There’s hardly anything I’ve ever done that’s made me cringe; I’ve got pretty good pitch, for a start, so I’m not known for hitting bum notes.
I think the first person to call me ‘Britain’s Obama’ was Martin Bright at the New Statesman. Harriet Harman made the comparison once at a conference; it was very flattering but it made me cringe slightly.
In my first few years as an actor, I took one terrible TV job after another. But even as I laughed off my awful roles and made fun of myself to friends, my work made me cringe – I dreaded anyone’s seeing it. I was crushed that I wasn’t doing anything I was proud of.
Seeing myself on the screen makes me cringe. I understand that I am that way – pouty.
I can’t speak for everyone, but the kind of comedy that makes me laugh are the ones that kind of make me cringe, and kind of make me look inside my own fears, my own anxieties.
I cringe when I watch myself on TV.
Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‘O.K.’ has deposed the more affirmative ‘Yes,’ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‘like’ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.
I have sometimes done cartoons that are hurtful to people – immature, spiteful stuff. Some are so self-indulgent, and some have just failed. I look back and sometimes cringe. But one regret as I get older is that I haven’t been radical and wild enough.
People can see that we are part of a tradition of absurd comedy, stretching from Spike Milligan and Peter Cook through to Monty Python and Vic Reeves. We’re not like Ricky Gervais’s hyper-real cringe comedy. We’re at the other end of the scale, but there’s room for the sillier stuff, too.
Most people cringe at the thought of a casserole.
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