, sensitive to subtle things as an editor.

I would never say, 'Ooh, let's do something really dark.'

I think my dad has a similar black sense of humour to mine, so perhaps it's just an inherited thing. I've got two little boys now, and I can see it with them as well. I don't know if you learn it off your parents - but my dad used to take me to see certain plays when I was quite young, so maybe that had an effect as well.

I always imagine people give succinct answers. I have no prepared thoughts on what I do.

People say the comedy is so shocking, but if you read newspapers or look around generally - I mean, obviously I'm not writing about all the lovely things that there are, which I do see as well - but there is a lot of outrageousness around, slightly covered up. And obviously, it's fun to take that a little bit further.

All the time, I'm watching relationships.

I just find it funny and terrible: someone being very rude and overbearing over somebody who doesn't know how to deal with it. Maybe it's because I've experienced that sort of thing and I don't know how to say, 'You can't do that. You can't say that to me.'

I actually think I'm still quite childishly optimistic in a certain way, which is maybe why I find life quite shocking.