It really helps a comedian to be an outsider.
I got cast on 'MADtv' as one of eight permanent cast members chosen from 8,000 comics who'd been screened. For any comic trying to make something of themselves, that was like hitting triple 7s-jackpot.
Coming from an immigrant background, where a lot of parents don't want their kids to be comedians, success was just showing my mom that I could make a living. I was like, if I can get my mom off my back, that was my success.
Part of the problem of comedians doing specials every year - when the masters do it, it's like, 'Okay, I guess, go for it' - but when people aren't at the top of the top level, bits don't get to cook long enough.
Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.
I'd like my super power to be puns; I'd like to be great at puns: pun power. Then I could go on loads of panel shows and live off that forever.
If you are a New York comedian who knows how to improvise and has glasses, you're going to start getting commercials.
Ricky Gervais would have you believe otherwise, but Sacha Baron Cohen is the most successful British comedian in the world.
Any club has more than enough comics, so if you're not there every night talking to the booker, you're not going to get on. You have to be there more than they are.
I decided I'd try my hand as a stand-up comedian, as I loved making people laugh, and appeared at the Latitude Festival, won the 2007 Laughing Horse New Act of the Year, and was a nominee for winner of the 2007 So You Think You're Funny competition.
Because comedy is cheap to put on: if you've got a play or an opera, there's a whole load of people and a set, but comedy is just one man or woman. And because TV has learned to love comics - there's so many more around now than when I started out.
Now, as a comic, if you're vaguely amusing you can go straight into TV, then you play the O2 and then everyone's sick of you.
Sometimes, when comedians get success, they don't do as much weird stuff as they normally do.
I have a very strong visual memory of the first time I made him laugh. That was remarkable. I was like, "Oh, God, I just made Jack Benny laugh."
I love doing stand-up, and the more you do outside of stand-up to raise your profile, the better your stand-up becomes in terms of the quality of gigs.
The most memorable performance was my appearance in concert in Carnegie Hall. The first standup to do so.
