I went to China for a brief working visit, and I thought that Shanghai was interesting, but Beijing totally grabbed me. – Marcus Brigstocke
I think it’s important never to look yourself up on Wikipedia. I think the temptation to correct any interesting factual errors would be too much. – Marcus Brigstocke
Guilt is feeling bad about what you have done; shame is feeling bad about who you are – all it is, is muddling up things you have done with who you are. – Marcus Brigstocke
I have learnt that I am incapable of packing the right amount of clothing, probably because I start 10 minutes before I’m supposed to leave, and that I truly hate airports. – Marcus Brigstocke
I’m more pompous and self-assured and determined that if – you know – if the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed. – Marcus Brigstocke
I’ve spent a lot of very happy times in Edinburgh as a result of playing virtually every festival since 1996. It’s also a beautiful city in its own right, is walkable, within sight of the sea and mountains – and was too far north for the Luftwaffe to have done any damage, hence the spectacularly beautiful architecture. – Marcus Brigstocke
I’d lie in bed in my dormitory and grab at bits of my body, wanting to tear them off… I was so large by then that, in the heat, my thighs chafed together and bled. I was very unhappy, and yet no one ever asked me how I felt. – Marcus Brigstocke
I stumbled on a joke idea and style that worked, the audience went with it and, from that moment on, I was hooked. It’s an amazing feeling. – Marcus Brigstocke
I have an addictive personality. Boarding school merely sent me more quickly on the downward spiral that dominated my childhood. – Marcus Brigstocke
My purist comedy friends accuse me of being a Jack of all trades and master of none. – Marcus Brigstocke
I find myself by default an atheist but fairly unhappily so. It would be bloody marvelous if there was a god. – Marcus Brigstocke
Catholicism has the clerical equivalent to a nut allergy – even a small exposure to change, and the whole thing will go into anaphylactic shock. – Marcus Brigstocke
I realised that to compare your insides with other people’s outsides leads to unhappiness. – Marcus Brigstocke
There are a lot of comics at the top end making staggering amounts of money and selling out stadiums. I think stand-up is a more intimate thing than that. Maybe because of the kind of comedy I do. It’s like a discussion, but I’m the one with the microphone. – Marcus Brigstocke
The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it’s so straightforward and simple. If the audience don’t laugh, you didn’t do your job. I’ve had some audiences where I didn’t care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid. – Marcus Brigstocke
I think Ross Noble is the only person that I’ve seen really storm a stand-up slot at a festival, and that was when he led 3,000 people on a conga out of the tent and across the entire site to a vegetarian food truck. – Marcus Brigstocke
Political correctness is as exploitable as any other progressive ideal, but its aim is to stifle the incessant noise of those who flap their careless lips without a thought about those they might offend and why that might be important. – Marcus Brigstocke
Eventually, somewhere – be it on the Internet or somewhere else – I will host some version of ‘The Daily Show.’ – Marcus Brigstocke
Offence is important; that’s how you know you care about things. Imagine a life where you’re not offended. So dull. – Marcus Brigstocke
I became hugely overweight and then hated myself because it was a form of self-abuse, something over which I had no control. I think the thing compulsive over-eaters want to achieve is that stuffed-full Christmas afternoon feeling. – Marcus Brigstocke
I am not racked with self-loathing. Some issues of guilt and shame, but I’m a pretty good guy. – Marcus Brigstocke
I failed to get into drama school, and my best friend told me I should do stand-up instead. I was always doing gags and voices, so he booked a gig for me without telling me. I only had four days to write it. I did a seven-minute set; the first four minutes were terrible, but the last two were amazing. – Marcus Brigstocke
I have a very good memory for scripts. I can watch a show I like once, then remember about 90% of the script. But ask me who was in it, and I wouldn’t have a clue. – Marcus Brigstocke
