I cannot possibly reveal the full horror of my most embarrassing moment, but it took place in a pub in Exeter (which is a town in the south coast of England, where I went to university) in 1984 and involved a joke made by me that backfired spectacularly. The whole debacle was witnessed by my friend Pauline, who is mentioned elsewhere on this fansite (I have to keep her happy in case she TELLS).

In order to raise money to pay for myself to go to the National Youth Theatre, I performed a medley of my drama school speeches and some songs for my entire school. Considering I can’t sing, this was terrible. I did U Remind Me by Usher and Hey There Delilah by the Plain White T’s. They paid £2 each – basically, to laugh at me.

On one of my first jobs, Cold Mountain, I got a wasp in my ear in front of Jude Law. He couldn’t see the wasp so just saw me freak out.

I can always remember, when I was at high school we had a school sort of army battalion and because, at that time, I was one of the larger boys, I was appointed sergeant of the number one platoon, and I was always absolutely petrified that when I was meant to turn the platoon left or turn it right, I was really actually hopeless at knowing quite what to do. But fortunately, my platoon, who were really all the misfits in the school, the larger misfits, they stood by me, and some of them were quite good at knowing when to turn left or turn right. So whatever command I gave, they would do the right thing. We were a pretty good platoon as a consequence although, at the time, I felt an absolute idiot.

I was stabbed in my 20s. It was a late-night mugging and, while taking my wallet, they stabbed me in my chest.

I couldn’t care less.

Our wedding weekend in Ireland.

When I was growing up, my mother would accuse me of showing off. That’s the most shaming, humbling, horrible thing. What was I doing? Showing off!

Now that I’m at this end of my career, I’m gobsmacked that I’ve managed to cling on for as long as I have.

Back in the day, when comedy was crueller, my monologues were full of terrible jokes about people, and you can’t apologise because then you’re asking people to forgive you. Your punishment is to walk around knowing you said these horrible things.