He was aimless yet competitive and loved being in the spotlight. There was only ever one way his career was going to go
I wasn’t very well behaved at school and got in trouble, mainly for backchat and being disruptive in class. So just before my GCSEs, my school wanted to kick me out. My dad said, “Well, can he at least do his exams?” So the agreement was I could do them, but I wouldn’t be there for my A levels. I think it was testament to the fact that I’d spent five years annoying most of the teachers and they were sick of the sight of me. Looking back, that’s probably with good reason.
At 16, I tried to be funny over almost everything else. I had no real idea what I wanted to do with my life. I liked certain bits of school, mainly the social aspects. And I enjoyed exams, which I accept is completely bizarre, but I’m very competitive. From the outside it might’ve looked like I was quite driven, but I just liked the idea of beating other people, which isn’t the same thing!
I was an only child and completely spoiled for attention. That’s probably what got me into trouble at school and what led me to the ultimate career for an attention seeker. Oddly, since I started being on telly, that need has evaporated; it’s like I’ve satiated it. Now it’s not something that particularly motivates me.
Even now, if I need advice, I will often turn to my dad. He ran a garage selling tyres, doing MOTs. So even though what I do is a million miles from his work, there’s something about that feeling of reassurance from a sensible, clever man. And he was always really supportive of me. I can’t remember if him pushing back against the school for me meant a lot at the time, but it means a lot looking back.
My family would watch the telly together. We’d have our trays and we’d sit, have dinner on our laps and watch TV. I always really loved that. But until I went to university I just had no inkling that a career in television, or being a comedian or anything like that was a possibility. I didn’t know anyone who worked in the media. I didn’t know anyone who’d ever met anyone who worked in the media. So if you told me I’d end up being on TV and radio, I would have been baffled.
I was always confident, but I don’t know if I necessarily knew what to do with it. Your sphere of opportunity expands massively when you go to a university like the one that I did [Pembroke College, Cambridge], where there’s a lot of well-connected people who feel like they can do whatever. And that does rub o
